HP - Photosmart 850 review

Somewhere in the depths of the huge HP corporation there is a team that desperately wants to develop a 35mm film camera. Instead they've been told to sort their act out and develop a digital camera fit for 2003, so here it is: the HP Photosmart 850, a digital camera that looks just like a traditional film camera. As a result it's quite large at 120mm x 120mm x 85mm with the lens extended.

The specification includes some big numbers, including a 4.1 Megapixel resolution, 8x optical zoom, 7x digital zoom and a lens that is the 35mm equivalent of 37-300mm. In fact the specification actually says "Total 4.13 Megapixels (3.89 recorded Megapixels)" so let's err on the side of caution and say it's approximately 4 Megapixels.

HP has chosen to power the Photosmart 850 with four AA batteries (supplied), which is not a choice that we approve of, as one of the beauties of a digital camera is that it has no consumables to pay for. If a Li-Ion battery isn't appropriate for some reason then at least give us four AA Ni-Cads and a charger. Anyway, the four batteries live in the part of the camera that looks like it should hold a roll of 35mm film.

The rest of the layout is conventional, with a decent-sized 50mm display and just enough buttons to navigate the set-up menu comfortably.

You'll find the flash on top, where it pops up when you release a catch. This is hardly rocket science, but again it's not quite what we want to see. A regular flash set in the front of the camera can respond to the auto setting as necessary. Perhaps it's all a ploy to discourage us from using up those AA batteries.

Thankfully all this is mere quibbling, as the HP is very good indeed when it comes to taking photos, both indoors and outside. The colour balance is just right, the picture is sharp and clear, and that huge zoom range drags the subject just as close as you want. The most important thing is that the Photosmart 850 doesn't add or remove any information; instead it takes the picture that is in front of you.

HP includes both a USB cable to connect to your PC and a USB Direct print cable, should you have an appropriate printer. That's inevitable as HP is an imaging company, however we tend to find that pictures need a bit of editing before printing. The included HP Instant Share software helps you to send photos to your nearest and dearest over the Internet, although we trust that visitors to this site are au fait with e-mail and attachments and so likely to be able to manage on their own.

HP - Photosmart 735 camera review

HP has been plugging away making cameras for the last five years or so, yet many of the main digital camera outlets don't stock them. This is a shame - just because HP's background is in computing rather than optics doesn't mean it can't make a good camera.

The latest Photosmart 735 may look a little bland - there are only a couple of curves to break up the fairly boxy look of this 35mm, compact-size camera - but its specification and performance put it up with many better known brands. As with previous HP cameras, the lens system is from Pentax, the two companies having collaborated on previous cameras, with each bringing its own expertise to the design.

The lens on the Photosmart 735 offers 3x optical zoom and the electronics add a further 5x digital zoom, producing an unusually high 15x total. The camera has a 3-megapixel CCD array, so it can cope with this high level of digital magnification. Other features more often found in higher-end cameras include manual aperture control, as well as several automatic presets for different environments, such as landscape, night-time and portrait photography.

The camera is straightforward to control and has two LCD displays. As well as the normal colour LCD used to view shots and make menu settings, there's a mono LCD status display on the top of the camera. This shows things like the number of shots remaining, battery status and the selected image quality. Buttons ranged around both displays make it easy to set up and change the camera's parameters.

Picture quality is generally very good, with the camera's optics and electronics working well together to produce natural colours and well-defined foregrounds. When set to fully automatic, the camera still manages to make most of the right decisions and is as 'friendly' for the novice photographer who wishes to point and shoot as for the more seasoned user, keen to take more control.

HP includes its Memories Disk with the Photosmart 735, offering basic image manipulation and management. This makes it particularly easy to get pictures off the camera and onto your PC, or further out onto the Internet. InstantShare is a function which uploads selected images to an HP-maintained Web site and automatically sends messages to selected contacts so they can view them directly from there. This saves sending bulky pictures to all your friends, particularly those with dial-up links.

HP - Photosmart 945 review

The HP Photosmart 945 is the biggest, bulkiest and heaviest camera in this group by a wide margin. In fact at first glance you may not even realise that it is a digital camera as it is styled to look like a regular 35mm film camera. The 'film canister' actually houses four AA alkaline batteries, and doubles up as a comfortable grip that is good for steadying the camera.

Besides its looks, the HP Photosmart 945 stands out in this group as the only 5-megapixel model and it also has a massive 8x optical zoom, compared to the 3x figure of the other models. The result is that the HP takes pictures that can be up to 3MB in size at an enormous resolution of 2,608 x 1,952 pixels, compared to a typical 'fine' resolution of 2,272 x 1,704 with a 4-megapixel model.

The optical zoom can pull the subject right up to the foreground from an enormous distance, but the downside is that when you turn the HP on there's a fair amount of whirring as the lens extends and sorts itself out.

You also have to remember to remove the lens cover and if you want to use the flash then you have to flip the unit up. None of that is hard work but you have to remember to do it, and in that respect too the HP Photosmart 945 is more like a traditional film camera than a compact digital camera.

HP has made it easy to use this fully featured camera by fitting a 2-inch LCD screen which has helpful notes on the menus so you should have no need to refer to the manual if you have any prior experience of digital cameras, although you may have some trouble figuring out which button turns the LCD on in the first place.

There's an unusual feature in, of all places, the viewfinder. A sensor shuts off the display when you put the camera to your eye to save battery power, and in the viewfinder it looks as though you are looking through the lens, however it is actually a magnified portion of the displayed photo. We were happy to stick to using the screen in the regular way although you have to take more care to avoid camera shake that way.

Although the pictures that we took using macro weren't particularly impressive, the rest of the interior and exterior shots were very good and when we used the zoom it was no surprise that the HP Photosmart 945 was in a league of its own in this group. Clearly the HP Photosmart 945 isn't much use to you if you want a slim camera that you can drop into your jacket pocket, but other than that it's superb.

HP - Photosmart R707 review

In the crowded digital photography market, the still camera that stands out from the herd will have to combine stylish looks, good picture quality and a host of technical wizardry with a reasonable retail price.

Hewlett Packard has always had an eye for quality and with the Photosmart R707 the company is hoping to hit most of the targets above. For a start the brushed steel exterior is both classy and solid to the touch, yet the unit weighs a mere 180g without the battery.

The Photosmart R707 is not just a thing of beauty. It also has an impressive 5.1-megapixel resolution and offers 24x total zoom (3x optical and 8x digital). At its lowest resolution (VGA and 'two star' compression) you can fit 180 images on the 32MB internal memory and there's an additional SD card slot. There are ten shooting modes ranging from action, landscape and sunset to beach and snow, panorama and aperture priority.

Talking of panorama, one of a series of HP Real Life Technologies features built into this camera is the world's first in-camera panorama preview. Instead of having to guess where the parameters of your last shot were, you're now provided with a ghost image of your last photo, thus enabling you to line up the subsequent section exactly. Like most moments of genius, you wonder why no-one has thought of such an easy solution before.

If that's got you interested, there are two more programmes that will have you excited. The first tackles the photographer's perpetual enemy - red-eye. In the past you had to transfer the images to a computer and then get to work with PhotoShop or Paint Shop Pro to mask out those devil eyes. Now red-eye removal can happen at source, in the camera, with a preview mode to make sure the wrong red source is not being corrected.

If you're relatively new to photography and don't know why some photos haven't emerged at their best, then there's HP Image Advice to analyse your images for 50 possible problems and then to suggest ways of improving your technique.

It doesn't stop there, as another element of the package is HP Adaptive Lighting, which is a lighting contrast correction facility that will virtually eliminate those 'dark foreground, light background' type shots that you notably get on ski-slopes and beaches. If that wasn't enough, how about Adaptive Demosaic (which fills in missing colours), Preferred Photographic Reproduction (for optimising images for printing) and a Noise Filter to cut down on that bumpy, grainy look on faces and landscapes?

Once your photos are taken, you transfer them to a PC or Mac with the relevant cables. Normally you would then decide where you want to allocate them - to folders, albums, e-mail, Web site, etc., which can be a lengthy task. To short-cut this, HP includes its Instant Share technology which allows you to pre-determine where each image should go before it's transferred to the computer. Then it's simply a case of plugging it in. You do have to spend time initially programming the menu but it's definitely worth it in the long term.

The standard package comes with a rechargeable Li-Ion battery, computer and print cables, HP Image Zone software, wrist strap, manual and AC adapter, but it's also worth thinking about buying an additional fast charger or the impressive R-series dock. The dock recharges both your current battery and the spare, downloads photos on to the computer, prints them or shares them by e-mail, and connects to your TV to present your photos as a slide show using the remote control.

HP - Photosmart 422 review

There are two main ways to print digital photos directly from a camera: pull out its memory card and plug it into a printer or connect the two together with a PictBridge cable. Both of these techniques can be fiddly, particularly for somebody new to digital photography. For this type of photographer the Photosmart 422 could be ideal.

HP's new camera and printer bundle incorporates a printer dock, an idea pioneered by Kodak, where you simply plug the camera into the top of the printer to print your photos. A connector on the printer couples with a socket on the underside of the camera and the two devices then act as one. In the case of the Photosmart 422, the printer uses the LCD display on the back of the camera to display your shots, so you can select what to print.

The short, fat M415 camera has a good specification, with a 5-megapixel sensor, 3x optical and 6x digital zoom, 16MB of internal memory and an SD/MM card slot for adding more. As supplied, it can take eight shots at its default resolution, so you'll probably need to invest in a memory card early on. The 38mm LCD display on its back is a little small to see any detail, but is usable.

The printer takes 15 x 10cm (6 x 4-inch) photo paper, up to 20 sheets at a time, and produces good quality prints from its single tri-colour cartridge. Ironically, prints are better using a PC connection than directly from the camera, where we saw some banding and noise. The camera includes innovations like red-eye removal and adaptive lighting technology, which improves detail in darker or shadowed areas of a photo.

Running costs come out at around 22p per colour print. If you prefer black and white photos, you can fit a tri-grey cartridge instead. For some reason best known to HP, it quotes its tri-grey cartridge as producing less than half the prints of its high capacity colour cartridge, even though the tri-grey cartridge has greater capacity. It therefore costs around 30p for a black and white print.

Printing is quite quick, coming in between one and three quarter minutes (from a PC) and two minutes (from the camera). You simply plug the camera, backwards, into the dock on top of the printer and use its display to show your images, as you navigate through them using the ring of control buttons on the printer body.

HP - Photosmart R927 review

If ever there were a case of somebody soldiering on in the face of scant recognition, it's HP and its cameras. While well regarded for printers, scanners, PCs, servers, in fact most areas of IT, its cameras are hardly ever mentioned alongside the Nikons and Canons of this world, or even the Olympuses and Fujifilms. Some of HP's cameras deserve better, certainly alongside the latter two names.

The Photosmart R927 is a compact digital camera with an 8.2-megapixel sensor and a 76mm (3-inch) LCD monitor. These two specs alone should make it worth a look, but it also comes with two Lithium-Ion rechargeable batteries and a purpose-made dock/recharger.

There are fewer controls on the Photosmart 927 than on many cameras in the same market, with a set of four along the top edge plus power, shutter release and video start/stop. On the back there's a toggle for wide-angle to zoom and a menu button with a four-way ring around it for navigation.

One of the delights of using the Photosmart R927 is its logical interface. With a series of main categories along the top of the screen, each one breaks down in a vertical menu down the left-hand side. With the large LCD screen there's space for help text, too, so the camera can explain how to do things and what effect each option will have.

There's a set of slightly gimmicky in-camera effects, such as watercolour, retro and kaleidoscope. If you have a good, full-body portrait, you can even apply the slimming filter, which squeezes the centre of the image and expands the edges. The effects on this reviewer were stunning, if a little disconcerting.

Of more general use are in-camera red-eye removal and adaptive lighting. HP pioneered adaptive lighting, which brings up the detail in shadows when there's a high contrast between light and dark areas, and it makes a worthwhile difference to many shots. It's a bit like an automated gamma adjustment, applied dynamically over an image.

In use the camera takes sharp, well-adjusted photos in automatic mode, but you can select manual and aperture or shutter priorities, too. There are 13 other pre-set modes, ranging from snow to night portrait to beach, and you can take panoramas left to right or right to left and have the camera stitch them together. It's disappointing only to have a 3x optical zoom, but HP has tried to compensate with the 8x digital zoom afforded by its large sensor.

HP - Photosmart R837 review

Choosing your first digital camera in today's market is a bewildering business, as the manufacturers bombard you with impressive sounding statistics and/or provide a seductive exterior to grab your attention. In the case of HP's Photosmart R837, the initial appeal is linked to both style and content.

You're struck at first by the smooth, silver metallic finish at the front and the exceptionally large (3-inch) LCD display at the back. The shiny plate at the front trumpets the fact that the images will have a resolution of 7.2 megapixels and the graceful curve of the front case is designed to be sexily chic.

The camera is switched on via the sliding lens cover at the front - it feels clunky and not altogether smooth. Also, when you start lining up your photos through the LCD, there's very restricted gripping space beside the lens (the front curvature doesn't help here either) and you have to be careful not to put your thumb in the frame.

Once on, a slide control on the top lets you choose between stills, video and playback and again this is not the most user-friendly when changing between modes. The other controls, by contrast, are simple and easy to operate and include main menu, zoom, return, delete, mode and flash.

In terms of functions, there's a curious mix of feast and famine. Light sensitivity is restricted to ISO100, 200 and 400 and the flash options are simply Auto, On and Off (no anti red-eye). However there are 13 picture modes (including Beach, Snow, Theatre, Panorama left and right and Sunset) and you can use SD cards up to 4GB of memory in addition to the built-in 32MB.

The video capture is the weakest link as the maximum you can achieve is 24fps MPEG-1 at 640x480 resolution. Zoom capacity is more than adequate, though, with 3x optical and 8x digital available. The quality of the still images is no better than average, mostly because of the low light sensitivity and occasional fringing effect in high contrast photos.

Where this machine really scores is with its in-camera editing and manipulation. HP's so-called Design Gallery is a veritable treasure trove of creative effects, particularly if you don't like what you see in front of your camera and want to 'improve' it. Notable firsts are the Photo Touch-Up, which can remove facial blemishes like spots and moles (superb), and Pet-Eye Fix, which makes animals' glowing eyes a more acceptable black.

Fun stuff includes Slimming (for a more flattering figure) and 12 excellent artistic effects such as Cartoon, Ink Dots, Retro, Vintage, Kaleidoscope and Drawing. Photos can be tagged, too, to make them easy to categorise before you transfer them to a PC.