SlimShot camera is no bigger than five credit cards! (Fujifilm Axia IX-10)

Member Name: mdtt1983

Product:	Fujifilm Axia IX-10
Date:	10/08/02 (1352 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Very Portable, Easy Download, Long battery life

Disadvantages: Optical viewfinder too small, No Flash, No good for photo prints

FUJIFILM @XIA SLIMSHOT

When I bought this camera, I asked myself, ?What?s so great about?? Well being a great fan of modern camera?s I can its astonishingly portable, it has easy image download for PC and Mac and a respectable image quality with long battery life.
Being just six millimetres wide it is small, no wonder that Fujufilm?s new @xia SlimShot has just earned itself a place in the Guinness World Records 2002. Featuring a smooth silver aluminium casing with halo green plastic accents around the lens mount and sides, the SlimShot is no bigger than five credit cards stuck together. When switched off it is completely free from external protrusions and can be slipped neatly and safely into a standard wallet or purse without bulking it up too much. This diminutive didigam also fits perfectly into shirt pockets and those secret pockets that you get in combat trousers, making it the ultimate ?anytime, anyplace, anywhere? digicam. Although it weighs only 35 grams the SlimShot is also remarkably robust- when I accidentally dropped it from a height of roughly four foot onto a concrete floor it neither shattered nor dented. In fact, it suffered no ill effects whatsoever.

Features

The SlimShot?s CCD image sensor delivers a very lean 640 x 480 pixel image, which does not bode well in terms of image quality, but with not inconsiderable internal memory of eight megabytes you can still store up to 26 full-sized snaps (320 x 240 pixels). It comes with a wafer-thin rechargeable lithium-polymer battery enables the SlimShot to capture between 600 and 1000 pictures between each recharge. A separate AC adapter or battery charger is not required though- to recharge the battery you simply connect the camera to your computer via the USB cable, so as long as you can get access to a computer with a USB port will always having shooting power. It takes roughly 40 minutes to recharge a fully depleted battery. To save power during everyday use, if the SlimSho
t isn?t in used for over 30 seconds it automatically switches to sleep mode.

Easy to Use

To switch the camera on you push down the lever on its left-hand side. In doing so, the minuscule, fixed-focus lens pops out from the lens body. This action is accompanied by a high-pitched little beep noise and the activation of the tiny liquid crystal display on the back of the camera. This LCD displays all the image information required at any time, including the number of available shots, battery status and image size.
As far as controls go, there are just two teeny buttons on the back-one for turning off the beef noise, the other for selecting your picture size and/or deleting the snaps. Framing subject with the glass viewfinder can be a little tricky because your nose tends to get in the way, but with just a few basic controls and point and click functionality, taking pictures with this skinny snapper is simplicity itself. Because the SlimShot ships complete with Photo Album (a highly accessible image transfer programme), image download onto a PC or a Mac via a USA cable is an equally quick and painless affair.
In terms of portability, looks and ease of use then, I would say the SlimShot is a sure-fire winner!

As I watched my SlimShot pictures opening up one by one inside the Photo Album software, my initial scepticism of this little thing quickly turned to amazement. On the whole, colours are vibrant and accurate, detail is nice and high in both close-up and landscape shots and, best of all, the snaps I took indoors without a flash were well exposed and surprisingly sharp. The images are perfect for email attachments and web site illustrations but I don?t think they are high enough for photo quality prints. Like all my cameras, the SlimShot is not averse to turning in the occasional off-balance exposure too, but all in all the results are a far cry from the fuzzy, distorted ?webcam style? image I was expecting. I got it for £79.99, so I
personally think the SlimShot is also quite affordable.

Summary: