A great camera at a great price! (UPDATED) (HP Photosmart C215)

Member Name: richmills

Product:	HP Photosmart C215
Date:	02/08/01 (291 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Quality, auto-focus, simplicity

Disadvantages: Eats batteries, night photos are poor

*** Updates at bottom***

The HP PhotoSmart c215 is an ideal camera for those on a tight budged and for those who do not want to spend over £300 on a new basic camera.

The camera arrived with a standard 4mb memory card which is able to store up to 32 images at the lowest quality but only 5 images at the highest quality. Purchasing a 32mb Compact Flash card enable the camera to store an additional 59 photos at the highest quality or over 300 (three hundred) at the worst quality! Not bad for an extra £25!

The Camera is good at taking photos meant for the web, some examples can be found at http://www.thehuddersfield.net/pics/. These were taken at highest quality (1280x960) and then reduced to be a quarter of the size. The ones shown are compressed by 50%. I'll be adding some more this weekend.

One word of warning the camera eats batteries for fun, but what digital camera doens't?. Don't expect to last more than 30 minutes for a set of bog standard batteries. Get a battery charger and a set of Ni-MH batteries like I have and using an extra set allows you to rotate them.

The USB port is a simple plug in, load the drivers and software (supplied) and away you go. Just plug the camera in, switch it on and download the photos. Very quick and very easy.

The camera and the extra memory cost me much less than £200 and is perfect for my needs. I would recommend this item without a doubt. Just point, click and smile as the photo is reviewed on the LCD display.

***Updates***
09/Oct/2001
There are more pictures at http://www.richmills.cwc.net/personal/
I've found that the camera dosen't take good photos at night, you can see the examples at the above web site.
I'm reducing the rating by one therefor, however I would still recommend the camera if all you intended to do is take web photos.

Summary: