"Snap" up a Bargain! (Technika SH-7065 7MP)

Member Name: lel1969

Product:	Technika SH-7065 7MP
Date:	22/09/08 (340 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A decent camera for a low budget or beginner

Disadvantages: None

It was my daughter's 11th birthday recently and, as is usual, she had to decide what she wanted to do with her birthday money, of course, saving it up is too boring!

She decided to buy herself a digital camera as she was getting fed up having to use mine!! I had the job of finding a suitable one for her on the internet. Her stipulations were that it had to be "a good one", it had to be black and she didn't want to spend more than £50, oh yes, and it had to be delivered within 2 days as she couldn't wait until the weekend to go into town for one! I set to work trawling the internet trying to find what I thought would be the best deal for her, remembering that she is only 11 and still doesn't really appreciate the monetary value of things and that digital cameras are really quite fragile pieces of technology. So many cameras with so many different functions..... would she use these functions?......would she NEED those functions?......does it really matter what colour it is?.......... ARGHH. Just as I was reaching the end of my tether I visited the Tesco Direct website and I came across the Technika SH-7065 7MP Digital Camera. It was £49, black, quite stylish and compact looking, it was in stock with next day delivery available and the icing on the cake was you were getting a free canon inkjet photo printer with it, she was over the moon and I was instructed to order right away! Needless to say I was over the moon too a she always manages to finish the ink on my printer, printing off photos of her and her friends posing.

Delivery charges are £4.85 and if ordered before 12 noon your items should arrive the next day. Alternatively you can pick up from your local store if your local store has this facility, you can check online to see if your local store offers this facility. The pick up from store service is still £4.85 if your order is below £25, making this a waste of time in my view, why pay to give yourself the bother of collecting from the store when you can have your item delivered to your door for the same price! Orders over £25 can be collected from the store at no charge. Anyway enough waffling and a bit about the camera.

==What The Technika SH-7065 7MP Digital Camera Has To Offer==

The camera arrived well packaged in a cardboard box. Along with the camera you also receive an instruction manual, camera strap, leather look camera pouch, lithium ion rechargeable battery, battery charger, charger adapter, USB cable and software disk.

The camera offers 7MP good quality high resolution photos. It has an auto flash facility, a 2.36" TFT colour image LCD monitor, up to 4x digital zoom, 14mb of internal image memory storage, it can use an SD memory card, has a USB connection and cable for down loading photos and video images onto your computer, it has a DPOF function allowing images to be printed directly from your camera using a compatible printer, scene mode and software allowing you to edit, enhance and retouch your photographs.

==What We Thought Of The Camera==

Compact, small and lightweight this matt black finish camera is a great looking camera, all smooth and flush with no little bits jutting out waiting to be broken off. We attached the wrist strap and Erin was very impressed with the pouch she got with the camera. I think you are much safer keeping a camera in a pouch, just to give it a bit of protection, and when you get one free with the camera then it's definitely a bonus.

Before use you obviously have to insert the lithium battery. There was a small amount of charge in the battery allowing us to test the camera before charging. To turn the camera on you simply slide the lens cover along until it clicks into the open position and you're ready to go. On first use you will be asked to set the screen language and then set the date and time. You should also set the image resolution and quality you wish to use for taking your photographs. There are 4 choices of resolution and 3 choices of quality - fine, standard and economy. I set the camera to the standard quality and the second highest resolution, which only allowed the internal memory to store 7 images. The internal memory can store from 2 to 76 images depending on the quality and resolution you choose. We liked the quality of images we had chosen so decided to buy a 1GB SD card, which we picked up in Tesco for under £5, which now allowed Erin to take 670 images on the setting we had chosen. The 1GB card will allow from 316 to 6291 images to be stored, again depending on the chosen quality.

This camera has a 4x digital zoom, which is easily used by continuously pressing the ok button until the desired magnification is reached. There is a focus switch, which can be set either in normal mode allowing you to capture images of scenery or people etc.or macro mode, which allows you capture close up images. The auto flash will flash automatically when required. You can also set the flash to red-eye reduction, which helps to reduce red-eye on people and animals thus making the image more natural and forced flash, which will always flash regardless of the surrounding brightness and you can also set the flash to the flash off position for situations where the flash will make no difference. All these facilities are easily accessed by using the menu and arrow buttons. The self timer facility can be set to 10 seconds, 2 seconds or 10 + 2 seconds, although I have no idea why you would want to use the 2 second setting as I think the picture would have been taken by the time you got in front of the camera!!

Scene Mode Selection - this is a selection of settings, which can be used for different situations:

Auto - this is the simplest setting, just point and shoot and the camera does everything for you.
Sport - this setting can be used when taking images of moving people or objects.
Night - as it would suggest this is for taking images in the evening or night time.
Portrait - this is used for taking a photograph of someone but making them a bit clearer and stand out more, although I compared this with the auto function and to be quite honest didn't really notice any difference between the two images.
Landscape - this can be used to take distance images, for example scenery, it gives infinity focus thus helping to create a better sharpness to the image.
Backlight - this function can be used when the light comes from behind the subject.

Although there are all these settings I personally find the auto setting is best as it really does everything for you.

One function Erin loved was the colour function allowing her to change her images from colour to black and white or sepia (the old fashioned brown colour), she loved using this for all her images for her Bebo page!

The video function allows you take silent motion clips, with the internal memory allowing up to 26 seconds and the 1GB SD card allowing up to 31 minutes. Again great fun for when she is with her friends, especially now they are forming a "band"! She was always stealing my camera before, but I was never too happy about her doing that, now she can play with her own camera!

The playback mode allows you to have a look through the images you have captured, this function is again easily navigated using the menu and arrow buttons. You can either view you images in the normal setting looking at one image at a time or thumbnail display allowing you to view 9 images at one time or the slideshow display, which allows you to playback your images automatically in sequential order. Again this was a function Erin loved. You can also playback any video clips as well. Any images or video clips you no longer need can be easily deleted, again using the navigation buttons. There is also a facility for protecting your images/videos clips to prevent accidental deletion.

The DPOF (Digital Print Order Format) allows you to print images directly from your camera using a compatible printer with a memory card slot, therefore you don't have to download your images onto a computer or disk. Another function is if you have a Pictbridge compatible printer you can connect this camera directly to your printer using a USB cable. When we got the free printer with the camera it was advertised as having this function but as yet I have not worked out how this done, not being too up on technology, however Erin does like to play around with her images on the computer first before printing so it's not really a function we would use but I suppose it could come in handy if your computer crashes?!

The software was very easy to upload onto the computer using the disk supplied and copying the images from the camera onto your computer is again very easily done following the on screen instructions.

Charging the battery was simple, just insert the battery into the charger and plug into a socket. When the battery is charging a red light will be lit and once it is fully charged again the light will change to green. It is advised to fully discharge the battery before charging. Charging times do vary but it usually takes 1-2 hours for the battery to be fully charged.

Overall I would rate this camera 10/10 as I can find no fault with it at all. It looks good, is lightweight and compact, very easy to use and gives great results. I loved the fact that it had a rechargeable battery as my own digital camera goes through AA batteries like they were going out of fashion. This is the perfect digital camera if you have a budget to stick to, if you are a beginner or like my daughter, for the younger generation who don't quite yet appreciate the value of technology. We of course had the added bonus of receiving a free printer with our camera, although this offer is no longer on.

Many thanks for reading.

© lel1969

Summary: A great camera for the younger generation or beginner

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