need opinion re first digital camera

MartinS wrote:
"Cathy" wrote:
"MartinS" wrote...
"Cathy" wrote:

snip

I've also wondered why HP cameras don't seem to get much of a
mention.

Sorry I can't give you a great deal of help, as I haven't made a
whole lot of use of it yet - mostly indoor baby photos. I try to
use bright room light and avoid the flash; the flash is quite close
to the lens.

Did your baby have red eye? I guess with a baby, you don't want
to use the flash much. My kids never liked the flash going off.
Actually, I don't like it myself. If you have enough light you don't
need the flash, but I seem to always need it for indoors. I thought
I read that its better not to have the flash too close to the lens.

I've had red eye on a couple of closeups (my grandson, BTW).

I didn't buy the dock - I find the USB cable is fine, and I use a
separate charger for NiMH batteries.

Thats probably the best way. You don't really need the dock. I use
Win 98SE and have a separate partition for Win 2000 Pro. What OS do
you use?

Recently upgraded to WinXP Pro - much more stable than 98.

It's compact and takes 2xAAs, but
it uses them up fairly quickly. I haven't tried the video feature,
as I also have a digital video camera. I bought the 407 because it
seemed a good bargain for a 4Mp with 3x optical zoom. I previously
bought an HP 318 3 or 4 years ago - C$300 for 2Mp and only 2x
digital zoom.

The HP 307 and M407 are selling in Toronto at around $200.00 Can. so
very cheap prices as long as they take good photos of course. If I
was getting any of those, I would get the M407 as it is very similar
to the M307, only its 4 MP's. So I am swayed back to considering it
again. How do the pictures turn out? are they clear and sharp, even
the indoor ones?

Plenty good enough for 4x6, as long as the focus is good to start
with. I haven't done any direct comparison with other cameras.

The Wal-Mart Canada digital photo service is pretty good; $0.25 for
4x6, $0.99 for 5x7 (even cheaper at Sam's Club). You can upload
your photos to the website, or take them into the store on your
memory card or a CD-R/RW. BTW, I'm about 100km from Toronto.

I have a Walmart near me where I sometimes make 4X6 prints from my
35 mm. There is no Sams club near me.


Slightly off-topic: my wife went to a party and handed out a half-dozen
one-time-use cameras. Collected and submitted to Costco for
develop/print, they each yielded 27 or 28 images. We requested two each
5x7 prints. Cost per envelope was $6.99 = ~ $ 0.13 per 5x7 print. My
intuitive estimate is that about half were "good" party pictures, and
that very few were not worth looking at.

Not all photography is necessarily high-tech.


--
Frank ess