HuSä

Opinion
Very cute, but maddening to use.

After two weeks of hands-on work with this camera, I've concluded a) it's very cute and does many things well but b) it can be maddening to use.

What it does well:

• In good light, it takes photos and high definition video which are sharp and have good color saturation.

• The tiny flash is surprisingly powerful, even when lighting a fairly large room.

• It offers a wide range of image sizes and formats (ie., 16:9, 4:3, etc.)

• It takes excellent close-up photos of flowers, insects, etc.

• It has some interesting and useful features including high speed (33 fps) photography at 3MP, red-eye reduction, etc.

• It's extremly cute (like a baby dSLR) and easy to carry around.

Why it's maddening:

• The electronic viewfinder (EVF) functions like a traditional optical viewfinder. When using the EVF, however, you must continue looking through it to see the image you just shot as the latter doesn't appear on the camera's main viewscreen. The logic is you only use the EVF when it's too bright to see the main viewscreen, however, I'd like to be able to use the EVF to save on batteries and use the main viewscreen to confirm my photos after each shot.

• The camera menus are frustratingly inconsistent between different camera modes. For example, some modes allow you to change the ISO while other modes allow only "auto" ISO. The auto-only option should ONLY be on the auto mode.

• Setting shutter speed and aperature is not entirely intuitive. To increase the shutter speed, you have to push the down arrow button. (I know, push down to admit less light, but I don't think that way when shooting. If I want a faster shutter speed, I should be pushing the up arrow button.)

• When setting aperature, you're only given a choice of two aperature settings (f3.5 and f7 when on wide angle, for example). If I'm adjusting the aperature, I'd like to set it to any setting I desire, not just two.

• The macro and super-macro modes require separate button clicks to activate and deactivate. In the field, this quickly gets annoying, especially when similar video closeups don't require the same adjustments. If closeups work when shooting video, they should also work with still photos.

• No threads for lens filters. I have a skylight 1A filter on all of my SLRs and dSLRs. With a little camera like this one, I'd like it to have the same protection for its lens.

• No battery level indicator until the batteries are almost entirely drained.

• The full camera manual is a PDF on CD. For a camera that definitely requires you to read the manual to get reasonably comfortable (or at least minimally frustrated) with it, a printed full manual is a must-have.




Problems
• When shooting toward the sun (not necessarily directly at it, but with the sun at your face), the viewfinder image takes on a strong bluish tinge which is distracting. The photos themselves are fine, but forget trying to judge color accuracy when looking through what looks like a clear, blue shower curtain.

• The "blue shower curtain" effect IS a problem on the final result when shooting lower resolution video (620x480 or 320x240). Face toward a major light source such as the open sky and your low-rez videos will have a noticeable blue curtain "falling" down the screen at those bright spots.

• Ridiculously short battery life. I like using AA batteries and have two Pentax dSLRs in which battery life isn't an issue. Why this little camera goes through AAs like popcorn is an engineering problem IMHO.

• Zooming while shooting video sounds like a zipper zipping and unzipping on the audio. When shooting, plan on editing out any zoom-transitions you have in your video later.

Bottom line: I *want* to like this camera, but it's annoying enough that I haven't fallen in love with it. Hopefully many of the issues above can be addressed with a software update. The hardware issues, however, make the camera feel like it's still not ready for prime-time.