Concord Eye-Q 4360z

...and found Argos had a Concord Eye Q 4360z 4 megapixel zoom camera half price at £74.99, what a bargain, so we snapped it up. I had never heard of Concord before but have recently found out it is part of the same company as Polaroid.

When we got it home we found in the box along with the camera, a mini USB cable, a TV cable, a multilingual users guide, a quick start guide, warranty card, camera case ( which secures with velcro and has ...
...hold a spare memory card or batteries), 2 x AA rechargeable batteries and charger with operating instruction booklet and a CD Rom which provides the software required to transfer the pictures, view and edit them on your PC. These include USB Mass Storage Driver, Arcsoft Photoimpression 2000, Acrobat Reader 5, Direct X 9 and another user guide. It depends on which Windows or Macintosh System you have installed as to which software you require. When ... more

We got a new PC at the end of last year and after a few months decided our little Canon Ixus II, although a great camera, was out af date now as it wasn't digital. We started to look about and found Argos had a Concord Eye Q 4360z 4 megapixel zoom camera half price at £74.99, what a bargain, so we snapped it up. I had never heard of Concord before but have recently found out it is part of the same company as Polaroid.

When we got it home we found in the box along with the camera, a mini USB cable, a TV cable, a multilingual users guide, a quick start guide, warranty card, camera case ( which secures with velcro and has a wriststrap, belt loop and a handy inside pocket to hold a spare memory card or batteries), 2 x AA rechargeable batteries and charger with operating instruction booklet and a CD Rom which provides the software required to transfer the pictures, view and edit them on your PC. These include USB Mass Storage Driver, Arcsoft Photoimpression 2000, Acrobat Reader 5, Direct X 9 and another user guide. It depends on which Windows or Macintosh System you have installed as to which software you require. When I put the cd rom in the disc drive it automatically detected which software I needed installing. It does reccomend you have a computer with at least Pentium 2 or Mac 9. So we are okay with a Pentium 4.

Having the charger and batteries included is a good idea because cameras can drain ordinary batteries very quickly.

As you press the smaller of the two buttons on the top the red flash light blinks and the lens comes out at the front. The colour LCD screen also comes on. The LCD and camera automatically turns off after a couple of minutes without being used which is good so you can't accidently run the batteries down. The screen has icons on it for various functions including the date/time and a battery indicator. It is about 1.5''. Everything you can do with the camera you see on the screen. I find it easier when taking photos because you can see exactly what will be on the photo and it has a little square in the middle (as does the viewfinder) so you can be sure the shot is centered.

It has a sliding switch on the back with three positions for taking photos, video clips and to review what you have taken. The video clips with no sound are shot at 30 frames per second and does use up alot more memory than photos. The review function allows you to delete single photos or the whole lot in the cameras memory or SD memory card if you don't want any.

We have used the internal memory which is 16mb since we bought the camera. It allows us to take about 51 photos but only a short video clip. We recently bought a Fuji SD memory card with 128mb costing £19.99 which should allow about 128 photos according to the Argos book. It depends on how many megapixels the camera takes photos at and what memory the card has how many photos it will save. There is a table in the Argos book giving comparisons. I've never inserted the memory card yet to know if this is accurate.

There is a sliding door on the base of the camera and this is where you insert the batteries and memory card. Incidently if the batteries are out for more than four minutes the date and time will be lost but it is simple to input them into the camera. it is useful to buy a second pair of Ni Mh rechargeable batteries for this reason also so you don't have an instance you cannot use the camera because the batteries are charging. The charger included holds 4 AA batteries but it can also charge AAA size. It takes 24 hours for the batteries to charge fully so thats another reason to get a second set.

It has various flash settings to allow for different lighting conditions or you can set the camera to auto flash and let it decide if a flash is needed at all. You can also set the scene such as fireworks, night time or in the the snow so that the camera automatically adjusts the shutter speed and colour to take the best pics.

It has 3x optical and 6x digital zoom which allows you to magnify your pictures up to 18 times. To be honest I haven't got to grips with this yet I have used it but haven't mastered how to take the picture after zooming in.

The camera also has a self timer so you can be in the photo as well. After pressing the large button on the top of the camera, the shutter, an LED light will blink for ten seconds and you have to be quick to get yourself composed and ready!!

If the subject on your photo turns out too light or too dark you can even alter the lighting to make it look better. The camera has loads of features which I wouldn't have expected to find on a camera of this price, even if we had paid the full amount, it seems to be excellent value compared to other cameras on the market. There are a few more features I have spoken about as I haven't tried to use them yet like connecting the camera to your tv then you can review your photos or even use the tv as large viewfinder. I didn't know any camera could do this until now.

To connect to the PC you plug the larger end of the usb cable into the disc drive and the mini usb into the side of the camera. The first time I used it the software automatically started to run. I had no problems transferring the photos onto the PC and I am certainly no expert with computers. Editing the photos was easy as well you can take out red eyes, alter the colour and size of the image, crop the image and resize to keep a particular section.

If you should have any problems ther is a troubleshooting section in the users guide which is also multilingual. If you cannot solve it using this, there is a website www.concord-camera.com which has a customer support section or you can e-mail the customer support centre.

This seems to be a high quality but low cost camera which will suit novices as well as having lots of features for more advanced photographers. This small lightweight camera takes sharp, clear pictures and would be an asset to anyone. I've attached a few photos I've taken.

So go on, say cheese!!!!

 

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