My first digital camera was free with a stereo, which was nice. The thing is, I had no use for it. As far as I was concerned unless you could use it for your job or running a website then the only reason to have a digital camera is so you can put porn on the internet (I have often been told I have a filthy, cynical mind). So my big bulky digital camera was relegated to the drawer under the bed until someone told me about Ebay and then some poor mug gave me £100 for it.
After the sale I began to had a good look around Ebay and was surprised by the vast range of stuff people will buy and decided it would be a perfect way to get rid of a load of my old junk. Only one problem, in the categories I was thinking of selling in, most items won’t sell if you don’t have a picture of it.
Doh!
Well, I wanted a cheep, basic no frills camera. Something that does the job, which was to take clear pictures of stuff I wanted to sell. I didn’t want to pay all the £100 I’d just made to get it either.
I came across the Digital Dream L’espion camera on Ebay for £35 and with a recommended retail price of £39.99 this wasn’t bad. After winning the auction I am now the proud owner of a little digital camera that you would probably lose if you tried to use it for porn.
Appearance **********
The camera comes in a box about the size of a CD, except deeper. The camera, nestled in the middle, looks for all the world like a novelty lighter. In silvery coloured plastic, with a key ring chain, it’s smaller than the palm of my hand and at 58mm x 40mm x 15mm, weighing 40g it’s the tiniest camera I have ever seen in my life. It comes with a tiny little leatherette case to carry it in.
At first I couldn’t find the viewfinder but then I found a little slide on the side of the camera which pushes a little window up. It takes a single AAA battery. There is a function button next to a little two character display screen where functions are chosen and number of pictures left can be seen, apart from the shutter button and the USB port that’s about it.
In the box you get a USB cable; a little instruction leaflet, a licence agreement; a sample photograph and software CD-ROM.
Installation ************
The software provided with my camera included, in addition to the driver, Adobe acrobat reader (for reading the electronic help file), Eyestar mail (For the webcam functions photos) and Ulead photo express (for uploading manipulating pictures)
Simple to install, you basically put the CD into the PC and follow the instructions. For those of you that need detailed instruction on this, they are provided in the little leaflet.
Taking pictures: ****************
After loading your battery you should hear two beeps, which signal that it has been fitted correctly.
Press the function button to turn the camera on. You should see in the display screen the number of pictures you have available.
To take a picture simply point at the thing you want a photo of and press the shutter. The camera will emit a high pitch beep, which means the picture has been taken. If it emits a low pitch beep it means it hasn’t, I’m not sure why you get a low-pitched beep sometimes, there seems to be no logic to it and I cannot find any advice in the help file. This doesn’t happen often and only seems to happen for me when I try to take a picture of my baby nephew (my sister was most upset when I said this must mean she had a devil baby).
The functions available for picture taking are:
CT: Continuous shooting.
By holding the shutter button down the camera will take continuous photographs at lightening fast speed.
ST: Self-timer
By pressing this function and then the shutter button you will activate a 10-second timer for picture taking. It will beep every second until the picture has been taken.
CL: Erase
By selecting this function and pressing the shutter twice you will delete all images on the camera, there doesn’t appear to be the function for deleting just one picture at a time.
This function will allow you to take up to 20 pictures @ 352 x 288 resolution before you will need to either upload or delete.
LR: Low Resolution
This function will allow you to take up to 80 pictures @ 176 x 144 resolution before you will need to upload or delete.
To upload your picture onto the computer simple plug the USB cable into the port. Launch you photo editor, any application with a TWAIN acquire menu can be used, and follow the instructions.
Using the Ulead software provided this involves clicking the photo mode tab and then the camera icon. From the select data source box select l’espion from the list of source and then click the acquire button. The digital camera user interface appears and you double click any the thumbnail images of any images to wish to transfer.
The picture quality isn’t half-bad, its no professional job but what do you expect for £40? The colour is good, it’s not too grainy (the low resolution is a bit more grainy than the high, but then that’s to be expected) and it captures the light well.
Webcam function ***************
This isn’t something I have much use for; I have the same attitude toward webcams as I did toward digital cameras before I needed one. I’m sure one day ill have family a long way away and a webcam will be a great asset, but for now they all live within 3 miles and I don’t need it. However I the interests of completeness I’ve tried it out.
Again, very simple to use you just make sure that you have no pictures in the camera, launch the webcam program (in this case, eyestar) and there you are, sitting at your ‘puter. The picture quality is quite grainy though not too bad, I don’t know if this is normal as I’ve nothing to compare it to. The picture does, however, pick out every single flaw. I don’t know if I actually look that bad today (I do have terrible sunburn on my face at the moment) or if it’s the cameras fault. I’m blaming the camera myself.
My thoughts ***********
For the price of this camera you can’t really fault it. It takes reasonable pictures, which fulfil the purpose I wanted it for. Also, despite what I may have thought, I have found other uses for it. I used it to take my profile picture and I carry it round in my bag in case I have a car accident, so I can take a picture to prove it wasn’t my fault (if it was my fault I don’t own a camera, right).
My only complaints are the rate at which it sucks battery juice, you need a high quality battery which I resent paying the money for, and the fact that the Ulead photo editor isn’t, in my opinion, very good. There is, however, nothing stopping you from using another photo editing program.
It’s certainly not for anyone who has a ‘real’ use for a digital camera or someone who is really into this kind of toy. I wouldn't use it for everyday things like birthday parties and such like, it's not really suitable, I believe there are far better teeny tiny digi-cams on the market, but if your someone like me who wants cheep and cheerful its pretty good.
Techie Specy stuff ******************
For those of you who know what all of this means, these are the cameras specifications:
0.1 Pixel camera 16.7 Million colours High quality 20 shots @ 352 x 288 resolution, Economy 80 shots @ 176 x 144 resolution Fixed Focus Automatic Exposure CMOS Sensor Built in retractable Optical Viewfinder Working Range 0.8M to infinity 10 Second self timer LCD control panel with High/Low resolution, Continuous shoot for short movies, self timer, number of pictures left to take and Delete all images. 16 FPS webcam mode Dimensions 58mm x 40mm x 15mm Weight 40g 2MB internal memory Power 1AAA battery
166MHz Pentium Processor or above 32MB RAM 10MB Minimum Hard disk Space SVGA monitor USB port CD-ROM drive Windows 98/ME/2000 (I run XP and it works fine)
MAC
Apple Imac/G3/G4 with USB Port 32MB RAM CD Drive 10MB Minimum Hard Disk Space Mac OS8.6 to 9.4 Image application supporting Adobe PhotoShop plug-ins Apple Quick time for viewing video clips
Well, I think that’s covered everything. I've given it 5 stars as it does exactly the job I wanted for exactly the price I wanted. You can of course find out more about the camera and the digital cream company at www.digitaldreamco.com
More details
Durability
Satisfactory
Reliability
Good
Size
Very Small
Weight
Very Light
Instruction Manual
Good
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