HP PhotoSmart M415

...lighting system and 8 (so HP claim) shooting modes. As a standalone unit it's virtually identical to it's big brother the M417 apart from the smaller LCD, 1x less on the digital zoom, and lack of a burst mode, and as such it's not available in many shops or online stores. HP is selling through their online partner store Insight for the supposed price of £90 (actually £91.99) which, after Arfur Daley's favourite tipple has been added, works out at ...
...nimh AA rechargeable batteries.
HP Image Zone Express & drivers CD
USB lead (A-mini B)
Video out lead (1/4" stereo jack to 2 Phono plugs video & sound)
Printer Remote Control and CRV battery
Camera Manual
Setup guide
Photosmart 420 combined Printer/docking station
Printer power supply & UK socket adapter
Printer Manual
7 ml cartridge (3 colour, Vivera inks)
10 index ... more

INTRODUCTION

The Photosmart 415 is HP's basic entry level 5 MP camera. It comes equipped with a 3x Optical zoom lens, 6 x digital zoom, a 1.5" TFT screen, a supposed 16 Megabytes of internal memory (more on that later), selectable ISO levels, picture effects, in camera red eye removal, innovative Adaptive lighting system and 8 (so HP claim) shooting modes. As a standalone unit it's virtually identical to it's big brother the M417 apart from the smaller LCD, 1x less on the digital zoom, and lack of a burst mode, and as such it's not available in many shops or online stores. HP is selling through their online partner store Insight for the supposed price of £90 (actually £91.99) which, after Arfur Daley's favourite tipple has been added, works out at £108.09, a remarkably cheap price for a branded 5 Megapixel snapper with an optical zoom lens. Whilst it's hard to buy the camera on it's own, many places sell it as the Photosmart Go Go 422 package with the Pictbridge compatible Photosmart 420 printer and remote control at £149.

There are no professional reviews of this camera anywhere, but several of it's virtually identical twin, the M417 (1.8" lcd, 7x Digital zoom, Burst mode), dotted about on the Internet - as well as consumer reviews on many camera shopping sites as well as review sites like this one, and the manual covers both models. However, the reviews are a mixed bag. Whilst the consumer reviews praise the M417, the professional ones generally slate it as being an appalling camera.

So who's got it right, the consumers, or the professionals? Does it have serious faults, or is it the perfect budget priced snapper?

SPECIFICATIONS
Total pixels: 5.36 (2690x1994 - First time I've seen an image size for a total pixel count).
Effective Pixels: 5.19 (2620x1984).
Memory: 16M onboard (between 7.5 & 8.5 Mb used for camera functions)
Lens: 3x Optical Zoom. (equivalent to 36 to 108 mm on 35 mm camera)
Digital Zoom: 6x (18x total)
F stops: f/2.91 to f/4.86 (wide) f/4.86 to f/8.0 (telephoto).
Viewfinder: Optical real image.
Focus: 50 cm - infinity (normal) 10 cm - 80 cm Macro.
LCD: 3.8 cms (1.5") with backlight.
Image sizes: 5 (5 Mp Best, 5Mp normal, 3Mp, 1Mp, 640x480).
ISO Settings 4 (Auto, 100, 200, 400).
White Balance: 5 (Auto, Sun, Shade, Tungsten, Fluorescent).
EV: -2.0 - +2.0 in 0.5 EV increments.
Scene Modes: 8 (Auto, Macro, Fast, Sports, Portrait, Landscape, Beach & Snow, Movie).
Dimensions: 107 mm x53 mm x36 mm (WxHxD).
Weight: 149g without batteries.

CONTENTS (PHOTOSTUDIO 422):
Photosmart M415 camera
Wrist strap
2x 1700 mah nimh AA rechargeable batteries.
HP Image Zone Express & drivers CD
USB lead (A-mini B)
Video out lead (1/4" stereo jack to 2 Phono plugs video & sound)
Printer Remote Control and CRV battery
Camera Manual
Setup guide
Photosmart 420 combined Printer/docking station
Printer power supply & UK socket adapter
Printer Manual
7 ml cartridge (3 colour, Vivera inks)
10 index cards
5 sheets HP premium Plus glossy 10 mm x 15 mm photo paper

FIRST IMPRESSIONS.
The box was neatly packaged, with the printer on the bottom packed in polystyrene, and the camera and accessories on a top layer, with the manuals and CD ROM placed neatly on top. There was quite a lot of documentation with the package. The camera itself was an all plastic construction affair. One professional reviewer stated it felt sold after the batteries had been inserted, and this is definitely the case. The camera was wrapped in a bubble wrap bag, and secured by sticky tape which wasn't security tape that told you it had been opened. The Nimh batteries had some charge in them to last for about a dozen shots before needing to be recharged, meaning the camera could be used straight away. There was no case in the box . The camera will fit nicely in a shirt or jacket inside pocket if it is not in a case, but may be a little long for trouser pockets.

MANUAL
Thankfully, it's a small A6 sized paperback, amounting to 172 pages, which is quite a lot. It states 'HP Photsmart 420 series Portable Photo studio, and as such covers three M series cameras in the range, the 415, 417 (extra 1x digital zoom, burst mode and 1.8" screen), and the 517 (8x digital zoom, 2" LCD). It's very concise and easy to read, and there's a handy index at the back so you can find the information you need quickly. It's comprehensive too, the contents run to 4 pages. With HP being an American company, there's none of those annoying Chinese/Japanese translation errors you usually find with digicams. A 64 page manual accompanies the bundled printer, and there's also a quick start guide, to have you snapping and printing in no time at all. Overall, this is an excellent package of printed material, and could only be bettered by enclosing the paperwork and CD ROM in a wallet like Kodak do with their documentation.

CONTROLS.
There are a total of 13 controls on the camera, including 2 (that's right) shutter release buttons. Looking at the back of the unit, four buttons for Flash, Mode, Self timer and Instant Share run down the left hand side directly underneath the small viewfinder. To the left of this is the LCD screen. At 130,000 pixels it's 20,000 more than many other cameras. Above this are the capture and playback mode buttons. The capture button also doubles up as the monitor on/off switch. At the bottom right is a 4 way D pad with an OK button in the centre. Above this in a handy circular recess for your thumb are two arc shaped zoom buttons. It's a rocker switch means that the buttons get used twice as much as seperate ones. On the top are the two shutter buttons. The larger one is the picture shutter, and the smaller one the movie shutter. It might seem odd at first, but it's a much better way of operating, and it means less wear and tear on the other buttons whenever you shoot a movie. All in all, the layout is extremely well thought out.

EASE OF USE.
The M415 is deliciously simple to use. The most common functions, such as selecting the mode, movie taking, flash settings, playback mode, and printing, are accessible without having to resort to the menu. It would have been nice to have a buttons dedicated to image size and Adaptive Lighting, as apart from the options mentioned, these will be the settings that most people use the menus for. Everything on this camera is a joy to use. Want to take a picture? Simply switch the unit on. Want to review your shots? Simply press the playback button. Want to remove Red eye? Just press menu and use the joypad to go to the correct menu. Want to transfer photo's to your P.C.? Plug the USB lead in, and the Image Zone Express software fires up to help transfer images from the camera.

To demonstrate just how easy it is to use we'll take a picture. The camera is powered on by sliding the power on switch to the right and holding there for a few seconds. The green power light comes on to indicate the camera is powered on. With a start-up time of around three seconds , it's not a fast camera, nor is it a slouch. In fact it's just about average for an entry level point and shoot. Now use the mode button to select the required scene mode.
The modes are Auto (where the camera works out what's the best setting to use), Macro mode between 10 and 80 cms (which allows a large area where both normal and macro can be used, Fast mode for use in bright light (which uses a fixed focus setting for fast response times instead of autofocus, sports mode, the almost obligatory Portrait, Landscape and Night modes, as well as a Beach and Snow setting, which is primarily intended to smooth the high contrast that results from photography in either of those conditions. Next choose your flash mode (from auto, red eye, on (fill-in), off, and night). We'll leave it at auto for now for ease of the review. Unless you turned the display off to save battery power, then if you so desire, you can press the capture button (a picture of a camera) to turn it off and use the viewfinder to compose your shot. It's not a 100% viewfinder, you will get more that this in the image . Spectacle users may find the viewfinder image slightly blurred at times, and may have to move it around slightly to get a sharp view. Otherwise, use the LCD screen as you would a viewfinder for a near 100% preview of what will be captured. It's even usable in daylight conditions, which is more than can be said for many LCD screens. And you can increase the screen's brightness for sunny days. Then, all you do is press the shutter button halfway, to lock focus - for which you'll hear a beep - and then press the shutter fully to take a picture. Shutter lag when pre-focused is under one second, and when having to focus before taking the shot, there is hardly any difference. The picture will be displayed on the screen for a few seconds, after which the LCD will return to the live view, or switch off dependant upon what seeting you chose Write times for a 3 MP image are somewhat longer than you might expect. A simple press of the playback button (looks like a play symbol) switches the camera into playback mode. Moving the joypad to the left and right cycles through the images taken, whilst using the zoom out button brings up the thumbnail view that most cameras have these days. There's a small green icon for this by the zoom out button. Again, as with most cameras using the 4 way joypad scrolls you through the individual photo's, 9 of which are on the screen at a time in this view. Pressing OK selects that image full screen. Pressing the Zoom in button once in playback mode loads the image for enlarging the view and panning in. It loads at twice the size of a normal playback, and you can zoom in further. Unless a very high level of zoom in is reached, the image looks sharp and unpixellated. Using the 4 way pad allows you to freely move around the image until the desired point is reached. Then its simply a matter of zooming in again until you are happy.

OPTICAL ILLUSIONS?
The Photosmart 415 comes with a HP precision 3x Zoom lens. As HP don't make lenses, it's a safe bet it's a generic lens with HP's name on the front. It picks up more purple fringingthan many other branded cameras, though this may be aggravated by the flash. The images produced by the lens were quite sharp, and didn't need sharpening in an editing programme. The focal length is equivalent to 36 mm at it's wide angle, and 108 mm on a 35 mm camera. You get some barrel distortion at full wide angle. Whilst it's not severe, it is noticeable. At the telephoto end there was no visible pincushion distortion, and the sharpness wasn't compromised at full zoom. Normal focusing is from 50 cm to infinity, and it's macro range is between 10 and 80 cms, it would have been nice to see a 5 cm macro as 10 cms is poor for a 5 Megapixel camera.

DIGITAL DELIGHTS.
Most digital zooms are completely unusable after about 1.5 or 1.6 x magnification. With a large 6x digital zoom, does the M415 fares surprisingly better than most. Whereas most digital zooms crop the image and then add extra pixels to take the image back up to it's the selected image size, this camera leaves out the latter stage, just cropping the photos instead. With most cameras you can often go into digital zoom and loose quality without realising it. With the M415, the zoom stops at full optical zoom, and to initiate the digital one you have to press the zoom button again. Once in digital zoom, a frame shows the area that will be captured and the size in actual size Megapixels, from 3.9 down to 0.1. It's not continuous, but seems to have pre-set image sizes. If you normally shoot at 3 Megapixels, switching to 5 and using the digital zoom to crop the image down to 3Mp, the image will be zoomed in closer without compromising much image quality. Obviously, some quality loss will be inevitable, but it will be negligible.

MENU KNIGHTED.
The acid test of a good camera is ease of use, and as most of a digital camera's functions are buried within it's menu system, this is often where a digicam falls down - in the ease of use stakes. In fact Top marks go to HP for having one of the easiest menu systems ever. Whilst many functions such as shooting mode, flash and self timer have dedicated buttons, the rest of the cameras features are accessed by the 'Menu/OK' button and the four way joypad. There are 5 menus each with their own subsections. They do not scroll down into one another as menus do on some cameras, which is a good thing as you can't forget which menu you're in. There's a top level which allows you to scroll left and right between the five menus. A downward press takes you into that menu, whilst an upward press from the top item takes you back to the top tier. Simply pressing left and right scrolls you through the settings for that option and automatically applies it, or if you press the menu button then a sub menu appears and you scroll up or down and have to press 'Menu/OK' again to apply the setting which is more complicated. At the bottom of each menu is an exit symbol which exits the whole menu system, but you can also exit it by pressing the shutter. The five menus and their settings are as follows:

Capture:
Image quality: 5 Mp Best, 5 Mp Normal, 3 Mp, 1 Mp, 640x480
Adaptive Lighting: On/Off
Colour: Full Colour/B&W/Sepia
Date & Time: On/Off
EV Compensation: -2 -to +2 EV in 0.5 stages
White Balance: Auto, Sun, Shade, Tungsten, Fluorescent
ISO: Auto, 100, 200, 400.

Playback:
Delete: One, All, Undelete last
Remove Red Eyes: (see later- probably uses a lot of the cameras memory)
Rotate: 360 degrees in 90 degree increments
Record Audio Clip: Up to one minute of audio per photo, saved in the JPEG file.

Instant Share:
Print One Copy: Sets DPOF (Digital Print Order file) for 1 copy
Print Two Copies: Sets DPOF 2 copies
Instant Share Setup: When connected to PC (on it's own or through dock/printer) sets the e-mail addresses etc. on camera.

Setup:
Display Brightness: Low, Medium, High
Camera Sounds: On/Off
Live View: On/Off (this is the screen status)
Date & Time:
USB: Digital Camera, Disk Drive
TV Configuration: PAL, NTSC
Language: English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, and 2 Chinese.
Move Images to card: Moves photos from internal memory to the installed card.

Help: This menu is comprehensive, and probably accounts for a lot of the cameras internal memory that is used for on camera functions.

Top 10 Tips:
Camera Accessories:
Camera Buttons:
Using Shooting Modes:
Sharing Images:
Printing Images:
Recording Audio Clips:
Recording Video Clips:
Reviewing Audio and Video:
Deleting images:
Transferring Images:
Managing Batteries:
Getting Assistance:
Camera Shortcuts:
About:

Also, when connected to the printer dock, the capture menu is replaced by a print menu. This will be dealt with in detail in the printer review. Basically, you can specify 1 or 2 prints, passport photo options and a few other minor settings.

IT'S LIFE JIM, BUT AS HP KNOW IT.
Have you ever taken a shot with the flash set to auto instead of red eye? Or have you taken a photo and notice the shadow detail is too dark? Well, to combat these problems, HP have developed what it calls 'Real Life Technologies'. This is basically on camera post processing, a bit like an imaging programme on your P.C. There are two of these technologies, 'Adaptive lighting' and 'Red Eye Removal'. But do they work? Let's look at each of them in turn and find out.

Adaptive lighting:
This is basically in effect a digital flash for the camera. What it does is lighten the darker area of a photo to bring out detail that would normally be lost. Adaptive lighting, when selected, performs this task in camera after the image has been captured. When activated, an icon appears on the LCD screen so you know it's on. It has been commented by many users that the technology does work reasonably well, but introduces more noise into the images. As the M415 is an entry level 5 Megapixel Zoom camera, it's images by nature will be noisier than a more expensive camera, from say, Cannon, Sony, Nikkon, and one of Fuji's mid range models. Test images using adaptive lighting on websites look impressive. Yes it does bring out the shadow detail normally lost, at the expense of added noise (see Image quality for a decription of 'Noise' on a digital photograph). Compared to other 5 MP cameras, without the feature turned on the M415 seems to loose a little more shadow detail. The bottom line is that while it does work to a degree, a higher setting would have been a welcome addition.

Red Eye Reduction:
Red eye has been the bane of photographers ever since built in flashlights were introduced into cameras in the 70's. Digicams are no exception to this. Thankfully, the majority of new cameras are good at reducing this unwanted occurrence, even without red eye flash mode selected. But when it does occur, it's a cumbersome process removing it in Photoshop Elements or Paint Shop Pro. Here's where the in camera removal tool comes into it's own. After the image has been taken, selecting the Red Eye tool in the playback menu will instantly process the image for - and find -any red eyes in your image .After processing is complete, if red eyes are present, little squares appear around the eyes. The camera does an excellent job of selecting the offending red eyes. Even in an image where three out of four subjects contained red eyes of varying degrees (one was vivid, two were much more subtle), the camera perfectly selected the offending areas. Then, you simply press OK, and are presented with a the option to preview the image, accept the changes or discard them. Any changes made are saved to the same file, though it would have been nice to have had the option of saving as a separate file. The burning question has to be 'Does it work?', and the answer is a resounding, 'Exceptionally well!' The only real drawback is that on the M415 the corrected eyes may appear a little black. And correction did not exceed the area covered by the eyes, as can happen when using an image editor to do it. Also, sometimes small red objects are recognised as eyes and the red is removed from them as well Whilst experts will probably get better results with Photoshop or PSP, the average snapper will find this tool invaluable at removing red eye.

PLAY IT AGAIN SAM!
Playback is a breeze. To the right of the viewfinder are the capture and playback buttons. Simply pressing the playback button brings up the last image taken. Using the joypad enables you to scroll through the images taken. When you have selected your image, pressing the menu button brings up the playback menu options. Delete is the first, and selecting this option allows you to chose between deleting the current image, deleting all, or after an image has been deleted undeleteing the last image deleted. The next item is the Red Eye Reduction followed by the Rotate setting. This allows you to rotate the image in 90 degree steps. The last item is the Record Audio option, which allows you to add up to a minute of commentary to a previously captured image. The most annoying thing about playback mode is that the lens doesn't retract back into the camera. This leaves it open to accumulating dust and dirt during image review. Other cameras retract the lens when playback mode is initiated.

KEEP IT FOCUSED.
The camera generally seems to focus well outdoors. The Focus brackets on the LCD turn green when the camera is focused, and red when it's not. A half press of the shutter locks the focus so you can then reposition the camera to put your subject wherever you want it and still get a sharp image. Again, as with many cameras, a red light doesn't necessarily mean you'll get an out of focus or blurred shot, as if the flash fires then most times you'll get a great shot. It must be noted that for indoor shots with lighting on (be it tungsten or fluorescent) it was sometimes inclined not to focus properly before taking the shot, or indeed give a message that it's unable to take the picture, especially in fast or sports mode. Sometimes, this was cleared after focusing several times. In these instances, it seemed that the lens was zoomed in too much, as zooming out often enabled the picture to be taken or lock on and gain a proper focus. This happens enough times for it to annoy some people. Auto mode night shots come out reasonably well, and although they are in focus can sometimes lack sharpness that other cameras seem to retain under identical conditions. Annoyingly, some outdoor night shots of people came out blurred when, again, many cameras just simply would not. This could be due to the lack of a focus assist lamp. A focus lamp fires a beam of light (usually infra red) that bounces off the subject and tells the camera how far away it is, allowing it to capture a super sharp photograph.

EXPOSE! EXPOSE!
Generally speaking, exposure is excellent. You may want to calibrate your monitor to get perfectly exposed prints, but as this camera has been optimised for use with a its printer dock, then prints come out exposed well. In general, virtually all pictures are correctly exposed. Even night shots are well exposed, although the background can sometimes be a little dark. In fact, it could be argued that exposure was this camera's strongest point.

IMAGE TRANSFER.
The camera can be used as either a mass storage device from which you drag and drop files, or as a Digital Camera by which HP's Image Zone Express software transfers the pictures for you. You have the option to select the folder in which the images are stored, though if you make a new folder, a dated sub folder is created in the folder you have chosen. Advanced options include deleting images from the camera upon successful transfer, though unlike some cameras you cannot save in Tiff mode. After transferring the images, image zone express opens, which is a basic image editor/storing application. As well as rotating and cropping, you can remove red eye and correct exposure and colour as well, but these are one click fixes, and a better editor, such as Photo Impact, Paint Shop Pro, or Photoshop is recommended. Image Zone also lets you create greetings cards and other fun photo's, but this is very limited.

IMAGE QUALITY.
So just how well does this camera take pictures? Image quality is where a camera stands or falls, and, as mentioned earlier, professional reviewers sayi it gives soft and poor images that you wouldn't want to print bigger than 6"x4".But consumers seem to rave about it. So who is right? Well, in my opinion (and in line with all the consumers), the images produced by the camera are quite sharp, though the default 5 Megapixel normal quality images may benefit from a little sharpening in photoshop. At 3 Megapixels, images generally don't need much sharpening at all, though the 1 Mp images aren't as sharp as those from some 3 Mp cameras, probably due to it's aggressive compression at this size (making the file smaller by removing unnesseccary data).

Make a big noise.
For those who are novices, I'll explain just what noise on a digital image is. If you were to look at a brand new car in a showroom, the coulour would be identical all over with no tonal variations. A digital image of the same car would be up made of slightly differing tonal variations. This is called noise, and for a decent camera, unless you blow an image up to 100% magnification on your monitor you would usually see it as a smooth colour. Cheaper cameras aren't as smooth in doing this, but are adequate. Noise usually appears in darker areas not fully lit by the cameras flash or natural light, and the higher the megapixel rating you shoot at, the more visible it becomes. A good image editor can remove it to an extent, but better cameras have less noise in their images. Look at the Pleasure beach photo and you'll see what noise is, and how it can spoil an image.
This camera does have a problem with noisy images, although it's not really a big issue. There is more noise than with many other digital cameras, but you must remember that the higher the image size, the greater the problem is with noise. The M415 has a 1/2.5 inch sensor, which is small for a sensor containing 5 million pixels. Generally, the bigger each individual pixel is, the less noise you get. Shadow detail often picked up excessive amounts of noise, and when Adaptive lighting was used, this was even more noticeable. But even when it was turned off, some images showed a little noise in blue sky areas, an area that normally doesn't see this problem. It must be said that the slightly noisier images generated by the camera aren't too much of a problem, but noise IS there. Experienced photographers would probably find it unacceptable, whereas point and shoot beginners will not find this a major problem.

ISO the light.
You can change the iso levels to take sharper photo's of fast moving objects, but this creates more picture noise. The images taken at ISO 100 were acceptable, with slightly above average noise levels. ISO 200 and 400 were a lot noisier and cannot be recommended unless you aren't printing.

Chrome on the range.
Cameras of yore used to suffer from Chromatic abhorrations. These are purple fringes around high contrast areas. The majority of modern digital cameras control Chromatics so well that reviewers have to look hard to spot them. In my opinion, the Chromatic abhoration produced by the camera were the worst I've ever seen. (see photo ofThomas at the station).

PRINT MILK BRILLIANT!
The images print very well at 6" x 4" on the Photosmart 420 printer dock. Pictures are sharp and the colours are well saturated. To print from the camera, simply dock the camera and turn it on. The dock powers itself on in playback mode. Use the 4 way joypad on the printer to select the photo you want printing (not the pad on the camera as it won't work) and press the print button, and away you go. There is a major flaw with printing this way, in that the resulting prints are cropped, loosing detail at the top and bottom of a landscape print, or the sides of a portrait. Quite a lot is lost, so it's better to print from the hard drive to the printer so the complete image prints. Whilst the Photosmart 420 prints excellent quality images (see separate review coming soon), A4 prints printed on an ageing Epson C42 looked terrible. This is probably due to the fact that the Epson's print heads were a little clogged, and the image was printed using ultra cheap photo paper. It's probably fair to say that on a good printer, the results at A4 size will be reasonable, but not outstanding.

PROBLEMS.
As remarked upon before, chromatic abhorations were so bad HP shipped out a replacement. However, there was another reason HP support was called - Battery life. HP claim 225 shots on the fully charged 1700 Mah Nimh batteries that come with the camera. However, reality is a lot less. On a day trip to a steam railway no less than three sets of fully charged batteries gave a low battery error. One of these sets was able to give 50 shots on the low battery warning, but fresh batteries should not be doing this. The new camera has not been tested enough to see whether these problems re occur, but this review will be updated. Apart from those two problems, only the slightly out of focus viewfinder gave any worries.

HP SUPPORT.
In general customer support was very good. An original e-mail regarding the cropped prints and extra noise was answered within 24 hours. The response itself was incorrect, in that it blamed the excessive noise on the ISO speeds, when only ISO 100 was used. For the cropped prints it was advised to set the paper size in the printer driver, but that won't work for printing direct from the camera, which will frustrate those people who don't own a P.C. and bought the package solely to print from the camera. Telephone support was much better. After a short wait, the call was answered by customer services and I was transferred to a very helpful technical support section. After listening to what the problem was, I was told to turn the camera off and hold down the flash button whilst switching the unit on. Up popped a hidden 'Service Screen' (useful if you know it's there). If you have an HP camera try it to see what you get.
Service Screen.
Pictures - Total number of pictures taken with camera.
Strobes - Number of times flash has been fired.
Service ID - What is it for?
Errors - the first showed E300, E300, E0, the replacement camera E0, E0, E0, (what is error 300?).
SR - (Anyone know what it is?) 0.
SN - Serial Number of Camera
F/W - Firmware revision - Latest is v1.900_RRV2.2.

After informing the technician of the errors, he looked up his database. The camera was faulty, and a replacement would be sent out via UPS with 5-8 days. If the new unit had the same flaws I was to contact HP again for a solution. That was on the Friday. On the Monday 2 e-mail's were sent from HP advising the date of arrival as the following Thursday (5 working days) and two from UPS advising a Wednesday delivery. It arrived at 11-20 on the Wednesday morning. The courier left a prepaid label for the return of the 'Faulty' unit. I have 5 days to phone and arrange it's pickup. The service as a whole will have been first class if UPS collect at the time I will arrange with them.

THE VERDICT.
The M415 is a nicely built camera of plastic construction that feels solidly built. It's image quality is acceptable for a budget five Megapixel camera, but not spectacular, though it suffers badly from the worst Chromatic Abhorrations seen in any of my cameras. Beginners will love the real life technologies, especially the in camera red eye removal tool which works a treat. Prints from the bundled Photosmart 420 printer were excellent, though A4 prints on my Epson could have been better, but this may be due to the printer not the camera itself. Battery life appears to be woefully short. The level of service from HP Customer/Technichal support was excellent. If the Chromatic problem was a one off, then the camera/printer package is a good buy for those who want to print 6"x4" prints. The lack of a decent photo printer with which to test it's A4 performance means that A4 quality cannot be commented upon, but this will be rectified and an update written in due course. The levels of noise are a minor concern which will probably put off most experienced photographers from buying this camera, but with a £100 GBP price reduction to a street price (and rrp) of £150 GBP for the camera (Street price £130 for the M417 in Argos) and the printer dock it's a great price for a 5 Mp camera/photo printer package aimed at beginners.
UPDATE: DEC 05.
The first camera was picked up by UPS at 2-30 PM on the day stated. The replacement camera does not show signs of purple fringing at all, which is excellent, although white dots show on some images. Whether this is another faul;t on the CCD or just dust, I do not know. At £150, a grat begginners package, but with nothing to tempt serious camera enthusiasts.
UPDATE MAR 27 06
After owning the camera for almost 6 months, I'm tending to side more with the professional reviewers. The majority of indoor flash shots come out soft focused yet not blurred, and with a lot of noise. The EXIF information embedded in the photo reveals varying levels of ' Sharpness' set between 0 and 3, so it looks as if the camera decides how much sharpening to apply, hence the lower the number, the softer the focus. I've had the odd freeze, but no serious problems apart from the focus issue, which is a headache. Even outdoor shots can suffer from this. Battery life is still poor, even charging for a day in the printer dock doesn't give a decent life. About 50 shots with average flash usage of 50% gives a low battery error. As to reccomending the camera, with these serious flaws, I cannot, and if I could get a refund, I would. There's a nice 6 MP Olympus FE120 in my local Cash store (lay by's) for £60 but I can't afford the deposiot. Drat! Oh, Just spotted this in my local Argos at an 8 Day only price of £125 (ends 04/04). 

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