Polaroid PDC 3035

...as a 'special' - the Polaroid PDC 3035, which has 3.1 megapixels (ie not bad quality) and also a useful 16 meg internal storage. Most of the cheaper ones only have 8 meg internally, meaning that for all practical purposes one has to spend another £20 or more on extra storage. So we went ahead and bought it using our Nectar points.

• First impressions •

The camera comes with a useful soft pouch and wrist-strap. The instructions ...
...as Kodak Express or Bonusprint for photos you want to enlarge, or to use as prints in albums. But for use online, for casual snaps in email to friends, and of course for enhancing Ciao reviews, the Polaroid PDC3035 provides good value for money.

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I'd been vaguely thinking about a digital camera for ages. I enjoy photography, and also having prints in albums, but there are times when I want a picture immediately, rather than having to wait to finish the film, and then have it processed. I also like to have general photos of scenery for one of my web-sites, but don't generally want these as prints - so it always seems a bit of a waste to use my ordinary camera for them, particuarly since I tend to take two or three just to ensure I get the picture I want.

However the cost of a digital camera put us off for some time, even in the past year when prices have become more reasonable. There are still many things more important for our limited budget than another camera!

But earlier in the year we had a nice surprise: having transferred about ten years' worth of Barclaycard profiles points to our new Nectar card, we learned that we had over £100 which could be spent at Argos or Sainsbury's. So we decided to treat ourselves to a digital camera. There were several possibilities for around this price, but the one which appeared to be best value for money was one Argos were advertising as a 'special' - the Polaroid PDC 3035, which has 3.1 megapixels (ie not bad quality) and also a useful 16 meg internal storage. Most of the cheaper ones only have 8 meg internally, meaning that for all practical purposes one has to spend another £20 or more on extra storage. So we went ahead and bought it using our Nectar points.

• First impressions •

The camera comes with a useful soft pouch and wrist-strap. The instructions seemed sparse - just a single sheet with the barest outline of how to operate it. However there is an accompanying CD which has not just the necessary computer drivers and some photo software, but a full manual with detailed instructions about every aspect of the camera. Not as useful as a ready-printed manual, but no doubt this saves on cost. A nice touch was to find that the camera came with a set of batteries.

It also came with two wires, one of which - my son informed me - was to connect the camera to a computer, and the other is to connected it to a television (USB and video cables respectively, apparently).

The camera itself is a pleasant weight - not too light, but easy enough to fit in a handbag. On the back is a small viewfinder like that of a regular camera, and also a reasonable sized LCD screen. We quickly learned that both these are easily scratched, particularly the viewfinder when used by people wearing glasses, so we covered the LCD screen with some of the sticky plastic covering recommended for Palm computers. This seems to protect it adequately, without reducing the effectiveness.

There is a knob on the top of the camera with four modes: taking pictures, viewing taken pictures on the LCD screen, video mode, and using as a webcam. There's also a button to press to switch it on, and one in the middle of the selector knob for taking the pictures. Beside the LCD screen are various buttons to access the necessary menus for looking through the stored pictures, deleting unwanted ones, altering the exposure, changing flash settings, and so on.

• Using the camera •

It always takes me a while to learn to use anything new, but the rest of the family seemed to know what to do by instinct. I didn't find it too hard myself with a little help and a few reminders, although it's a lot more complicated than the simple 35mm camera I've been used to. Just pointing and clicking tends to lead to inferior results, unless it's outside with average light; however adjusting the settings isn't difficult, and since it's easy to delete poor quality photos, it's well worth spending a little time and effort experimenting.

Shortly after acquiring the camera, we attended a wedding, so that gave us a good chance to try it out, both inside and outside, and to compare the results with the prints from various other cameras. We found some of the results to be quite reasonable, and others disappointing, but that's almost inevitable with any new camera.

• Flash •

We set the flash to 'auto' for the inside wedding photos - this was a mistake, since it was a bright, sunny day and in several cases the light was pouring through the window, fooling the camera into thinking there was sufficient light. Auto-flash didn't mean that it would always flash, so some of the pictures came out as silhouettes of the people concerned. To force it to flash requires a different setting. We found that reading the CD manual helped us to understand the various icons that show on the LCD screen, showing what has been set, and what mode the flash is currently in.

• Exposure •

The wedding was on a beautiful sunny day, and some of the outside photos came out rather too bright. The camera seems to have a default setting for average light rather than allowing for sunshine, so we had to remember to adjust the exposure every time we switched it on. This is easy enough to do via the menu system: there are several possible settings, and clicking through them alters the image on the LCD screen, so even somebody like me who knows nothing much about the theory of exposure can tell when it's likely to take a better picture.

• Connecting to the PC •

This turned out to be very easy, even for a techno-numpty like myself. We actually managed to mislay the CD for a while, but found the relevant drivers on the polaroid-digital site. They downloaded in a zip file which was easy to extract and instal. Then we plugged the camera in via the USB wire, the computer installed the hardware, and the list of pictures appeared on the new temporary drive assigned to the camera.

The USB wire now stays attached to my computer, and copying further images from the camera to the computer is extremely straightforward - at least with my Windows 98 system. I just plug the other end of the wire into the side of the camera, click 'My Computer' which shows the camera as the 'E' drive, with a folder of photos inside that can be viewed on the computer automatically if I set the folder to 'view as a web page'. I can then copy or cut the images from the camera folder to a folder on my computer, rename them as appropriate, then edit using any photo editor.

• Numbers of photos •

At the highest ('fine') quality, size 2048 x 1536, we can only take 9 photos; at normal quality (1600 x 1200) we can take about 25; at economical quality (1280 x 960) about 27, and at low quality (800 x 600) around 100. These are approximations, since a picture with a lot of detail takes up slightly more space than a simpler one. It's also possible to store a mixture of images - so for instance we could take one at fine quality, and still have room for about 50 at low quality. For the kind of usage we want, this is fine: I can take dozens of snaps for my web-site without worrying about running out of space, since even the low quality is good enough for that. At present, we have no plans for buying a memory extension: however they're readily available at any shop selling digital cameras.

• Quality •

Since buying the camera, we've read several rather negative reviews about the picture quality, which were a little worrying! People complained about faulty compression and other problems. However we've been pretty pleased with what we've had so far. It's not an expensive camera, so we didn't expect top-quality photos - if we want good portraits we'll use our decent Nikon non-digital camera anyway - but for sending via email, or using on web-pages, the ones we've taken with this camera are quite good enough.

We've experimented with all the different qualities of photo, and found that even the low quality ones were perfectly acceptable for small pictures on web pages. The colours seem to be excellent for photographs taken outside, easily comparable with friends' digital cameras at three or four times the cost.

• Video •

The video setting allows for short low-quality recordings, with sound as well as pictures. We've used this a couple of times, and while obviously it doesn't compare to a video camera, and it uses up the storage space rapidly, it's a nice feature to capture a special moment without too much planning ahead. Transferring to the computer is done in exactly the same way as transferring images.

• Software •

Included on the CD is the software Photo Studio 4, Photo Printer 2000, Funhouse 1, and Video Impressions 1.6. These are extremely simple to instal, and all come with inbuilt help.

Photo Studio is like a simpler version of Adobe Photoshop, and enables me to crop my pictures, and to enhance or edit them in any way I choose. They can be printed from this too, but Photo Printer gives an easy way of selecting photographs in different formats so as to print several on one page. Funhouse is for playing around with images, with inbuilt backgrounds and styles of people to make 'fun' photos - this isn't something that appeals to me, but it seems to work well. The Video Impressions software is for editing and using video clips, but so far I haven't been able to get that to work.

• Printing •

It's very easy to print photos via whatever photo editor you have, and the quality of prints depends primarily on the printer and the type of paper. With our colour printer (HP Deskjet 840C) they're never going to be as good as ordinary prints from a film camera, but then we didn't buy the digital camera for prints. At the economical or low quality, it's not worth making prints at all, but at the highest resolution they're comparable with those from any other home digital camera that I've seen. It's possible to send digital photos via the Internet to be printed at www.directfoto.co.uk or www.bonusprint.co.uk although we haven't yet tried that.

• Disadvantages •

While we're pleased with our outdoor photographs, those taken inside tend to be rather dark and dull, although we may still need to try out different settings to improve this. The flash is only designed to work between one and two metres distance, so that does rather limit indoor photographs. There's no true zoom feature (although there's a digital 2x zoom) and the auto-focus only works at distance of a metre or more. However these disadvantages compare to cheaper 35mm cameras, and are only to be expected from a digital camera at this price.

One of the more annoying problems is that the picture is actually taken about half a second after pressing the button. This means that people sometimes move or change their expressions. We've also found that the button has to be pressed quite firmly; more than once we thought a picture had been taken, but when checking later there was nothing there. Of course in most circumstances we'd have a look via the LCD screen immediately, but there isn't always time to do that, and it was a little disappointing to find some pictures not taken at all.

We find the auto-switch-off to be a little too quick, too. It's a good idea that it does switch itself off if it hasn't been used for some time, but sometimes I've waited for people to get in position, held the camera ready.. only to find it switches itself off before I've had a chance to press the button. It's also a little annoying that most of the settings don't remain when the camera is switched off. Selecting the quality of photograph stays, but other settings such as exposure seem to disappear.

The battery life is fairly limited, particularly when using the flash. The first set of batteries gave up within about a month of buying this, but then we'd used the camera fairly heavily during that time. The second set are still working after two months of less frequent use, although it now takes a while for the flash to warm up. However, as one set of four reasonable AA batteries costs about £1.50 or less, and lasts us easily for 70 or more photographs, that's still considerably cheaper than buying two 36-exposure films and paying for the processing.

• Conclusion •

We've had this camera for about three months now, and so far we're pretty pleased with it. Perhaps if we'd actually paid the £100 we'd be a bit more critical, but given that it was a free gift - effectively - we've no complaints. It seems to compare reasonably well with considerably more expensive digital cameras.

I wouldn't really recommend a digital camera for high quality prints, unless you have an absolutely top-class printer and are prepared to spend a lot of money on decent quality photographic paper; stick with a film camera and a cheap, high quality printing service such as Kodak Express or Bonusprint for photos you want to enlarge, or to use as prints in albums. But for use online, for casual snaps in email to friends, and of course for enhancing Ciao reviews, the Polaroid PDC3035 provides good value for money.

 

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