Optical zoom, white balance, LCD, GREAT pictures, only £50
Disadvantages:
NONE !
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
My mum was talking to me before Christmas about buying a digital camera. She's had a 35mm zoom for a few years but is always frustrated by the fiddly controls and steep learning curve. She asked me how much she'd have to spend to get a good enough digital replacement. "Oh, about £100, maybe a bit more" I replied - and she quickly lost interest.
A few weeks later, I noticed a £49.99 digital camera on Amazon. "Oh, just one of those crap webcam things", I muttered... until I saw that it was a 2MP digital camera with 3x optical zoom. Yep, not digital. Optical. The reviews were good, with only one recurring problem: it eats batteries. Yep, well, all digital cameras do that, and it wasn't enough to put me off.
I ummed and ahhed over the camera for a week or so - mainly because I thought it would be a waste of money. Eventually, I brought it to my mum's attention. We decided to take a chance on it. I thought it wouldn't be that great, but it would be fine as a point and shoot, and it had the zoom that she wanted.
We placed the order, and I waited particularly nervously for her to tell me the camera had arrived. After all, my neck would be on the line if it was no good, and I'd probably have to go over to her house to pack it up and send it back.
To my amazement, it's the best digital camera I've used, in terms of features and picture quality vs preice. I'm seriously thinking of buying my own - because I don't think I'll be able to give this one back if I don't.
--> TOP TEN FEATURES
If you don't think I'm off my rocker by this point, I'll go on to explain the features the camera has.
1. OPTICAL ZOOM - Believe it or not, this £50 digital camera has a 3x optical - that's optical, NOT digital - zoom lens.
2. LCD - Even more astonishingly, the camera has a good sized LCD and easy to use graphical menu system. Some settings, like picture size, are set on a separate panel on the top.
3. FLASH - Five flash modes, including red eye reduction and a night mode.
4. MOVIE MODE - This camera can also take short silent movies - the length depends on the card you use.
5. MEMORY - Unlike some cameras that come bundled with a useless 8mb memory card, the Premier has 8mb internal memory, with a slot to take additional memory up to 128mb. The card slot takes SD and MMC flash memory (despite what the manual says), and a 128mb card costs as little as £23 on Amazon - trek to PC World and you're looking at at LEAST twice that price. Buy it with any other item costing £2 or more and it's even posted for free.
6. WHITE BALANCE - Not only does the camera automatically adjust white balance, but you can also set this up manually if you prefer.
7. PICTURE PLAYBACK - Choose to view your images one at a time, as thumbnails, or as a slideshow, with your own choice of 2-10 seconds delay between each picture.
8. TV-OUT - Connect the camera to your TV and, in conjunction with the slide show mode, instantly play back the images or movies on a big screen.
9. USB CONNECTION - Like most cameras, the Premier has a simple USB connection to your PC or Mac, and with the Mac, it works flawlessly with iPhoto without drivers.
10. AND MORE... - Choose to turn the instant picture review on or off. Choose between six (yes, SIX) different picture resultions and sizes. Use normal AAs or rechargeables. The manual is clear and well-presented, and, best of all, the menus and controls are absolutely instinctive to a digicam owner or someone who's only just got to grips with APS!
(NB: The camera does also have a digital zoom, but with an excellent optical zoom at your disposal, you'll never need it. I have it switched off permanently).
--> USING THE CAMERA
Thanks to the 8mb internal memory, you can get up and running straight away. The internal memory will handle from 10-50 pictures depending on the quality setting you choose, and the type of pictures you take. By adding the aforementioned £23 memory card, you can literally take hundreds of photos.
Using the viewfinder or the screen, all you have to do is point and click - unless you want to fiddle with white balance, but you shouldn't have to, as the Premier does a perfectly good job of making those calculations by itself. The lens makes a little fuss as the picture is taken (and if you need quick response you're obviously best off with a SLR or 35mm camera), but the delays before and after the picture is taken are nothing unusual for a digital camera... maybe half a second before the click, and two seconds after, to store the image. The delay after taking a flash picture, or a picture in a darkened room, is significantly longer - perhaps 5 seconds or so.
Not to do the product any injustice, but that's about it. It's so easy to use, I can't actually think of anything complicated to explain about the process. Short of deciding which size of picture you want, or which flash setting you need, you just need to know how to zoom in and out and press the shutter.
--> VIEWING IMAGES & PICTURE QUALITY
You can then review your images on the LCD screen, either full size or as thumbnails, and delete them individually or all together. If you wish, you can play them as a slide show, or connect the camera to your TV if you want to share them with more than one other person (unless you're the type of guy/gal who likes a room full of people bearing down over your shoulder!). Of course, you can also upload your pictures to your computer and archive them on your hard drive or CD - or email them to friends.
Now, the LCD is perhaps a little duller than I expected, and I thought perhaps this was where the camera would let me down. There had to be SOMETHNG wrong with it, right? But I was proven incorrect yet again. One the images are viewed on a large screen, colour reproduction is excellent. Both flash and natural light photography yields crisp, clean lines and accurate shading - which is more than the £200 A403 can boast. In short, picture quality is more than adequate for any average home digital camera user. Believe me, I've used a £400 IXUS, and the images here at 1600x1200 resolution are comparable. Don't fool yourself into thinking you need as many megapixels as Dixons can sell you... the Premier is all you need.
--> ANY CONS?
To be honest, no. OK, so it doesn't look as flashy as an IXUS or a Nikon, but would you rather spend £100-£150 extra on something that looks amazing, or would you rather spend that £150 on a nice bag to put it in? A bit extreme, maybe, but you get the idea. It doesn't have the 'boy's toy' (ugh!) appeal of the branded cameras, but in my opinion, it doesn't have to. It looks suitably stylish, yet bland enough that it's doesn't say "STEAL ME" as soon as you get it out of your bag.
The movie mode doesn't have sound, but for £50 I'm actually amazed it has a movie mode at all, so again, I can live with this. I honestly think there are better ways to make movies anyway.
Battery life and delays when taking pictures may be a problem for some, but these problems are standard across all brands and prices in the scope of sub-£150 cameras. A set of rechargeable batteries and a little patience and care goes a long way here.
Apart from that - there's nothing I can say that will change my mind about this camera. Believe me, I'm trying to pick faults with it, because I haven't bought one for myself yet and I desperately don't want them to sell out before I do. I just can't think of a reason not to buy it.
--> CONCLUSIONS
The Premier is an ideal product to take on holiday simply due to the cost and capacity. You can get an excellent camera right now on Amazon, together with enough memory for hundreds of snaps, for £72.99. It's a steal, and possibly Amazon's best kept secret.
As I said at the start of this op, this camera is actually my mum's, but if I can't get it on semi-permanent loan, I will have to buy my own. In an ideal world I'd get the £200 Nikon SQ qith it's amazing cube design - but this camera has brought me back to earth with a bump, and made me realise that I'd simply be paying for the fact it's a different shape. Overspending on any other camera would just seem pointless. I've found a gem in the Premier DC 3202, and if you pick one up for this amazing price, I hope you agree that it's the steal of the year.
