My old digital camera had served its purpose well, but being only a 3 Mega pixel was now somewhat out dated. So I was on the lookout for a cheap good camera. I had planned on getting at least 5 mega pixels because I do feel that is this techno age a 5 Mega pixel is the least you need. For those uneducated in the terminology let me simplify it for you. Basically the higher the mega pixel value of the camera the better quality of picture you will get. A 3 mega pixel will produce 3 million dots to get the picture whilst a 5 mega pixels will produce........................yep you got it 5 million dots in the same area therefore there will be far more detail.

The camera comes with a CD which has the necessary drivers should you be using an older version of windows. It also has some basic photo software to get you started on your digital photography.

1. The 5 Mega Pixel Camera
2. A nice little case to protect you purchase
3. A USB cable for connection to a PC
4. The software and driver CD
5. An AV lead for connection to a TV
6. 2 Duracell batteries of the AA variety
7. An instruction manual in various languages
8. A warranty card
9. A quick reference guide for the know it alls

A spanner indicates the settings mode

There are three buttons on the back of the camera for selecting options and entering the menus whilst in any of the above modes except for "A" where all settings are selected by the camera.

The instruction manual is very easy to understand as indeed is the actual operation of the camera. The menu system used to select options and settings is very easy to navigate and it wasn't very long before I was quite familiar with the operations of the camera. There are three settings for picture quality and even on the low setting the picture quality is very good There are 4 levels of picture size the lowest being a resolution of 640 by 480 which gives a reasonable quality print. The next size is 1024 x 768 which gives good quality print. The penultimate size is 2048 x 1536 the quality here is very good. The final and largest setting is 2560 x 1920 and the quality here is superb. Apart from the lowest setting all others need to be reduced in a viewer for purposes of viewing on a PC since the normal resolution of a PC is 800 x 600 this gives you a good indication of the quality of the pictures.Once they are reduced in a viewer the quality can bee seen as top notch. The sizes of the pictures is quite large this means that when reduced for viewing or printing the pictures become so much sharper and clearer.

Once a picture has been taken its properties can be easily changed using the rear buttons and the easy menu system. deleting a picture is also done this way. On highest setting I can get 90 pictures on the SD card which is required. There is an internal memory but it only stores a few pictures.