Smart option for the non-professional

By RICHARD WOOD

Hewlett-Packard's Photosmart 945 is one of a new breed of digital cameras providing creative amateur photographers great image quality, a fine 8x optical zoom lens and 5 megapixel resolution.

However, I found that the initial operation of the camera was less than intuitive.

On turning the camera on it extended the lens and showed a status screen and then blanked. Pressing another button was required to turn the screen back on.

But once I found the "ok" button brought up the menu, operation couldn't have been be easier. Each set of choices finished with a help option that gave a succinct scrollable explanation of what the function does - superb for all those bamboozled by camera functions.

The lens contracts to only 37mm from the body so it is still jacket-pocketable, although the mini-SLR (single lens reflex) body shape does make it a little bulky.

The right hand camera grip did not fit my hand so I had to move the camera up in my grip and support with my left hand when accessing the zoom with the right hand thumb.

The function select dial, which surrounds the shutter button, covers sports, landscape, portrait, video, auto, shutter and aperture priority modes. A burst mode accessible from another button allowed 4-6 pictures in a row.

The sticker on the outside of the camera proclaims a total zoom of 56x - arrived at by multiply the 8x optical by the a 7x digital zoom. Don't be fooled by this marketing nonsense. Even the HP945 manual says that digital zoom is simply a cropping of the photo.

Actually the manual, like the on-screen help, was superb, with full explanations in plain language.

To view your pictures or videos, which are recorded at low resolution, you press the play button. Pressing the ok button again pulled up another menu to add audio, access the delete function, or get a summary of data about the picture.

Standard digital camera features of exposure compensation, white balance for different lighting conditions, different types of light metering, ISO speed from 100 to 400 and contrast are available from the menu. There were also settings for colour saturation of the picture, the sharpness, and the contrast.

Settings can be keep in the memory when the camera is switched off.

The camera also features "Digital Flash" or Adaptive Lighting Technology which balances brightness relationships between bright and dark areas in a photo, keeping gentle contrasts and compressing harsh contrasts. It works a treat - automatically lightening some local areas in a photo and leaving other areas alone.

Resolution could only be set at 5 megapixels or 1, which is limiting, but there are three compression settings.

The viewfinder LCD display comes on when you put your face close to it, shutting off the main screen - an excellent feature. The main LCD was not the best in bright sunlight, but was great indoors.

The camera runs on regular AA batteries and it uses SD memory cards, coming with a 32Mb one, which I would regard as a bare minimum.

The 945 has an interesting feature called HP Instant Share where you can predetermine where your pictures will be sent when you connect to your computer.

This could be to email addresses loaded onto your camera, or an online album. Software is also bundled for uploading your photos and direct printing is available to a range of HP printers.

Overall the 945 will give a range of features to satisfy many semi-professional needs. But it is missing some high end capabilities.

There's no plug-in connection for an external flash and it doesn't save uncompressed "Tiff" or "Raw" files, which you need for getting the best possible image quality.

HP Photo Smart 945


Price: $1299

Pros: Excellent zoom, Digital Flash compensation, great on-camera help.

Cons: some non-obvious controls, lacking LCD screen clarity outside, doesn't save uncompressed files.

Score: 7.5/10