Excellent camera at an excellent price
Written: Mar 12 '02 (Updated Mar 14 '02)
|
Product Rating:
|
|
| Ease of Use: |
 |
|
| Durability: |
|
|
| Battery Life: |
 |
|
| Photo Quality: |
|
|
|
Pros: Bargain Price, Lots of Features, Print Image Matching
Cons: Poor Optical View finder, No automatic lens cover
The Bottom Line: I recommend this camera for anyone looking for a mid-size 3MegaPixel camera or looking to spend around $350.
|
|
|
| cidd's Full Review: Toshiba PDR-M71 Digital Camera |
Now let me start off what the bad stuff first.
The two things I somewhat dislike what the PDR-M71. Is the optical view finder, because it only shows about 80 percent of the final picture area. Personally this doesn’t really bother me, because, like all digital cameras you can preview your picture right after their taken.
The other thing is, and I don’t mean to sound lazy but, a built-in, automatic lens cover would have been really convenient.
Now on to the good stuff,
The camera over all is great value, and was also voted PC World’s sub-$500 digital camera best buy for February 2002. http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,73852,pg,1,00.asp
I have been using the PDR-M71 for about three weeks, and I have used two other digital camera's piror to this one.
The shot to shot lag time for the highest setting, is 2.41 seconds which is pretty fast. Although start up time is 6.8 seconds, kind of slow.
The 30 second 320-240 AVI movie mode on highest quality is near VHS quality, and the mono sound isn’t that bad either.
The only problem I have is what lighting, in order to see the LCD, and to record video you need, real good lighting, but then again, this a problem with most digital cameras, and camcorders. But on the good-side the LCD is real easy see in the sun.
Operating the camera is pretty easy and fast to do. The menus are logical and easy to follow without resorting to the manual too much.
In Auto mode you have 6 selectable preset settings which are Auto focus, Portraits, Landscape, Sports, Night mode, and 16 shot continuous. To access these preset modes, you only need go into one menu.
If you know what your doing, theirs also manual mode, with Exposure, White balance, Metering System, and lots more settings to choose from.
Transferring your images is especially easy if you have Windows XP. All you need to do is, put the camera in transfer mode, plug in the USB cable in, and then transfer your images. No drivers or software needed to install.
Included what the camera:
Soft Case
Neck Strap
Lens Cap & cord
4 Toshiba brand AA alkaline batteries (No Rechargeables)
Audio/Video cable
USB Cable
Small, 8MB SmartMedia Card (Holds only 6 images on highest quality)
Software CD
Nicely illustrated, 276 Page instruction book (138 in English, 138 in French)
Despite the negatives, I say this is a great value for your money.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 304
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
cidd
|
|
Member: Michael
Location: Port Hueneme, California
Reviews written: 15
Trusted by: 0 members
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.