Digital Concepts 3.1MP Digital Camera

by Sakar

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 3.5 x 2 x 0.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0007OVOI6
• Item model number: 89379
• Average Customer Review: 1.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (28 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #35,651 in Camera & Photo (See Top 100 in Camera & Photo)
• Date first available at Amazon.com: February 1, 2005

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

40 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Takes Very Poor Picture Indoors, Consumes Lots Of Batteries, May 5, 2005

By 

Paul Rudoff "SpookCentral.tk" (SpookCentral.tk) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Digital Concepts 3.1MP Digital Camera (Electronics)

This is a review of this product: Digital Concepts 89379 3.1MP Digital Camera. Amazon may display this review on the page of another version of this product, for which this review may not apply. After reading this review, please click on the link so that you can be assurred that the product this review applies to is the same one you thought it was for.
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I bought this camera because I needed one solely for taking photos of the items I sell on the internet. I didn't want to spend a lot of money (read: over $100) on a digital camera, so when I saw this at Wal-Mart for $60, and saw that it had a built-in flash, I figured that this would do the trick. Even though it's a cheap camera, I figured that it should be able to handle such a simple and undemanding task as taking photos indoors of various little and big items. Boy was I wrong.

This camera takes VERY POOR picture indoors, even though it has a built-in flash. In fact, the flash makes the pictures worse. Pictures taken with the flash appear all washed out.

Unless you hold the camera incredibly steady, you risk having shaky pictures. Half the photos I took were shaky, even though I held the camera as still and steady as possible. The camera has a hole on the bottom where a tripod can be inserted. I highly suggest you use one, if at all possible.

It consumes battery power at a fast rate. I put new batteries in it and within a few hours it started complaining that the battery was low. When it prompts "Low Battery," it doesn't let you use the flash (how annoying!). It uses 3 AAA batteries, but has no adapter for house current, so you're forced to feed it more batteries. It even uses up battery power when you're not using it at all. I had a set of 3 brand new AAA batteries sitting in it for two weeks, while the camera was just sitting in it's opened packaging. When I went to use it again, first I saw defects in the preview screen, then eventually the camera would keep shutting off as soon as I would turn it on. Thus I was required to put another set of three brand new AAA batteries in it.

It has a 16MB built-in flash memory which requires a constant electric current to store your photos. Should the camera lose power (for instance if the batteries die or are removed), all stored pictures will be lost. Sakar recommends always downloading your photos to your computer as soon as possible to prevent unintentional data loss. I recommend not buying this camera unless you have a SD card or buy one along with the camera (luckily I did). The SD card supercedes the built-in memory, so all photos are saved onto the card instead, where they will not be lost because of the power supply.

The package comes with the camera, instruction manual (which is easy to understand, if somewhat poorly written), drivers disc (with PhoTags software), USB wire (to connect the camera to your computer), and a hand strap. Although the manual tells you first that the PhoTags software is needed to transfer the photos to your computer, if you continue reading you'll learn that it isn't. In fact, you can use the camera without installing PhoTags at all. The driver installation is located on the CD at: \drivers\setup.exe. Once installed, when you connect your camera to your PC, it will appear as another drive on your computer (two drives if you have a SD card in it). Then you can just copy, move, and delete the photos on it from Windows Explorer or whatever way you normally work with your computer files. I don't know if it's just me, but I found that Windows kept reinstalling the drivers every time I connected the camera to it. That got very annoying real quick, especially when once it made me get out my Windows 2000 CD.

You *might* need PhoTags to use the camera as a webcam, but then again, you can probably find some other software on the internet (maybe for free) that will let you do that as well (and maybe even better).

In case you're wondering, PhoTags is a rather useless program to organize photos (to a certain degree), add text and captions to them (which can be turned on and off using "Active Captions" technology - software required on the computers of anyone you send your photos to), make minor corrections (such as red eye removal), and do simple photo print projects (calendars, greetings cards, postcards, etc.). Two of the photo projects are non-existant: Album Creator and Video CD Creator. When you click on either of them, you are taken to the PhoTags website where you are prompted to buy the full version for $10 to add these two features.

Although I didn't expect to get a top-of-the-line digital camera for $60, I did expect to get something that would take decent photos indoors. I guess I'll have to keep looking.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Sucks beyond measure..., December 26, 2005

By 

Christopher Berry (Hale, Michigan United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Digital Concepts 3.1MP Digital Camera (Electronics)

Got this for a Christmas present...awful awful awful...did I say AWFUL??? Everything that you read about this camera is true....
Poor indoor pictures...
Eats batteries left and right...even when it is off...
Cheaply made product all together....
You have been warned....

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Same problems as the others..., May 12, 2006

By 

Joanna Jill Dunning "jojidu" (Albuquerque, NM USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Digital Concepts 3.1MP Digital Camera (Electronics)

I bought this back in February at Wal-Mart for about $60. I had not researched it, but my Logitech QuickCam settings display died and I wanted a new camera. This one was an upgrade as it has a color LCD display with photo preview. My old camera only displayed system options. A flash was also necessary.

I thought this camera was sucking battery power more than it should. It doesn't matter what kind of batteries I use - standard Energizer alkaline, rechargables specifically for digital cameras, whatever... I put them in (because everytime I go to use the camera, they're dead after I just put new ones or freshly charged ones in last time I used it a week before) - I take about 10 pix, w/flash, download them to my computer (since I kept losing the pix I left after use) - which takes power too because you have to turn the camera on even when it's connected to the computer - and make sure it's off when I'm done. Then a week later it's dead when I go to use it! So you have to set the date every time you use it (if you want the date on your photos), and as all the others say, if you don't download the pix immediately, they are lost when the batteries die (it does say this in the manual). I just bought a SD card so that the pix would remain, but honestly, if this camera wouldn't suck batteries WHEN OFF an external card shouldn't be necessary.

Again as others have mentioned, in a dark room, you can't see the object you wish to photograph in the LCD display. It seems to come out OK with the flash in the actual photo, but many photos with flash are just totally out of balance. My orange cat comes out white! Yes there are options, but unless you know how to use them, they are useless - and you would have to take the picture again after changing the settings - which uses the ever-depleting batteries. After about 10 photos with flash, the batteries are 1/2 dead and it won't let you use the flash anymore. I don't even take high-resolution or high-quality photos.

Also - another reviewer stated he was having problems getting the SD card out - you can't just pull it out. Hold the camera with the bottom up and the SD card on the left side - the finger dip should be towards you - and use your thumbnail to push it in and it should pop out. It's a push-in pop-out spring system. If it doesn't pop out right away, just practice and it should loosen up, mine did.

I recommend you wait until you can save up some extra cash for a better camera. And always research before you buy.