Customer Reviews

Digital Concepts 3.1MP Digital Camera

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

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.

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....

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.

i bought this camera at walmart for $60 roughly 9 months ago.
it was a step up from my last camera because it had a lcd, flash, and higher res. on the downside it doesn't have a microphone. it does not take very good photos in low lighting conditions and the flash is too powerful for most instances
i'd include a picture but they are all on my other computer
i wouldn't recommend this camera for anything indoors or anything short of broad daylight. also the flash uses up most of the batteries and the 3 AAAs don't last very long (get rechargeables) the only use i can see for this camera is pictures on bicycle rides or walks during the day otherwise it is quite useless. the main thing that really turned me away was that it (or at least mine) had little gray stripes accross the image and a lack of saturation of color. i sent it back to get the screen fixed (at least the tech support is decent) and i am thinking of getting a kodak c330 and selling it here.

I bought one of these cameras at Wal-Mart and returned it the next day as not only useless but frustratingly useless. My computer could access the camera as a pair of USB flash drives, and pull photos off the camera that way, until I installed the camera's software. With the vendor software installed, photos could not be retrieved from the camera at all. The vendor software also did not fully uninstall, so its installation marked the end of my ability to get photos off the camera. The camera went through a set (3) of Duracell Ultra batteries in a little over six hours, with less than a dozen test photos. I called the vendor's technical support line (a toll call) and spent 30 minutes on hold before giving up, having never spoken to anyone. All in all, both product and vendor support are excruciatingly shoddy.

If only I had read these reviews BEFORE I bought this camera...

I can only confirm what everyone else says: 1) the camera comsumes batteries even when it is off; 2) it deletes pictures in its internal memory when it loses battery power; 3) it will not operate with rechargeable Ni-MH AAA batteries - at least mine wouldn't!

However, I would like to offer one compliment to Sakar, the manufacturer. Their customer service was very good. I contacted them (figuring that I had a defective camera) and they provided a replacement when I sent the first one in - it cost me a couple of bucks in shipping and I got a replacement in about 10 days. Only problem, the replacement camera is no better than the original. Obviously, the whole design is defective.

As with the others, my advice is to spend your money elsewhere.

If you're thinking of buying this for a nice gift/Christmas present, just say no! Here's why:

This camera goes through a set of batteries in literally less than an hour. And even if you turn it off, it really doesn't turn off ever - the batteries will *still* be dead within a few hours (with all pictures forever lost if you didn't have them saved on an SD card).

I bought this camera for a trip to the Grand Canyon. Probable scenario if I had taken it along: Hike for 1-3 hours, taking pictures. Halfway back to the car the batteries die and all photos are lost.

No thanks. I bought a Kodak C300 instead for only $30 more, looks to have nearly identical functionality but already I can see the image quality is much better. So long as the batteries can last even a day or two in this one, I'll be a happy camper.

Spend twice as much on a digital camera, and you'll probably get ten times the value - steer clear of this cheapo camera.

My brother won this camera at work (It must have been a booby prize). He was unwilling to even give it away because it looked so CHEAP (frankly I think it looks like it should sell for $12.99 - before the $20 rebate)!

Regardless, I wrangled it from him for the $5 shipping cost. Ahhh..., yea, if you've gotten this far I would agree with all the negative stuff said. Most of the pictures look washed out, and even Photoshop can only help that so much. I did buy the NiMi batteries, took about 6 pictures (no flash), downloaded them and three days latter the batteries were dead!!! Even with the best of batteries this thing sucks the power when not on.
So if you are foolish enough to spend $60 on this rather than spending an extra $40 on a "real" camera here are your options:

1. Quickly take pictures and immediately download them, then remove the batteries. Next time you need to take pictures repeat the process.

2. Buy batteries to last a month of which the cost will exceed buying a better camera. And, oh, yea, if you don't immediately download the pictures well, they surely won't be there when you install the new batteries - anyway. Which might I add forces you to basically follow step one in the first place.

OK, you have been warned. If I see anyone posting that they bought this product you deserve the misery you get. It is products like this that somehow take the fear out of "inexpensive Chinese goods" dominating the world. On the other hand it very well could be a communist plot to drive Americans loony!


Manufacturing products like this should bring criminal prosecution. Why? Because those that likely can only pony up the cash to buy this... trash, are the one's that can least afford to be ripped off.

Just to review;
You get a total of 4 pictures on the 16 megs of built in memory at the best setting.

You get maybe 24 hours on the best batteries if you leave them in the camera.

You pretty much better download shortly after taking the pictures (the few that you can).

The flash is worthless (except to possibly blind an intruder), but then you better have charged batteries (and be a quick loader) to do that.

*** Late News Update***
I just put a flash memory card in this "item" and it looks like I will have to break the camera apart to get it out. It may be the wisest thing I do!!!

Tormented Tom

1. Batteries last about 12 hours, even if you have a flash card.

2. It keeps erasing photos. My daughter lost 1/2 of her vacation pictures. If we didn't save them with in a couple of hours, 1/2 of the time they would be erased, even those on the flash card.

Spend another 100 bucks and get a real camera.