Customer Reviews

Hewlett Packard PhotoSmart C912 2MP Digital Camera w/ 3x Optical Zoom

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is the third digital camera that I have purchased (I sent the other two back because they were both disappointments). I was jaded. I wanted many things on a digital camera that i never thought I'd find. I wanted easy features that i could control without having to go through a bunch of lame menus. I wanted a good zoom. I wanted at least 2 megapixels. I wanted to have good control of my picture taking, and to be able to see 'through the lens', like an SLR 35. I was sure it wouldn't happen...

And then, I found the 912. What can I say? Well, in a nutshell: this baby ROCKS! Great pics with excellent clarity and color; great detail in shadows; manual control on about everything. Aperture, focus, shutter speed, it's all easily adjustable! What's that you say? You like to play with the variables, but don't want to spend all day 'tinkering'? No problem! You want macro? turn the dial to the flower, and you are good to go. You want landscape? turn the dial to the mountain. you want quick and easy night shots without dealing with all the aperture/shutter/exposure levels? turn the dial to night, and you're DONE! Action? NO PROBLEM! This camera has so many great features on the body of the camera that everything is just soooo easy to adjust and play with! the battery drain kinda honks, but i bought some rechargeables, and snapped like 100 pics, about half with the flash, before they ran out. the software is probably the best that I've seen come bundled (don't expect photoshop, but you will get good applications that grab your photos right off the camera and save them right to the hard drive folder of your choice, AND, the previewing is super easy!). also, the cam comes with straps, lens caps, and a little catalog of all the extras you can get for it from a third party dealer. This puppy has 47mm threads (i think they are 47 mm...?) and you can put tons of different filters, zoom lenses, etc. on this bad boy. This is the probably the best SLR-type digi cam for under $1000 on the market. if you want more megapixels, look elsewhere. but if you are a 35mm enthusiast that wants similar control, at a pretty decent price, on your digi, then look no further! Oh, by the way, this camera has a diopter on the eyepiece, that I still don't quite understand it's purpose... it allows you to focus on your subject, but has no effect on the actual image. Huh? Can someone help me out on that one... One thing: the price on this cam went up $100 between the day I purchased it, and the day I received it. I got the lower price, but what's with the sudden jump in price?...

This thing is a champ! Best Around! KUDOS! HP/Pentax have done their homework!

The C912 camera takes great pictures but does not perform well when you want to shoot with manual settings. This camera won't replace a 35MM SLR as I had hoped. Overall, I think I would have been better off buying a new 35MM SLR camera and a smaller digital camera like the Olympus C700. I sure miss my old Canon AE1!

Shortcomings:

1) Manual focus is a joke. You have to select between distance settings measured in "meters." I haven't found a way to change the readings to "feet." Adjustments to the manual focus are done at the back of the camera where your left thumb is. Neither the LCD display nor the viewfinder work very well for judging focus. I'd suggest that you set the camera for a small aperture so you'll get fairly well focused pics. Manual focus on the lens like a standare 35MM would be way way better.

2) The hot shoe only has one contact; you'll have to shoot with manual exposure settings when using an add-on flash unit.

3) Very low light pictures shot at long exposure come out with "noise" in the picture that looks like snowflakes.

4) When using the flash, aperture or shutter speed priority perform poorly. I would have expected the flash to compensate better for changes to aperture and shutter speed. I've taken some pic's that came out with poor exposure this way.

5) The camera is as large as a 35MM SLR, too big to put in your pocket. On the bright side, you don't have to worry about it falling out of your pocket...

6) Shooting in Automatic mode provides average focus so you get pictures that are often out of focus.

7) The autofocus has a half-second or so delay that you have to compensate for. I guess all auto focus cameras perform this way. You have to shoot in manual focus to get instant shutter response. I sure miss my old Canon AE1.

8) A 10x zoom lens like the Olympus C700 would be much better. A removable lens like standard a real 35MM SLR camera would make this camera the best thing since sliced bread! The 3x zoom is okay for general photography. I should have bought the C700!

9) Zoom is electric not mechanical. It's adjusted on the lens like a 35MM focus ring. It's a bit slow to respond. Mechanical would have been way better.

Advantages:

1) Shooting in "P" for program mode and set with center point focus produces excellent pictures just about all the time.

2) The flash is small but quite powerful.

3) The camera has an excellent look and feel.

4) Diopter allows you adjust the viewfinder to your eye so you can shoot without your glasses and see clearly.

5) The camera is built very well. This is one of the main reasons I bought it. I'm sure it can take quite a hit without breaking. You could probably use it to break open walnuts! The lens is enclosed so it doesn't extend in and out like smaller cameras. The lens is built to accept screw-on filters and telephoto and other lenses without Mickey Mouse adapters. Install a clear filter the day you get the camera to protect the lens from dirt and finger prints.

6) The camera uses a proprietary battery pack or standard AA batteries. Rechargeable 1700mAh AA NiMH Batteries and a Radio Shack one-hour charger perform well and cost half of what you'll pay for the HP battery and charger. I use the 6-volt AC power supply that came with my camcorder to power the camera without batteries and have had no problems.

7) The date displays on the image. A note and logo can also be displayed on the image.

8) Sound recording is a pretty cool feature. No video recording and glad.

9) A PCMCIA adapter for the compact flash can be bought for [price]. It's fantastic for vacation. I bring along my old laptop to download pictures every evening. 64MB holds 58 pic's at highest resolution.

I spent some time looking around before buying. This camera gives me the level of control/options/manual override that I am used to in 35mm cameras. My 35mm camera is a Pentax, so the controls and functions are familiar. I also like the SLR operation and the size/weight/feel of the camera.

A couple of worthwhile plus points:

1. The battery is a rechargeable video camera battery and has very good life - you can take a couple of hundred pictures including a good number with flash without it needing to be recharged. Much better performance than my friends have been able to get from their cameras.

2. The direct, onboard, USB connenction makes downloading images to my PC very simple and quick. The CompactFlash card format is maturing - large capacity cards are readily available and not too expensive.

Just two small quibbles:

1. The camera has a hot-shoe flash attachment but only works in manual (not automatic TTL) mode. This means my Pentax flash unit fits but doesn't work in with the metering system.

2. The 'continuous' mode takes a picture every few seconds. You'd be hoping for perhaps 2 per second. This feature isn't actually useful at that speed.

Those two small things aside I've been very happy with the camera and the results I've been able to get with it.

Michael

I have always used a good 35mm SLR and owned a photolab for many years, so I know what I am talking about when I talk of quality photos.

Wanting to get into digital photography on a budget, I bought Mustek MD800 a couple of years ago and it was a disaster. Pics were dreadful and the color/exposure was almost toxic. Every now and then I would check and see if there was anything exciting and affordable on the web and that was when i found the HP 912. I took a long time to make up my mind and to actualy buy it due to residual fear from the last digital fiasco, but the leap of faith was worth it. I just could not believe the list of everything it can do, and that made me even more sceptical. After it arrived, I was taking pics within 5 minutes and was amazed at the quality. Since then, I have put it through it's paces and everything works just as they claimed. Even the built in flash is far more powerful than i thought possible. In flash shots I am so used to seeing the faces over exposed (all bleached out) and the background pitch black, but with this camera the results are quite startling. I took a whole bunch of pics on Christmas day in the sittingroom while the kids were opening their gifts and was surprised to see that things were clearly visible in the diningroom - over 20 feet away and the subjects in the foreground were perfectly exposed! And it is all so easy to do! The results are far more pleasing than my 35mm outfit which cost me well over two thousand dollars. Another thing I found interesting is that I got 154 shots out of the 4 AA batteries that came with the camera! Very economical!

I Love it.. So far it has lived up to what it says.
Will be taking a Lot of pictures with this. It was bigger than it looked too.I Love the remote my sisters and I got some good pictures no back of the head shots are up the nose shots. We just used the little remote and got all kinds of group shots. No More Running. It is just great If you want a camera this is the one you want.Also you can get a lot more goodies for it Like more lens and filters. Shopping at ... made it a lot nicer and easier too..

I've been very happy with this purchase. The 2.5 Mega pixels are just fine for printing 5x7 prints, and 8x10's if you set the picture up well. The features of the camera are many, the automatic ones work great and there are overrides on almost all of the auto ones. I take up close "macro" pictures a lot and was thinking about getting a ring flash, but so far I've been pretty happy with the built in flash lighting up my subject... This feature and two others are why I would recommend this. You can set the ASA from 25 up to 400 (a lot of other cameras have one setting 100). The other feature is the compact flash memory, they work well and I feel they're very reliable.

I was not dissapointed by this camera. It works like a manual 35mm camera for focussing on the subject, has a great zoom, great optics, and all of those digital camera features we've come to expect. One absolutely key feature is the remote control which works like a wireless cable release, this is excellent for those long exposures where the camera needs to be motionless.
The only drawback is the one so many digital cameras have, power.
It eats batteries like salted peanuts. I regret not having ordered the AC adapter and rechargeable batteries from the start.

As with all the other reviewers, I really like this camera. The optical viewfinder is excellent, especially for macro shots. The latest feature I have discovered is the ability to send images from the camera to my laptop via infrared (Jetsend). I also like the high-end approach of not over-processing the images in the camera. It is easy to process sharpness and saturation to your liking using Photoshop. There is an added plus to the 1600 X 1280 resolution. It creates an exact 8 X 10 image. Given the smaller resolution of this camera, it is nice that 8 X 10's requires no cropping at all...so all the pixels you capture are printed. The macro is fantastic and the flash throttles back well to give excellent exposure on macro shots. I also like the fact the camera can do time-lapse with no additional gadgets required.

The remote control has either instant shot or 3 second delay. My Olympus has only a delayed remote so many times the shot is gone before the camera fires. My flash, an Olympus FL-40, works perfect in automatic mode with the HP. The camera must be set in manual mode but that is where you can really get creative. Thankfully, there is no silly movie capture feature. Did any of the reviewers mention that the LCD swings up so you can look down at the screen and compose the picture?

If HP/Pentax wanted to put in a 4 or 5 mp CCD and charge over $1000 for this camera, I would be first in line to buy it. Even at the 2mp size, it is excellent. Plus now it is selling at a bargain price. My other camera, an Olympus E-100RS has its own set of advantages and so these two cameras are a perfect complement to each other.

This is a circa 2000-2001 camera that on the surface resembles an SLR, but in function is more like a point and shoot. I had one for almost four years, until the LCD died, and got another a few years ago off Ebay that had only 54 exposures. It was the first "serious" digital camera I had, and the first camera period where I learned to shoot good photos.

They're very scarce now, probably because they weren't popular, and the same model was also sold as the Pentax EL-2000. In general appearance it resembles a "real" 35mm film camera and has about the same weight and feel. It relies on buttons and dials rather than internal menus as most digital cameras do today. The lens is a 8.5-25.8mm which is 3X, roughly equivalent to the 18-55mm on most of today's DSLR cameras. The f-stop is 2.5-3.9, which is fairly fast, but it's permanently attached. The zoom is motorized with an odd turn, you twist the lens barrel to zoom in and out. The motorized zoom is a prime failure point in digital cameras, and is my biggest complaint against the 912; there's simply no reason for it to have one. The lens is non-extending and fixed, it would have been cheaper and more practical to have a manual zoom, but that's the way it is.

It takes compact flash cards; coming from the day when 64MB was considered big even a 512MB card will hold 490 photos, plenty for any practical use. The battery is very big and is a Lithium-Ion, which is surprising considering the age of the camera. Battery life is good but not great, easily a few hundred shots. There was also an adapter sold that let it work with 4AA batteries.

The LCD flips up but does not rotate, and it is a true TTL (Through The Lens) viewfinder. However it's not a mirror like an SLR, instead it's a beam splitter, and bright light from behind you can find it's way into your image.

The picture quality in the right conditions can be very good but not contest winning. With 2.24MP there's no room to crop or squeeze out extra detail. Some of the down points are very slow operation, reviewing pictures can take several minutes if you have a lot. The max ISO of 400 and burst mode of something like one frame per second means it won't be winning any speed contests. For older cameras like this I usually tell people to think of it as a film camera with a manual advance.

It uses the standard (big size) USB cable to download pictures, advanced for the time as back then the big deal was Firewire. The C912 is also notable as the operating system supported custom scripts for the camera's operation/processing and supposedly there was a website where people could trade and download them but I never saw any.

There's something endearing about the C912, from the little hoot-toot chime it makes when it starts to the old school feeling of taking time to compose and set up a shot, but it's so far behind the times today it's really only a novelty.

I am very impressed with this camera. I have owned several other digital cameras and this is the first one I have used that makes me even consider giving up my 35mm SLR. The only feature I would need to make me give up my film camera would be interchangeable lenses.

The only downside of this camera is that it tends to eat batteries. I would recommend the Lithium batter pack or getting some high quality NiMH batteries. Using the LCD chews up a lot of battery life. After every picture is taken the LCD turns on and shows you the picture. I haven't found a way to turn the LCD off yet but I feel sure there is a menu option to override the default.