Customer Reviews

Toshiba PDR-M4 2.14MP Digital Camera

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I have a B.S. in Photography and have turned my nose up at most cameras in the less than 2 million pixel range. As the 2 megapixel camera prices have dropped, I started taking note. This one has an excellent price to performance ratio. I looked for a camera with High Quality, low cost, very simple to use, and flexible storage and transfer features. This camera has it all. I especially like to take pictures in natural light with the flash turned off, as it has an excellent meter and great color range. Sometimes it favors the flesh tones in the same way that Kodachrome did in the good old days. The USB transfer is EXCEPTIONAL, plug in the camera and with one touch it transfers and erases at the same time. Very fast transfer with 16 high quality (one mb) images transferring in about thirty seconds. I was used to a much slower transfer rate and this camera really makes it easy/fast to download from. The pictures speak for themselves if you have a decent printer, like an Epson with 1440 dpi quality, it makes excellent 8 x 10 inch prints. Hard to tell from film. A 16 mb smart card holds about 18 high quality pictures. Great overall!

I did alot of shopping around before purchasing the Toshiba PDR-M4. The two selling points were the 2.1 Mega Pixels, which is about as high as they come, and the incredibly fast upload time (almost instant on USB). Other good features include a good software program, an AC adaptor, and a TV input jack (which is real cool). With other cameras with slow upload (like the popular Olympus D-340R), you have to shell out about $ for a floppy adaptor or $ for an external port which reads Smart Memory cards unless you want to wait minute after minute. Finally, the Toshiba camera is perfectly user friendly. You would have to be an idiot to not be able to work it. The instruction manual is helpful and clear. It takes good pictures as far as I can tell (I have no B.S. in photography). The guy at Wolf Camera said it was his favorite camera, too, and he seemed to know about them all. Note: I got mine for $. You should try to match that price.

I have owned this camera for about a year and WOW! I have taken spectacular shots from airplane windows, incredible close-ups, and under a real range of lighting conditions. The camera recycles very quickly from shot to shot, and is small enough to fit easily into your pocket. Resolution is excellent and the camera uses the SmartMedia and its batteries sparingly. I would recommend this camera to anyone, especially when you consider the price for a 2.1 Megapixel camera!

This 2.1 megapixel camera is really fantastic. The colors are rich and deep, the camera recycles very quickly between pictures and the built-in USB support makes transferring the images to the PC a snap! I have taken a lot of pictures with this camera since December when I bought it. It travels well, is smaller than a lot of the cameras, the controls are very easy to work and the pictures are unbelievable. I have several pictures taken from the window of an airplane (I travel a lot) and people just cannot believe that these came from a digital. (NY skyline and the Grand Canyon). I don't even miss not having a zoom on this camera. It is a great adjunct to my regular APS camera. You will not be disappointed.

I have had this camera for about a week now, and my impressions are very favorable. It is ready to shoot in an instant. The controls are easy to learn and I like the fact you can change resolutions. I use mine to shoot family pictures which I transfer to my PC for use on e-mail and on our little web site. The transfer process is fast and painless. The photo software that comes with the camera loaded without any hassle. My only complaint so far, is the pictures sometimes come out a little dark, and I must touch them up with the photo software. I will soon learn how to take pictures in the "manual" mode and that should solve that problem. I upgraded to a 16 MB smart media card, which gives me more than enough shots. I reccomend the camera for people who want a compact way to shoot pool parties, holiday fun, or family trips.

It took me awhile to finally decide on this camera and I am not sorry at all. I used Amazon.com and other buying networks to find out what customers thought of various cameras. One of the things I quickly found out you need to pay attention to is the battery life. That's something I would have never thought about on my own and this camera is a gem. It comes with a rechargeable battery and an adapter which plugs right into the side of the camera. I found that it recharges in no time at all. I also found that is you don't keep the LCD going all the time you can get hours of shooting time without worrying. There is a nifty battery level indicator available to you when you take a pic.

Another thing I heard horror stories about was downloading the pics. In my package I got a USB cable and the image software. Is instantaneous too fast. I loved it. With little fanfare I had my pics on my PC ready to do whatever. My only complaint is that there image software is no good for true color printing. It presents the pic in the right color but something gets lost in the translation to the printer. Photoshop is much better when it comes to printing. It was also very very easy to view the pics through the TV. My husband and I were recently on vacation in the Florida Keys which is famous for it's sunsets. Needless to say we had a zillion sunset pics and wanted to narrow it down. It was nice to see them on a 27 inch screen to make final decisions on which ones to keep.

Most of any tinkering you want to do is very easily done through a pretty good menu system. I hate reading the book and the only time I really had to do it was when I wanted to make sure I had everything to download my pics to my PC and when I wanted to learn how to save pics from accidentally being deleted. That's another pretty good feature in that you can lock certain pics and they have to be unlocked in order to delete them. Saves a lot of heart ache if you get trigger happy and make a mistake.

I have to say the auto feature gave some of the night time pics red eye. Otherwise the pics were right on but those people with brown eyes tended to look red. Not sure why cause those with eyes of another color were just fine.

As for the manual operation of this camera... I am going to have to read the book to fully understand all that I can control. I don't mind since this little gem, weighs almost nothing, was ready to go once it was charged up.

This camera has been great until this past week. The dial broke off, so now I can't use it. I've read other places that this is a common problem. So if you like Toshiba, you might want to look at one of their newer models.

The quality of the photos is great on the highest resolution setting. Zoomed in the photos are not as clear. After 2 years the mode dial popped off and I'm now looking for a new camera. Cost to repair is $[money].

Have had 2 Toshiba PDR-M4 digital cameras. This camera has been primarily handled by someone who is quite knowlegable about cameras, electronic equipment in general. The camera is used several times a week. Within the last 6 months, the shutter button has ceased to work and promptly springs right out of its socket. Yes, it takes lovely pictures and is easy to use....now, if the shutter button would only stay in place!

Good camera in terms of features, but as others have noted the shutter button is fatally flawed. My wife bought this camera and the button broke after just a couple of months. Fortunately it was still under warranty and one of the *two* Toshiba warranty repair centers in the entire US just happened to be located 25 miles from our house so we didn't have to pay shipping to get it fixed. Now, after another year of use since we got the button fixed the camera has stopped focusing and the shutter button is broken again.