12, Jan, 2025
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HP PhotoSmart C500

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Hewlett-Packard’s previous efforts with digital cameras have not been impressive, but its latest product marks a dramatic change. Instead of reflecting Hewlett-Packard’s usual simple, click-happy design approach, the PhotoSmart C500’s capability and controls are almost overwhelming.
It has an LCD status panel on top, as well as power, flash, quality, IR share and a four-way thumbwheel mode control. The back panel has zoom, a multi-way toggle control, menu-on and overlay buttons, LCD control, three extra menu context-sensitive soft buttons and three status LEDs. That’s a lot of stuff.
The body is quite bulky, with a pop-out 38 to 115mm macro zoom, viewfinder and built-in flash on the front, card slot on the right, and connection sockets on the left. The bottom contains a button battery for date backup and the main battery housing, which holds the three AA NiMH rechargables. A USB and a serial cable are supplied, as is a battery charger and a CD with Digita Desktop, Ulead PhotoImpact and PhotoExplorer plus Hewlett-Packard’s camera link software. Full marks for a generous and competent package.
The camera is easy to use, despite all those controls. Switch it on (this took us about five seconds), set it to record, adjust the quality, configure the flash and go. All these are simple single-button procedures, and if you want to delve deeper and set things like white balance or exposure weighting, then its onscreen menus are equally understandable. Shooting options include still, time lapse and burst. A mystery ‘eye-activated’ option also appears, but is not mentioned in the manual.
APC found the zoom a bit ratchety and noisy, and the LCD viewer jerked noticeably when panning fast. Its shot refresh time was good at four seconds, but in burst mode it seemed reluctant to take more than two images at a time. The images were very good once downloaded at a sizzling 3.5 seconds (for a 45OK image) into the excellent Photo Explorer. Even though it had a few more jaggies than some cameras, It had excellent detail, colour depth and range across shadow and highlights.
On the downside, when we downloaded a few shots from the 16M CompactFlash card, the battery icon started flashing. The HP was probably the worst of the cameras reviewed when it came to battery life, even with its high power NiMHs. Overall, It’s a capable camera for the money. It has a good mix of features, is easy to use, has excellent software and decent quality imaging, but its battery life Is poor.

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