Creative's PC-CAM 850 hybrid digital camera and web cam comes to the Australian market at an attractive price but is it what you want? Read our Australian review.
In the past it seems consumers who want to buy a decent digital camera would have to spend at least AU$500 to make their digital camera experience worthwhile. Creative have introduced the 3 mega pixel PC-CAM 850 at an extremely low RRP of AU$269.
The rather curvy looking camera is certainly not the prettiest camera on the market and has a distinct plastic feel to it. However its weight and and size are relatively small and will fit in most pockets for easy storage. With just 3 buttons and a multi selector the camera is not inundated with complex manual features. That may feel restrictive for some users who should be looking at a higher-end camera. It does make the learning curve for taking pictures on the PC-CAM 850 easy to grasp for most users who just want to point and shoot with minimal fuss. The multi selector on the PC-CAM 850 is a nice idea, but it is rather small. As such, it might suit children's fingers but not all adults will easily come to grips with it.
When you turn the PC-CAM 850 on, you're greeted with a set of toneless bells and whistles that can thankfully be turned off. The 1.6 inch LCD display is a decent size for the camera and produces satisfactory previewing modes for pictures and video. When taking pictures the preview screen goes completely blank for approximately 5 seconds. The screen then produces a "processing" screen which can be quite annoying as it's difficult to tell if or when a picture has been taken.
The PC-CAM 850 is a 3 megapixel camera with a hearty 16MB of memory on board. Those specifications translate into approximately 17 images at a high 2048x1536 resolution, 29 images at a medium 1600x1200 resolution or 112 images at 800x600 resolution. The PC-CAM 850 also includes a SD/MMC expansion slot that will extend the camera's storage with SD or MMC cards that are sold separately. The pictures taken in our tests reveal the colour balance and detail to be quite impressive. There's always a tradeoff with cheaper digital cameras, and in the PC-CAM's case, it's the fairly standard one; there's no optical zoom, only a 4x digital one. Like many cheaper digital cameras action shots suffer with the usual issues of blur and distortion.
The PC-CAM 850 also offers video recording and web cam functionality. The PC-CAM 850 will record and capture up to 76 seconds of video at 8fps/640x480. While testing, we found that the recording functionality, although a nice feature, was particularly jumpy and would be best suited to a fixed stand while recording.
Unlike many digital cameras, the PC-CAM 850 doesn't utilise a dock for easy upload of images; connectivity is via a plain USB 1.1 cable. The PC-CAM 850 also supports video out connectivity for viewing pictures on most televisions.
Bundled with the camera comes two software products, Video Impression for editing videos, and Photo impression for (what else?) editing images. Both software products are relatively simple to use and will complete most basic video and image adjustments for the casual user. More advanced users who want to tweak their video and images might want to look at buying additional software.
Creative's PC-CAM 850 runs on AA batteries. This has traditionally been a problem with most digital cameras as LCD screens will chew through batteries like there's no tomorrow. While over our testing period the batteries lasted quite well, there's nothing more certain (death and taxes notwithstanding) than the fact that you'll have to shell out for plenty of AA batteries to keep the camera running. The PC-CAM isn't capable of recharging batteries via USB, so we'd recommend a seperate recharger and batteries to keep costs down.
Lastly, and probably most disappointing was the camera's Web camera functionality. The camera comes with no documentation either packaged or online to get the camera running. After a little tweaking we got the camera to work with Yahoo and MSN Messenger. The quality of the streaming images is satisfactory and comparable to most other web cameras on the market today.
Overall Creative's PC-CAM 850 is a very good buy at AU$269 for users who want a simple point and shoot camera with limited video and a web camera functionality. While not targeted at an advanced audience, the PC-850 will appeal to the pockets of digital camera enthusiasts who are looking for simplicity and results with minimal fuss.
Creative PC-CAM 850
Company: Creative Asia Pacific
Price: AU$269
Distributor: Selected resellers
Phone: (02) 9666 6100
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Please i need the Driver of Creative PC-CAM 850