- The Good: Extremely low price for a camera with a colour LCD; compact; bright flash.
- The Bad: Low resolution pictures; LCD panel small and washed out, making it hard to see details such as whether the subject's eyes are open; long cycle time on flash.
- The Verdict: It has one of the best prices for a colour-LCD-equipped camera, but there are models that take higher-quality photos in the same price range.
- Reviewed on: Hewlett-Packard Media Center m380n Photosmart 3 GHz Pentium 4 PC with 1GB of RAM, DVD and DVD-recordable drives, a seven-way media reader, TV-input/PVR capability, Maxtor 120GB IDE and 250GB SATA hard disks running at 7200 RPM, an HP F1703 LCD panel, a 128MB NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 video card, and Windows XP Media Center Edition.
REVIEW:
For some people, a purchase is all about price. If you want to pay as little as possible for a digital camera with an LCD screen and a flash, the Argus DC1730 is for you - just be aware that you get what you pay for when it comes to image quality.
The DC1730 drops the price bar to an astounding level for a camera with a colour LCD viewfinder and flash, coming in at less than $50 (U.S.). It's portable, too, measuring about the size of a disposable film camera.
Resolution is where the reasons for purchasing the DC1730 get a little fuzzy, though.
Most entry-level digital cameras for general consumer use are in the 2 megapixel range right now, with high-end consumer cameras taking pictures at levels up to about eight megapixels. The DC1730, on the other hand, has a top resolution of just 0.3 megapixels. That basically equates to a VGA-resolution 640-by-480 pixel photo, the quality level offered by the first generation of digital cameras several years ago.
It's a good little camera for taking digital photos for e-mailing or website use, and it doubles as a webcam if you hook it up to a PC USB port. But it's not going to take photos of high enough quality to blow up into really decent five-by-seven-inch or larger prints, for example. If you're looking for a camera to replace your basic 35mm film model, this isn't it.
The camera's other Achilles heel is the flash. It lights things up beautifully for such a compact lighting element, and you even run the risk of blowing scenes out a bit if you shoot too close with the flash on. But the flash cycle time is around 15 seconds between shots even on fresh batteries — an agonizing amount of time when you're trying to get a follow-up picture, or take a series of photos.
The camera also tended to blur pictures if there is any motion. It's best for taking posed shots of static subjects.
That said, the camera's F=4.9mm F2.8 lens and complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) sensor takes surprisingly bright, clear shots indoors without the flash, even under fluorescent lighting. It's plastic, but the images are what you'd expect from a higher-quality glass lens.
The limited resolution is a good thing in some ways, too, since the DC1730 has only 8MB of built in memory and no expansion slot. It can take 24 high-res or 187 low-res shots before you have to empty the camera's memory onto a computer.
Transfers between the camera and the computer are extremely fast. The camera has a USB 2.0 port, which is overkill given the amount of memory in it. You can empty a full camera to a computer hard drive in seconds.
The DC1730 is hard on its set of two AA batteries (included in the package) if you use the flash and screen, but can get several memory-fulls of shots if the flash and LCD viewer are used sparingly.
Ahh, the LCD. The company bills this as the central feature of the camera, making much of the low price. But honestly, the viewfinder is of limited use. It's about the size of a postage stamp, and not very clear. It was OK for doing basic framing of a picture, but you can do that through the glass viewfinder just as easily. The main reason to have an LCD screen is to be able to view a picture right after taking it to see if it was a good one and whether you need to shoot more, and for deleting duds on the fly. The panel was so small and the detail dull and grainy on our evaluation unit, though, that you couldn't tell if the subject's eyes were open or shut unless it was a closeup head-and-shoulders shot of a person. If it was taken from some distance away, the fine details such as facial features were lost.
In viewfinder mode, the LCD was also about half a second behind action, making it hard to frame a shot. The image on the viewer also blurred if you move the camera too quickly.
There's no lens cover, but the lens is recessed deep enough in the body that it should be out of harm's way.
The controls are simple. There's a standard shutter button on top of the camera. On the back, there's a mode/power button, up/down buttons for menus, and LCD on/off switch and playback button.
The camera defaults to a setting with the flash turned off. The menu overall is well laid out, except for the flash-on switch. Instead of being easy to get at — since it's probably something you'll want to turn on in a hurry after powering up the camera indoors for a shot — you have to hit the mode button eight times (yes, eight) to get into the part of the menu where you can change the flash mode. This is a hideous design feature — the flash should be one of the menu's first options, not buried this far down.
The camera does feature a neat continuous mode which shoots a picture every few seconds, but due to the flash cycle time it's pretty much useless indoors.
It can also shoot in video mode, grabbing a few seconds of jerky video before the memory is filled. The camera can be set for either six or 19 frames per second (full motion video is a minimum of 30 fps).
The DC1730 comes with good software, though. Arcsoft's PhotoImpression for Windows 98se through XP lets you edit, organize and e-mail photos. It's a nice software package for such an affordable camera kit.
Overall, the DC1730 is a neat little camera, and it looks slick. But the problem is that the image resolution is simply very low compared to other entry level digital models. If you want an affordable digital camera to take basic shots for posting on your website or e-mailing to people it'll do fine, but for semi-serious photography I'd recommend spending more and getting a camera with a higher-resolution sensor.
