Hands-on Review: HP R967 Digital Camera

Who da thunk that I'd be sitting here with a 10MP digital camera in my hands, telling you it's a great point-and-shoot camera for a casual photographer? HP has combined a TON of pixels, a big fat LCD display screen, and a tremendous amount of ease of use in its newest HP R967, a $449 digital camera that just recently started shipping.

The camera's biggest shortcoming is the 3X optical zoom lens; modest by today's standards. (There's also a 10X digital zoom that is less useful.) Soccer moms or others looking to get close to their action might be a bit disappointed.

It's not a streamlined pocket camera either, meaning it will weigh your handbag down a bit more than you'd probably like, but the camera's large 3-inch LCD screen with an extra wide (170 degree) viewing angle and readable buttons are precisely what makes it so easy to use. The top of the camera houses one button to snap a photo and another (next to it, but recessed) to take a video. There's a flash button, a close-up button to choose focus, a playback button, and a button for something called Photosmart Express that lets you tag your photos for printing or sharing (via HP's Snapfish) while they're still in the camera.

HP has no fewer than 17 different shooting modes (sometimes called scene modes) to optimize your chances of getting a good photo. A rosette-type selector on the back of the camera works you through the various menus and modes. HP has always excelled at giving users useful (and sometimes less useful) shooting modes. You can opt to shoot panoramas, sunsets, bright light conditions, low light conditions (the "theater mode" suppresses the flash, for example), and more. One mode that's had its share of press attention is the slimming mode which actually makes your subject seem thinner than he or she really is.

The biggest downside to using scene modes is that when you shoot a picture you're so busy toggling through your camera to find the perfect mode that you've lost the shot by the time you find it. That, however, is not a problem unique to HP.

When you select a mode, you get a nice iconic representation of it on the LCD screen and a sentence that explains what the mode is doing to your camera settings. I like the rosette better than other cameras'  scroll wheels because I'm eternally overscrolling past my selection. HP has its own version of an anti-shake feature called Steady Photo that helps prevent blurred photos. Image processing inside the camera automatically does things like remove red-eye and bring faces out of shadows. A burst mode lets you capture a sequence of rapid shots and then select your favorite.

The large LCD screen is bright and easy to read in all sorts of outdoor conditions. The display turns on quickly and the click buttons feel responsive, so you can be more assured of capturing your shot.

As I used the camera little offenses surfaced. The LCD screen looks slightly grainier than others I've used, more so on my preview than on playback. The flash (as set by the defaults) is a bit too bright—washing out all my photos (the settings can be modified). And while the camera's video capabilities are nice, the zoom is noisy and you'll hear it in your video.

More serous photographers will find the functionality of a camera like the HP R967 too buried beneath mountains of user-friendly interface. For example, to change the flash from Auto to Off, you have to hit the flash button to pull up the flash choices menu, use the arrow buttons on the rosette to pick the one you want, and then go back to the top of the camera to press the flash button again to hide the menu. It's a two-handed, multi-step operation that other cameras avoid. On the other hand, most casual photographers wouldn't dream of manually overriding the flash and probably wouldn't read the manual to find out how to do it. HP surfaces these types of capabilities. That is the tradeoff between having "a coach inside your camera" versus leaving you on your own to master photography. At $449, this camera is a serious step forward to finding the perfect balance between ease of use and powerful capabilities, one that will keep you on the cutting edge for a long time.

While there are few buttons, to me they seem hard to use. On many other cameras, pressing the "flash" button cycles through the choices, and you stop pressing when you get to what you want.