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35 of 37 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Wow, what a beauty, 17 Dec 2002
By A Customer
Having read some of the other reviews and technical specs for cameras under 1 megapixel, I had dismissed the Blink in favour of the L'Espion Xtra or the Che-ez Splash. For a small extra consideration the Che-ez splash has the clip on Flash gun. It sounded great but it was a new product without any reviews to consider so it was a bit of a gamble. Well it paid off, I am delighted. My new toy just arrived this morning and first impressions were very good. Nice presentation packaging containing (almost) everything you need. The camera itself looks like a high quality product with its blue aluminium finish. The instruction manual is fairly clear and easy to follow but for some bizarre reason the letters "fi" and "fl" have been replaced by some unusual characters. This is annoying but not a major problem. The software on the supplied CD loaded quickly and without problems on Windows 2000 professional. The shielded USB cable is over 1M long which should be ok for most PC installations. The Nylon pouch for storing the Camera and the flash attachment is adequate but there is some room for improvement. Only thing that was missing was the batteries. So off down to the shops before I could try out this lovely new toy! Shame about this. I was very quickly able to take my first pictures and down load them via the USB. At first I had a few poor results due to camera shake caused by pressing and releasing the button. Not really suprising when you consider the size of the camera. I quickly discovered that the key to solving this problem is to hold the button down until after the second beep. After that no more problems. The picture quality is outstanding considering it is only VGA (0.3Mpixels) but results will vary with the light conditions and you need to practice a bit. Unlike some of the other miniature cameras the pictures are stored in an 8M Flash memory which means you do not lose them when the battery power dies or is disconnected. I also tried taking 2 short movie clips which also proved to be very easy and gave good results. Next, I tried the 10s timer. When selecting the various modes such as timer you need to read the manual very carefully. If you skip through the instructions quickly you will probably miss one of the button presses and end up in the wrong mode. Downloading to the PC was incredibly simple and easy. Connect the USB, click on the Che-ez icon, click on "storage" and it immediately starts to download the pictures and video clips at a very impressive speed. Save the lot to a directory with another click and your done. Fantastic. If you want to edit the pictures, There is also some picture editing software bundled with the camera which seems quite easy to use and produces good results. When I purchased the camera I was under the impression that you could also use it as a Web Cam which seems to be confirmed as possible but there are no details on how to achieve that or any software drivers to make it happen. Slightly disappointed about this but maybe I can figure it out later. Once you show this to your friends, tell them what it can do and how little it costs they will all want one. Several of my friend have already placed orders.
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