First up was Sony’s Cyber-shot DSC-P9, whose stout bar-of-soap industrial design failed to wow us; in every other respect, however, the P9 is a user’s dream. It’s easy to hold and operate, whether with one hand or two. The camera’s functions and settings are selected through a Windows-like interface, with intuitive drop-down menus.
Minolta’s DiMAGE X was the exact opposite; terrifically stylish but difficult to use. Its sleek, slim design fits nicely in a shirt pocket, and the zoom mechanism is tucked away inside the camera housing and never protrudes from the camera. But the menu system was anything but intuitive. We seemed to develop an uncanny knack of hitting the “down” button when the “up” was called for, and vice versa. After 10 minutes we gave up. Still, the size and looks of this camera may win over the more patient.
Canon’s PowerShot S200 was also slim, and its text-and-icon-based menus were very easy to use. A nifty feature on most digital cameras is the ability to zoom in on a picture displayed in the LCD screen, then scroll around to get a close-up look at a particular detail (a person’s face, for example). The PowerShot improves on this by including a little icon on the screen telling you which part of the frame you’ve magnified, so you always know where you are. Kodak’s EasyShare LS420 didn’t win any points for its boxy, chocolate-bar appearance. But using a cradle for both transferring pictures to and from the computer and recharging the battery is a smart and simple way to perform these two key tasks.
The Nikon Coolpix 2500’s swiveling lens enabled us take lots of stunning self-portraits. The camera’s best feature, however–apart from the easy-to-navigate menus–is the picture-in-picture function. It let us cycle through the pictures already taken in a smaller window while keeping the rest of the LCD clear to frame the next shot. The most pocket-friendly–and eye-catching–camera of all was Logitech’s Pocket Digital, which is about as thick as eight credit cards stacked atop each other. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have an LCD screen, so we couldn’t review our handiwork without connecting it to our computer; and its snazzy brushed-metal housing and plastic buttons seemed a bit flimsy. With only 1.3 megapixels, the Pocket Digital is better suited for e-mailing snapshots to friends than making prints; but it is so light and small there’s no reason not to take it everywhere. How many times have you wished you had a camera with you, any camera at all?
