I have been using those disposable cameras for years :smack:. I went to Best Buy and checked out the digital cameras, and of course I was overwhelmed and fled the scene before making a decision. I saw an ad on TV for an HP docking device that prints out pics without using your PC. I thought “cool”, so I looked at it while I was at the store. I also saw the same concept, only much smaller, produced by Kodak. The particular camera paired with it had a 3X zoom and was incredibly tiny. I also saw a more expensive model with a 10X zoom. I’m just looking for something to take still pictures, like when we go hiking and see a flower or a lizard or even each other. I realize that you can also have the prints done up professionally at any store these days, but I’m just curious if anyone has used either of these docking/printing devices, and how was the quality of the pictures? I tend to like HP products, but the Kodak thing was so small and would fit anywhere without taking up much space. It only holds smaller paper, compared with the HP which holds up to 8X11. But how often do you print up a pic that big, and wouldn’t the quality suffer as you increased the size of the print?
The cameras were all 5 megapixels, which I guess is the minimum desired amount.
I have no idea what I’m talking about, can you tell? All opinions welcome and appreciated…
What do you want to take pics of? If it’s sports or anything somewhat far away, the Kodak Z740 is a good choice. A 3X zoom just is not enough, heck sometimes the 10x is not enough.
The printer docks are convient, but have serious drawbacks. The Kodak one uses dye/sublimination, is nice for the pictues, but is s l o w and expensive to use. HP’s little printers use a single three color cartridge, so your prints lack a true black and use masive ammounts of ink.
Take a look at the Epson Picturemate—it uses pigment based inks, so they don’t fade or run, it has 6 colors for accurate color reproduction, and uses a true black. It is comparably fast, and at twenty eight cents a print, one of the more inexpensive printers on the market. With each consumeables pack you get a ink cartridge and 100 sheets of paper. Get extra premium photopaper, because the ink cartridge has somewhat more than 100 prints worth of ink in it. There are two versions of the printer, the more expensive one, with the monitor, is faster and can take a battery, makeing it truely portable.
Last Christmas, both my wife and my Mother-in-Law got the original Picturemate under the tree. My wife has not taken her Kodak printer dock out since, and I have heard nothing but good from the MIL–and I’m on speed dial for any problems she has.