(02/02/04 - updated 09/02/04) It's a 1.3MP (1280x1024) CMOS sensor compact digital camera - surprisingly compact at only 93 x 56 x 38mm! - with a flash and red-eye reduction, 1.5" TFT (3.5cm) etc. It has TV-out, and a USB connection. It has a 2x Digital Zoom - Macro mode, a tripod socket, video mode (without sound up to 30fps it says on the box - I managed 16fps). It can also be used as a PC Webcam. It has 8mb built in, expandable to 128mb with SD card. It has a 10 second self-timer. It takes 2 AA batteries.

I bought this camera on ebay.co.uk for £36. It interpolates the images to give you a 2MP (1600x1200) image. It does not have an optical viewfinder - so you have to look at the LCD screen to see what you're taking a photo of. (this is bad in the dark as you can't see anything!)

Praktica DCZ 1.3 S Links:
Camera PDF Specifications (pdf)
Shop that sells it (£109!!)
A.K.A the Trust Powercam 550 (£42 inc vat, assuming they have it in stock!)
Where I downloaded the drivers (http://praktica.de/)
UK praktica site (where I didn't download the drivers)

The Camera:

Front of the Camera - Front, flash, sensor (light?), red light, lens. The red light lights up when you take a photo, or flashes when you use the self-timer.	Back of the Camera - 2 lights top left, on the left is for busy, the one next to it lights up when you've switched macro mode on.
Compared to a normal 35mm Pentax PC-500 and a Sony Ericsson T68i	Video out and USB connector, plus the macro mode switch.

Modes of operation: These are chosen using the turn-dial on the back (shown above and below)

SET - This lets you set the Resolution (1600x1200 (2mp interpolated), 1280x1024 (1.3mp), 640x480), Quality (fine or normal), Self Timer (on / off), White Balance (auto, sun, tungsten, flourescent), Exposure value (-2 to +2), Language, Date/Time, Default (ok / cancel), Format (ok / cancel), TV (ntsc / pal), Frequency (60 / 50hz).

VIDEO - Press the shutter release button to go and the shutter release button to stop. Digital zoom does not work in this mode.

PLAY - This lets you view your images, and videos. It will allow you to delete individual pictures or all of them. It does not seem to let you zoom into your pictues though.

CAMERA - This lets you take still photos. Press the flash button to choose between no flash, flash, or flash (eye) which is presumably for portrait pictures. Display will toggle between the different display modes and information. It turns off the screen, but this seems a little daft, as there is no optical viewfinder.

PC - You choose from Mass Storage or PC Camera - PC Camera lets you use the digital camera as a "webcam". Mass Storage lets you get the files off the cameras memory. You don't need to set it to PC CAM mode in order to get the pictures onto your computer, just connect up the USB cable and it'll do it anyway.

Other features etc: 8mb ram is built in - I managed to fit 2 x 10second movies (15fps) and 8 x 2MP (interpolated) images - on the 1.3MP (1280x1024) setting 20 pictures fit into the memory. The video out cable is neat - because you should be able to show people the pictures without them having to own a computer. There's a bit on the top of the camera that looks like a button, but it's not. Every time you switch the camera on or off it makes a beeping noise which can't be switched off.

Sample Pictures - these pictures can be viewed full size in the photo gallery.

Macro: In macro mode - the camera goes as close as 20cm - 25cm - it would not let me use the flash in macro mode.

Good colour - fairly crisp, although this image was taken at the 2MP interpolated setting.	Again, this one looks okay - colour not perfect, quality okay, but again I took this at 2MP interpolated which will lower the image quality.

Macro of Heather's eye. Cropped from 1.3MP image on right. (camera struggled with the lighting in this one - made the image too bright in bits - this image has had "auto levels" and levels adjusted).	1.3MP - Resized thumb (thumb slightly sharpened) - showing Heather's face - flash not used.

Inside: Using flash the camera often over-exposes the images, especially when someone is fairly close to the camera (eg up to a metre).

Indoor (1.3MP) - with Flash! Over-exposed	Indoor (1.3MP) - without flash, still seems slightly over exposed, and in the larger image you can see it's slightly struggling with skin tones.

Outside:

Porsche Jeep - Okay picture, considering it's a 1.3MP CMOS camera. (again 2MP interpolated)	Nice picture, fairly clear, fairly good colours. Again taken at 2MP interpolated - a bit dark around the corners.
Using flash outside - fairly impressed with the skin colours. (especially compared to other flash photos)	Video mode records 320x240 sized videos without sound - inside and outside videos both seemed to record at 15 or 16fps.

So what do I think?

It's a small fairly decent looking digital camera, that takes decent enough pictures, and is cheap enough and small enough so that you can take it wherever you go, where you wouldn't want to take a more expensive larger camera. Macro mode is average - and does not really let you get very close - but it's better than not having macro mode. Flash is annoying when trying to take photos of one person, as it'll over-expose leaving you with a completely bright white person. Using 2MP interpolated doesn't make the images look as bad as I thought it would - I may even prefer it - further testing will tell, as I've only had the camera for a day. It's a fun, easy to use camera that so far hasn't annoyed me, apart from the over-exposed indoor flash pictures.

Update after a week: When taking pictures, on the 2MP setting, it does seem to take a little bit longer before you can take the next picture - presumably because it's interpolating the image to make it bigger and then saving the image as a jpeg. General image size in KB tended to be: 459kb for 2MP, Fine, 196kb for 2MP, Normal, 336kb for 1.3MP, Fine, and 129kb for 1.3MP, Normal - using the 2MP camera may mean the pictures are slightly better quality, here's why I think this: if the camera normally reads off the 1.3mp sensor, then saves that to internal memory as a compressed jpeg at 1.3mp - then when set to 2MP if the camera reads off the 1.3mp sensor, then straight away (before compressing it) it makes the image a 2MP image, and then compresses the image as a jpeg image, then it might be possible that by doing this, you are able effectively able to save more information in the picture, because it's not being lost by compression - which would tie in with the larger file sizes. (although I could be completely wrong about this)

Battery life is also VERY good for a digital camera - I've been using the same pair of batteries since last week, and they've only just run out now. The camera will also work with batteries that were previously rejected by a much hungrier digital camera (the Canon A300). Startup time as they call it is very good as well - just turn it on, and it's pretty much ready straight away to take pictures. It doesn't seem possible to zoom in on the pictures you have already taken using the playback mode of the camera which is a shame.

What I like:

• Very small
• Nice size screen (1.5")
• Seems quick to respond when taking photos.
• Outdoor photos good (better than expected for a 1.3MP CMOS camera)
• It takes SD cards which can be bought very cheaply from the likes of ebuyer.com
• Good battery life.

What I don't like:

• Indoor flash photos over-exposed
• No view-finder
• No sound with videos
• Pictures seem fairly dull overall.
• It starts from 1 every time you delete the contents of the memory
• Can't zoom in on pictures on the camera playback mode