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Pocket Cameras<br />
These shiny, go-anywhere shooters are part gadget, part bling. —Z.S.<br />
Digicams<br />
EDITORS’<br />
PICK<br />
Canon PowerShot SD850 IS<br />
$400 • usa.canon.com<br />
The 8-megapixel SD850 is all icing and no cake. It captures bright colors,<br />
but noise lurks in most photos, along with noticeable grain. You’re paying<br />
for secondary features rather than top-of-the-line imaging. An optical<br />
stabilizer counteracts shaky hands, and the shutter button snaps shots<br />
with almost no delay. But without the image quality to back it up,<br />
the price tag seems a little steep.<br />
WIRED Captures detailed textures under even lighting. Smooth flash fills<br />
the scene. Skin tones glow evenly. Quickly fires 14 shots in 10 seconds.<br />
TIRED Bright subjects wash out badly. Awkward button layout is a pain<br />
to navigate. Lacks standard manual exposure settings.<br />
Canon PowerShot TX1<br />
$500 • usa.canon.com<br />
The PowerShot TX1 looks like it was assembled by a misanthrope. Its<br />
viewfinder juts awkwardly out of the camera’s body, twisting to accommodate<br />
extreme angles and self-portraits. The counterintuitively placed<br />
shutter button demands agile fingers. One bonus: Under-thumb movie<br />
trigger instantly records high-resolution, 720p video. The TX1’s best photos<br />
are bold and clear, but its tragic shape makes it more toy than tool.<br />
WIRED Images sport bright colors and sharp details, even in full 10X<br />
optical zoom shots. HD video quality matches stand-alone camcorders’.<br />
TIRED Low-light shots look noisy and undefined. Tiny, 1.8-inch LCD.<br />
Buttons are hard to reach when shooting vertically.<br />
Casio Exilim Zoom EX-Z1200<br />
$400 • casiousa.com<br />
The speedy EX-Z1200 fires almost instantaneously, so you can bag that<br />
bicycle-kick goal or passing pelican. It’s also quicker in burst mode than<br />
most other pocket cameras we tested, capturing 9 photos in 10 seconds.<br />
We could live without the camera’s barely functional face-recognition<br />
technology, but its antishake mode works brilliantly, counteracting movement<br />
to take stable pictures at slower shutter speeds.<br />
WIRED Screen auto-adjusts brightness for easy viewing. Manual overrides<br />
for capturing difficult shots. Live histogram.<br />
TIRED Focus sometimes favors backgrounds over close subjects. Small,<br />
sloppy directional button muddles the interface. Choppy 20-fps movies.<br />
HP Photo<strong>sm</strong>art R937<br />
$300 • hp.com<br />
The R937 is full of interesting features. Its 3.6-inch LCD, the largest we<br />
tested, relies on tapping prompts with a tethered stylus instead of a joystick.<br />
An in-camera photo tagging feature assigns keywords to pictures for quick<br />
sorting on your PC, while a help system offers shooting tips and explains<br />
advanced options. But image quality only barely matches that of similar<br />
cameras, with extensive noise in most situations other than direct sunlight.<br />
WIRED Antishake option saves handheld shots. Thumbnails show how<br />
settings will change photos. Instantly fixes red-eye in people and pets ...<br />
TIRED ... which is good, because flash shots are plagued by red-eye. Touchscreen<br />
ignores finger taps. Only one tag at a time supported while shooting.
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