Carla Thornton

HP Photosmart 318

The $199 2.31-megapixel Photosmart 318 is a small camera that won't break your budget. It's light at only 10.4 ounces, and it's so simply designed that mastering it takes only a few minutes. All but a couple of controls sit on top of the camera, including the shutter button, a thumbwheel, a small status panel, and three tiny shortcut buttons. You access most of the camera's features by turning the thumbwheel and pushing it in to select menu items. A simple menu permits you to delete images, view up to nine thumbnails at once, digitally zoom up to 6X, and enter the setup mode.
The Photosmart 318 offers only point-and-shoot photography, lacking even basic exposure compensation. Its three picture-quality settings, the typical flash options, and its self-timer mode account for the full extent of its flexibility. The lens is fixed, capable only of 2X digital zooming (which is less desirable than optical zooming). The camera's pictures looked better on screen than printed. While it reproduced details and colors well in our print shots of a mannequin, the outdoor shot looked dark, and strange color artifacts littered our cropped text shot so thoroughly that words were illegible.
The Photosmart 318 took 294 shots on four AA batteries, which is about average. HP bundles Photosmart software that lets you easily download images from the camera, look at thumbnails in a Windows Explorer-style window, create albums, and perform minor image adjustments (sharpen, crop, adjust exposure, adjust hue).
The HP Photosmart 318 is a lightweight, inexpensive choice for basic photos, but it doesn't capture detail well.

Buying Information

HP Photosmart 318 2.31 megapixels, 1901 by 1212 maximum resolution, 38mm focal range (35mm equivalent), f2.8 to f8.0 aperture range, shutter speeds from 2 seconds to 1/750 second, optical and LCD viewfinders, USB connections, 8MB internal media, four AA batteries, 10.4 ounces with batteries; HP photo imaging software, ArcSoft PhotoImpression for Mac, ArcSoft PhotoFantasy for Mac and Windows software. One-year parts and labor warranty; 16-hour weekday toll-call support, plus Saturday. $ 199 2.31 megapixels, 1901 by 1212 maximum resolution, 38mm focal range (35mm equivalent), f2.8 to f8.0 aperture range, shutter speeds from 2 seconds to 1/750 second, optical and LCD viewfinders, USB connections, 8MB internal media, four AA batteries, 10.4 ounces with batteries; HP photo imaging software, ArcSoft PhotoImpression for Mac, ArcSoft PhotoFantasy for Mac and Windows software. One-year parts and labor warranty; 16-hour weekday toll-call support, plus Saturday. http://www.photosmart.com 800/752-0900