HP Photosmart 720

Opinion: Bought this camera on the good review by StevesDigicams.com and the fact the HP715 got some good reviews, it uses SD cards...

As I researched further, I liked the 3.3MP, 3X optical zoom, LCD info screen on top for quick battery saving information on quality, frames left, flash etc...
construction looked sturdy and looked like it was an easy camera to use...

So I bought the camera and initially it was heavier and slightly bulkier than my old Fuji MX500 1.5MP digicam, but less bulky than the Olympus 2040 I have borrowed before. I really like the black rubberised coating on 3/4 of the camera really helps your camera grip, the weight of the camera is such that the batteries are located right in your grip (if your right handed), the door to the SD card/ VIDEO OUT/6V/USB ports is quick and easy to use, the battery compartment is sturdy and locks shut well, as noted before the LCD info screen on top is brilliant and tells you everything you need without having to keep checking the main rear TFT screen. the view finder is large and very clear and relays the zoom type SLR view very well...apon holding the on button down for a few moments the zoom lense sparks into life, rear screen pops on displaying an image that you can set up in its internal memory, then settles with main rear screen off, just the info screen displaying you flash/image number remain/quality/mode...all in all about 3-4 seconds, which I thought was fairly fast...
Now actually snapping a shot is extremely quick, holding half way for focus fixing or just wacking it all the way seems to capture a good quality image then imediately a preview of it appears, allowing you to delete it, you can even start taking another photo after a couple of seconds, then press the main screen button the 1.5"TFT sparks into life and scrolls around without a hint of a flicker or pause, real true time update, then hit the screen button again and instantly it turns off, so basically once th e camera is up and running, it is very fast to take photo's and review them, then to turn off the camera, it takes a few seconds to retract its lense and close the mechanical lense protector...

Reviewing images/movies you can rotate images (which is a must if your doing a slideshow on a TV screen) delete, undelete (bit like an undo) send to printer, email, zoom, scroll and play back movies...

to shoot movies its so easy, it has a seperate capture button for movies, so you dont have to set the camera to a different mode, just once to start the again to stop or 30 seconds whichever is less, you get a good quality 20fps (most other digi's have 15fps) but you can't really view the movie any larger than the 320x240 size on your PC, perfect on a Pocket PC though. the sound quality is mono, but faily good for such a small microphone. you can set you zoom level then shoot a movie, but cannot change the zoom wilst recording.

Image quality overall is superb on its highest setting, with about 1.1-1.2MB sized files that are crisp and bright straight from the camera....

Now you can set your ISO, settings manually, so with flash turned of and standing the camera still set the ISO to 400 and your'll get a pretty good image, but a little grainy, just like a ISO400 35mm film would be, but most of the time you could get away with the camera either set to 100,200 or auto, the flash works very well too...
Apon taking a shot of one of my watercolour paintings you don't need to set the camera on macro, like other digicams, this focuses from 20cm up, which is pretty good, and the result was wonderfull, just needed a small tweek in photshop, and I could plot a fantastic print nearly as good as some of my proffesionally created watercolour prints...

I shall be testing lots more of shots over the coming months...

As for batteries it takes 4xAA I use 1500 NimH ones which last a good two 64MB SD card with 50/50 use of TFT screen and flash...so very good.

Overall I would rate this camera 8/10

Opinion: It is good camera.

Opinion: I bouth this camera one month ago. It worked good, but when I bouth SD card my camera could not recognize it. So they changed camera. It was good still started make red or violet images and sometimes could not focus. Sometimes it changed colors red - green... I send back it and I am going to buy Minolta F100. I think HP 720 is to bulky and to hard. I was thinking to buy 850, but I do not want risk one more time. I was very possitive about HP cameras, but better to buy only HP printers.

Opinion: Very good camera and neat price. Rubber surface is handy.