Digital Trends

HP Photosmart R927

March 28th, 2006 | by David Elrich

Performance

The R927 jumps to life in less than two seconds once you hit the power key. Setting the date/time is a breeze as is rigging the camera for a day in the field. Although primarily a point-and-shoot camera, the R927 offers a wide variety of options for those who want to go beyond Auto. Although it doesn't have a mode dial to pick specific shooting modes (like portrait or sunset), the very intuitive menu system lets you choose the one you'd like. It even has aperture- and shutter-priority options and full manual.

Before I get into the nitty-gritty of the camera, I'd like to complement HP for the excellent onscreen menu system, probably one of the best you can find. Go into the Shooting Modes, pick one you think that's appropriate and HP gives a concise explanation and a sample shot. Very good stuff—especially when you see it on the 3-inch LCD screen. If you want to adjust Exposure Compensation it shows the +/- graph but then tells you why you would want to do this (make images brighter or darker). The long list goes on including saturation, sharpness, contrast and many others. For the record ISO maximum is 400, lower than many competing cameras. Still this camera has a lot to offer if you want to go beyond Auto. It was a very pleasant surprise for an unassuming digicam.

Along with the operational menus, the R927 has a very cool new feature called the HP Design Gallery. Usually the internal special effects you can apply to snapshots are fairly weak and limited. With the R927 there's practically a editing program built into the camera. Once you've taken a shot, you go into the playback mode then go into the Design Gallery Menu. You can apply over a dozen effects such as Ink Dots, Watercolor, Kaleidoscope to your shot and it's saved as a separate file. An inset shows what the effect does so you can quickly decide if it's worth the effort. You can also modify the overall color or add a ton of borders including Soft Edge, Burned Edge, Spatter and a half-dozen more. Again you can see a preview before you save the new file. It's also simple to crop the images in the camera by using the arrow keys on the main control pad. And if you crop too much, the camera even tells you resolution is going to drop. This was informative, a lot of fun and highly recommended. The camera even has internal red-eye removal along with a red-eye reduction setting. I took a guaranteed red-eye image of a cat's face and it eliminated the problem before it even occurred so I didn't need a post-processing fix.  

Another very nice feature is called Image Advice. Here HP gives you advice for taking a better picture. Unfortunately it comes after the fact. So if you have the Adaptive Lighting cranked up along with the ISO, the camera suggests you lower both settings to cut down on noise. But if the shot of a lifetime is gone, better luck next time! To eliminate such problems the camera has a series of articles under the Help Menu such as Top 10 Tips, Using Shooting Modes, Sharing Images and so on. The features cover the basics so don't expect to find the DaVinci code. Like Kodak cameras, this HP has a share button that lets you mark images for emailing or printing once you connect to your PC. And since HP owns the Snapfish photo site, you can even mark prints to be purchased online. Isn't that nice?

Now how were the photographs? As noted, I took hundreds of shots during a combo business trip/vacation in the San Diego area. Photos were taken in bright California sunshine, overcast days, indoors, outdoors and at night. I had the camera set at maximum resolution (8.2MP, three stars or Fine mode). When done, the images were offloaded to a laptop with the supplied HP software. Prints were then made on a Canon MP780 with no editing (other than the ones with in-camera special effects or cropping).

First off, the camera's LCD screen handled the bright California sunshine with ease—once I turned the setting up to High. I used the camera on the beach with no problems at all. The photo results outdoors in Auto were stellar although I have to admit I cranked up the Saturation simply because I like vivid color. Even without the increased Saturation colors were very accurate with very little purple fringing. The lens rarely grabbed for focus but there was some delay as camera saved the large 8MP files to the card. This internal chugging really separates point-and-shoot digicams from D-SLRs and premium-priced all-in-ones like the Sony DSC-R1 but it's a bit unfair since these camera cost two or three times the price.

Indoors the R927 also performed well, thanks to the AF Assist lamp, a feature I strongly recommend, no matter which camera you choose. Shots were taken in available light with the maximum ISO. While there was noise, you could live with it on a 5x7. Given the large 3-inch screen, battery life was commendable. Although the camera has a digital zoom it was kept in the Off position since resolution drops as you increase the zoom. I found myself wishing for some additional zoom length, especially when traveling through the San Diego Zoo's Wild Animal Park. And although you can zoom while shooting a video, the camera picks up the lens mechanism loud and clear—not the best background “music” for your productions.

Image Courtesy of HP