I've never been good at taking pictures — somehow what I thought I shot seldom matched up with the pictures I got. I needed all the help I could get, and the HP Photosmart 935 digital camera gave me plenty! Although it didn't turn me into Ansel Adams, the 935's user-friendly features and design changed photography from an exercise in disappointment into something that was fun and exciting.

The HP Photosmart 935 digital camera

For those who are used to a 35mm film camera, the Photosmart 935 is a good transition into the world of digital photography. It has a nice mix of the features that you're used to in a film camera, as well as those you've come to expect in a digital camera (pIus a few surprises).

One of those pleasent surprises is that the 935 comes with a 5.26-megapixel CCD. The higher the megapixel count, the more detail the camera's image sensing element captures, and the more details you can have in your pictures (entry-level cameras normally have 2-3 megapixels; professional-grade cameras 6 or more). Of course, you can choose to save images at lower resolution, which allows you to keep more pictures in memory. 5.26 is an unusually high number of megapixels in a camera retailing in the $350 price range, which alone makes the 935 a good value.

The 935 has an optical viewfinder as well as a 1-1/2" LCD viewscreen, and a Pentax lens with a 3X optical and a 7X digital zoom. The camera is about 3-3/4"W x 2-1/2"H x 1-1/2"D, and has a nice heft to it. The Photosmart comes with a 32MB Secure Digital (SD) card so you can actually take (and store) high-resolution pictures right off the bat, without having to purchase more memory.

The more information in the picture, the more you have to work with. Observe the detail in the closeup pulled from the original 5-megapixel photo taken with the 935.

Two AA batteries are provided with the camera, so you can begin shooting right away. The batteries included are non-rechargeable, though, so be prepared to replace them in a short amount of time. If you don't already have them, NiMH rechargeable batteries are worth the investment. I was running through a pair of AA alkalines about every other day while I was trying out the camera.

Shooting from the hip
How user-friendly is the 935? Very. I took the camera out of the box, popped in the batteries and SD card, and started taking pictures. Everything on the camera was clearly marked with easily understandable icons, so I didn't have to spend a lot of time learning by trial and error.

The top of the camera has four buttons. One rectangular button controls flash, another focus range (letting you toggle between normal, macro and infinity). With the focus range set at "Macro," you can focus in on subjects as close as 5" to 20" to the camera. "Infinity" shifts the focus to distant objects and landscapes. There's a large shutter button, just where it would be on a 35mm camera, and a small round button which activates the video feature. Also on top is a dial to set the camera for landscape, portrait or action shooting. Of course you can just leave it set on "Auto" which will handle just about everything, but if you know a lot about cameras you can select "Av," which lets you adjust the len's sensitivity to light, as well as that of the sensing element.

Help!
The coolest (and most practical) feature of the 935 was the LCD's help menu. HP's instruction manual fully explains the functions of all the features and options, but I?m not likely to have that valuable document with me when I'm ready to snap the kids in front of the Washington Monument.

HP's convenient help menu puts the important info you need to operate the 935 in the camera itself. Every option has its own brief explanation displayed on the bottom of the viewscreen, and each group of features has a "Help" option, for more detailed information.

Not knowing much about photography, this was really helpful when I dialed the "Av" setting, and was given a choice of ISO speeds. Each setting had its own little note (For example: "ISO 100; for best quality — exposure time will be longer"). In addition to the three ISO choices, I could also select "Help," which provided me with a good basic definition of what adjusting the ISO speed means and how it affects the picture.

Practice makes perfect
Instant Review was the second coolest feature on the 935. The best way to improve as a photographer is just to take pictures — lots of pictures. Digital cameras make that easy to do, because you can discard the shots you don't like without having to go the expense of printing them. The 935's Instant Review feature makes the process even easier.

Once you take a picture (even if the LCD is turned off), it appears in the LCD with a prompt. If you don't like the shot, you can discard it right away, before it's saved to memory. If you don't discard within a few seconds, the picture is saved. No digging through stored images to free up more memory! I could shoot, discard, shoot again, discard, and so on, until I got just the photo I wanted.

The detail on the left was taken in black and white mode, with maximum sharpness and contrast to make it look more like an art photo. The detail at right was shot with sepia tone setting, with minimum sharpness and contrast, giving it an old-fashioned look.

Over the course of a few hours, I learned a lot about the mechanics of photography simply through trial and error. I experimented with black and white shots, and sepia tone images. I changed the contrast, color saturation and other options to see how they affected the pictures I was taking. I discarded a lot of images along the way, but I ended up with some great shots (for my skill level) by the time the SD card was full.

Action!
I also activated the camcorder feature and got a nice surprise. The 935 can record up to two full minutes of video and sound, more than enough time for a home mini-movie. After a couple of practice shots, I tried my hand at some serious filming, making a pretty ambitious video starring the office Siamese fighting fish. With two full minutes to play with, it became quite a production! I panned in through the foliage of the houseplants that surround the bowl. I tracked the fish as he swam back and forth, experimenting with a variety of camera angles. I even did a slow, long pan back to finish the video, framing the bowl on the filing cabinet.

With two full minutes to play with, you can record a lot of action.

Award-winning? No — but it was easy, and fun! And I was left with enough room in memory to take a few still photos, besides. The Photosmart (like many digital cameras) records video images at a low resolution, as video requires more memory space than still images. Nevertheless, the clips I took looked pretty good when played back on the 935's viewscreen. Later, when I loaded my fish movie onto my computer and played it full-screen, it still looked good, although there was a little bit of fuzziness and pixelation.

Finally, before you make your directorial debut, make sure your SD card is empty, or nearly so. The 935 can store up to two minutes of video, but only if there's room. If you only have enough free memory for 40 seconds of video, that's what you'll end up with.

Doing more with your pictures
Having pictures is one thing, but being able to use them is something else again. Although the 935 comes with USB cable to connect directly to your computer, the Photosmart 8886 docking bay (the 935's optional companion piece) is an accessory worth getting. It comes with the cables necessary to connect it not only to your computer, but directly to your television. The docking bay also has its own remote control, duplicating those on the back of the camera. The bay also comes with two rechargeable NiMH batteries for your 935, which it can power in-camera while the 935's docked.

Although I could transfer pictures just as easily with the port as with a direct hookup from the camera to the computer, I now could check out my shots on something bigger than the camera's 1-1/4" by 1" viewscreen. With the TV connector, I could look at my photos and video directly on my TV. With the docking port's remote, I could sort through everything on the 935 from the comfort of my favorite TV viewing chair. I could even share my fish film with the whole family without having them gather around the computer terminal!

The HP Photosmart 8886 camera dock. More than just a battery charger!

The docking bay was a major convenience I quickly became used to. It remained hooked up to both computer and TV, so all I had to do after my latest photo session was put the camera onto the bay. I could then sort through the SD card's images using my TV, and controlling the camera with the dock's remote, discard the less than perfect images. Then I could go over to my computer, and import the remaining images to play with, all without a lot of plugging and unplugging (or searching for misplaced cables).

Shooting for the hip
The best thing about the 935 is that you can take it out of the box and start shooting without having to make a lot of adjustments. I found the 935 reproduced colors very accurately, even with just the default settings. I only changed the settings when I was after some kind of special effect, rather than to compensate for a discrepancy between what I saw and what the camera recorded.

Even using just the default settings, the 935 gives you great looking pictures.

The autofocus (with a range of 19.7" to infinity) also performed well, which really helped out this less-than-skillful photographer! The 3X optical zoom moved smoothly in and out, with a very responsive control that allowed me to frame the shot exactly as I wanted to.

Even though most of my previous photographic experience consisted of disposable cameras, with the 935 I soon found myself considering camera angles, lighting and photographic effects. I was taking control of my pictures, and having a lot of fun in the process. Whether you're a seasoned shutterbug or photographic neophyte, the Photosmart 935 is five megs of fun.