Sunday, September 10, 2006

Polaroid i532

So our old Nikon Coolpix digital camera was not living up to its former glory after a hard life, and with a wedding this weekend we decided to get another camera. I had a few tips to go off of for new cameras, but the one that I had my eye on (a nice low-end Canon model), but we couldn't wait for shipping.

We eventually ended up at Wal-Mart which had a pretty good selection of cameras. We had a price and some general features that we wanted, like it had to be SD so that our old card worked, and the more optic zoom the better. It was down to two cameras, the Nikon that was the newer model of the one we had, and the Polaroid. The screen was bigger, so we went with it.

It started out good as we played around with it. Good amount of features, came with everything that we needed right in the box, and the screen was excellent. Since we had a wedding to go to, it was going to get a good workout in a real-world situation.

We first took it to the Cincinnati Museum Terminal. It didn't last long before the batteries died in the first museum we were in, or so I thought. I decided to try the camera again about a third of the way through the exhibit, and the camera showed full battery! To be safe I grabbed more batteries as we went from one section of the museum to the next, but the 'dead' batteries lasted quite a bit longer.

I also started to dislike the fact that the camera has no eye-viewer, and that you had to always use the screen. Not a huge deal, but it would have been nice to save the screen. The screen never shuts off, and therefore wastes battery. Not a good sign.

Next was the wedding and the reception, the true test.

During the ceremony itself, the camera was OK. It really bugged me that the power-save feature just turned the entire camera off instead of just the screen. Our older Nikon just went to sleep, but the Polaroid had to go through the entire process if you left it alone to long.

At the reception, the batteries died, again. I also found out that when the batteries start to die, the shutter button starts to get sluggish. I'd hit the button, and it would take almost 5 seconds to snap the picture. This was with the shot already focused, so I know that it wasn't the auto-focus. There were also a few shots I missed because the camera 'took' the picture, but apparently never wrote it to the SD card.

We changed the batteries again, and the next problem that creeped up was the flash. Unless something is close to the flash, it won't work. Now, I don't mean I tried to take a picture across an empty room and was wondering why the little flash didn't work - if a person was within five feet of me (like someone's head in the way), I could take a picture across the room with the flash. If there wasn't anything there the picture was dark and crap.

By the end of the night I was sick of the camera. Wal-Mart has a 30 day return policy, and this camera is going back Monday after work.

Thanks for making me take some crappy pictures at my cousin's wedding Polaroid!

No comments: