HP Photosmart M307 3MP Digital Camera with 3x Optical Zoom

The HP M307 digital camera looked very promising. It had a nice compact size, the controls were laid out very well and I liked the fact that it used standard AA batteries rather than a proprietary battery pack. My enthusiasm began to wane as soon as I started taking pictures with the camera.

After unboxing the camera, I chose to install some recently charged NIMH batteries that I had available. After taking only 5 or 6 photos, I got a low battery warning and the camera shut down. I was a little perplexed because I was pretty sure the batteries were fully charged. My other point and shoot digital camera, a Canon using 4 AA batteries lasts a very very long time before needing battery replacement. Nonetheless, I recharged the batteries and the next day, reinstalled the definitely fully charged batteries. After taking about 25 photos, the batteries were depleted again. I should mention that I was not using the LCD to view the photos which would have contributed to faster battery drain. The battery drain was just from using the camera to take photos.

The software that is provided with the camera is virtually worthless on a Macintosh computer. I had a lot of trouble getting any of the software to work as advertised. Finally I gave up with the HP software and used iPhoto to upload, view and manipulate the images. And the images needed a lot of manipulation because virtually every single "people" picture where the flash fired, the eyes had "red-eye". In all fairness, this is quite common to all small cameras where the flash is so close to the lens. Red-eye is caused by the flash reflecting out of the eyes of the person you are taking the picture of. The closer the flash is to the lens, the worse the red-eye will be. This is why professional cameras usually have flash units that are well above the lens.

The camera has a scant amount of built-in memory. So little that it might as well not have any at all. But in a pinch, you can take a few pictures without any other memory card. But you will certainly want to buy a larger capacity

SD card for the camera. It would have been nice if HP had included a SD card, but alas they did not.

The camera was easy to learn how to use. The buttons were logically placed and intuitive to operate. The on-off button was difficult to grasp though and I constantly had trouble trying to turn the camera on or off because the button was fairly smooth and it was not easy to get enough friction on it to operate it.

The camera was advertised as having audio annotation which really appealed to me. How cool it would be to attach a short audio file to a photo to describe the circumstances under which the photo was taken. Unfortunately this feature only works if you use the HP software which was basically useless.

Another problem I had with the camera was the extremely poor audio quality of the sound in movie mode. It is a great feature to be able to take movies with the camera, but the audio in the movie was very poor quality with an obnoxious buzz and whine throughout the entire audio portion of the movie.

Another huge oversight in the design of this camera was the failure to include a video output jack to enable you to view the camera photos on a television set.

The little flap of plastic which covers the USB port would never stay closed and was always flopping around. I'm surprised it hasn't broken off yet, but I'm sure it will eventually.

I can not recommend this camera to anyone. There are many other far superior digital cameras out there these days. I'd recommend looking at the Canon A75...an excellent camera with better features, far superior battery life and a much better overall fit and finish.

Pros: This is is a very good digital starter camera. It is relatively cheap and easy to use, in fact my 11 year old set it up right out of the box. Being a digital camera rookie, I found that if I left all the settings on AUTO my pictures turned out fantastic.

Cons: To save on battery life the camera will turn off by itself (there might be a setting to change this) and when the battery life gets low, some of the functions will not work (like zoom, and lens will not go back into camera when shut off), also the internal memeroy is extremely small, you only get about 7 great quality pics.

To allieviate the above problems invest in a large SD card (like a 256mb and you can get over 200 pics) and some quality lithium batteries (I've taken over 200 pics with the same set of batteries and no probs)!!!

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Buy HP Photosmart M307 3MP Digital Camera with 3x Optical Zoom Now

This is great little starter camera for digital rookies like myself. It has a very user friendly menu and help screens if you're not sure what the functions are. Battery life does suck, but only if you use Nimh AA batteries, invest in some lithiums, it will make all the difference in the world. I've taken over 200 pics with Energizer AA lithium batteries and I haven't had a low battery prompt yet. Get a high memory SD card and you're all set.

I found that I got the best pics by keeping the settings on AUTO. I also have a HP computer, I just stick my SD card in the card slot on the front of my tower and I can print my pics from my computer. How simple is that??? I wanted a camera with higher megs so I upgraded to a M417, but the M307 is still a quality camera for the price.

PS. If you use Nimh batteries and the battery life gets low, the camera will start functioning strangely (it won't zoom, or shut down, or retract the lens when power is off)!!

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I wish I could give this camera NEGATIVE 10 stars!!!

The screen died on me after a few months of use. I did not drop it or anything--it just froze up and went black. It acted like it was taking a picture, but there was no picture. HP said it was a 'hardware' issue, so they sent me another one. A month after my year warranty was up (keep in mind that this replacement camera was NOT a year old, but my year warranty from my original purchase date was up), it happened again. Basically, both of these cameras did not last a year.

Plus, the camera EATS batteries, and the connection to the computer via USB sometimes wouldn't work, which I've read elsewhere this is a common problem with this camera.

DON'T BUY IT! Try a Canon instead. My sister swears by Canon and has not been disappointed. I should have listened to her, but I thought HP would be more compatible with my computer. Boy, I was WRONG!!!

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This is my first digital camera. I dont know why everyone has been giving it such low ratings, I think it a really nice little camera for what I paid to get it.

All of the controls are pretty easy to figure out, it takes only about 30 minutes of screwing around to get it.

Im able to keep upwards of 700 photos or an hour and a half of video on the thing because Ive got a 1GB SD card though.

Batteries will work for a long time if you use better batteries.

There are defineately better cameras than this one, but they are higher priced. This is my first camera, and Ive taken alot of really nice photos sofar, and it has not given me trouble once in the months that I have been using it.