The Carburetor Chronicles

Casio QVR-40 - A pretty good camera for a great price

There are a couple of serious reviews from Steve's digicam review site here, some more information from the dpreview.com site here, and finally a review from  megapixel.net here.

There is no way I can improve on those reviews from a technical standpoint so I will try to summarize.

The price was great. I paid $269 at Sam's Club. At the time it was one of least inexpensive 4mp cameras available. I bought it in November of 2003.  In January of 2004 Casio announced a 5mp model.

My criteria when looking were pocket size, it must take readily available batteries, and it must take relatively inexpensive memory.  It needed to be small enough that I would carry around regularly so I would capture shots.   wanted to be able to get batteries at any 7/11 if I needed them in a pinch while on a long ride.  I wanted memory to be affordable enough that I could get a big card for a good price.

It is about the size of a  pack of camels

It uses AA batteries, but if you use alkaline batteries the die amazingly fast. It came with reachable NiMh that last for over one hundred shots if you don't go nuts with the LCD screen on the back

It sakes SD cards and I got a 256mb card at Costco for about $65.

It has a very fast time and a very fast image capture time for a digital camera which makes it great for a snapshot type of camera.  Nearly all of the pictures you see here were taken with this camera.  All of the bike rebuild photos, most of the ride reports photos and just about everything else I did not crib from another site.

It take pretty good pictures but the flash is very hot.  It can wash out photos if you are not careful.  If you are photographing something with a reflective surface you need to be aware of flash reflection and you may as well buy a copy of Photoshop when you buy the camera. In incandescent light the picture can be very warm. with too much red tones. The answer to this problem is the white balance adjustment that is built into the camera, you just need to remember to use it.

All in all it is a great camera and has convinced me to go all digital and my Canon SLR has not been out much since this camera came home. 

dp 12/03

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