HP Pushes Digital Cameras and Printers

While I think that digital cameras are cool, I've never been all that impressed by the type of printing you can do at home. Unless you've got one of those fancy (and expensive) dry ink/dye sub printers, you probably aren't going to anywhere near the quality of prints that you'd get using a $20 disposable camera and a one-hour photo lab. Since Hewlett-Packard is pushing cameras and "photo-quality" color inkjet printers this week, I'll tell you about both, but you'll probably be interested mostly in the cameras here, since "photo-quality" is pretty elusive in the inkjet world. The HP Photosmart 318 and 612 digital cameras give you a 2.31 megapixel resolution, 2x digital zoom, and a 1.75" LCD. Features include automatic exposure control, red-eye reduction, automatic flash and a status display. What sets the 612 apart from its sibling is a 2x optical zoom. The Photosmart 318 and 612 digital cameras are expected to turn up this fall for around $199 and $299, respectively. The third camera HP is showing off is the Photosmart 715, which gives you a 3.3 megapixel resolution, 3x optical zoom and a 4 mm lens, that is threaded for optional accessories. The digital camera ships with a 16 MB CompactFlash memory card and automatically changes between shoot, view, play and download modes. It should arrive in stores at the same time as its lesser-priced brethren for around $499.

As for the printers, the one that sounds kind of interesting, except for the print quality you can expect from an inkjet, is the HP Photosmart 100 photo printer, which measures 8.8 x 4.3 inches in size and weighs less than three pounds. It'll print photos up to 4 x 6 inches directly from CompactFlash, SmartMedia and Sony Memory Stick memory cards without a PC. The HP Photosmart 100 photo printer is expected to be available in fall 2001 at an estimated price of $179. The other two printers coming out from HP are the Photosmart 1115 and 1315 color inkjet printers from which you can also print directly from a digital camera via CompactFlash or SmartMedia memory cards slots without using a computer. The HP Photosmart 1315 printer also features a Sony Memory Stick card slot. The 1315 lets you crop, rotate, adjust image brightness and add borders and a date stamp to the image on its 2.5" color LCD. The HP Photosmart 1115 and 1315 color inkjet printers are expected to be available at the same time as the rest of HP's new shutterbug gear for $199 and $399, respectively. Inkjet printers don't have the "gee whiz" factor of most of the gear I write about, but maybe you could take the little bitty one with you to upcoming holiday parties.