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Polaroid m737t Digital Camera
It is two tone grey with a silvered ring around the lens. A seven mega pixel offering a year ago would have been a really powerful offering. It has the standard 3x optical but they - unfortunately - still use the optical x digital to produce a figure of 12x something that most companies have been shamed out of doing. The only real use for digital zoom on a camera is to zoom into part of a taken image on the display. Anything else the digital zoom can be done better in software on the PC.
It is 9.5x6x2cm and weights just over 150grams. One recent feature is touchscreen and a lot of it's menu options are activated in this way. There are two buttons on the top of the camera the on/off and the shutter release. The right side has the anchor point for the wrist strap, the left side has nothing and the base the door that the solid battery sits behind beside the optional SD card, the only other items are the anchor screw for a tripod and a mini AV out socket.
The back is totally dominated by a huge 6x4.5cm TFT display - described as 3 inch - to the right of this are five touch buttons telephoto, wide, stored images, menu and scene.
First job on getting the camera from the box is to charge the battery in the cradle supplied (I am told that this is only available in Europe and that is probably why there is no 13amp plug in the box) I used a shaver adapter to charge it.
No case is supplied (normal) no SD card is supplied and even if one was it would be 16MB or maybe 32MB (normal) as the large chains want to sell both at extortionate prices to you in the shop. A 512MB card costs only a few pounds in fact I have seen 2GB ones at only £10. I would buy two at 512MB and keep one as a spare you those trips away. A 7MP image 3072x2304 is not small and takes around 3MB of space. You can also take images at 2816x2112, 2048x1536, 1600x1200 and 640x480. All easily selected from the resolution option after pressing the menu button when in shooting mode.
There are no less than 30 scene modes spread over five pages of six again one finger touch to select. However for the novice user then just leave it in Automatic and let the camera make the choices, of course it can take short movie sequences (found in scenes) and these are perfectly acceptable and another good reason for a decent sized SD card.
Another feature that is starting to become accepted are near normal is face tracking, this is when if you set an image on a face and it moves slightly (not several feet) then it tracks it to keep the focus perfect.
If I have a criticism of the camera - apart from my rants above at the industry in general - it's that the image in the display is often brighter than the captured image so when you print you may be disappointed. So my advice is adjust the screen display down a little, this of course is something that a viewfinder could negate but with TFT displays being huge there is no room for one.
This is the point where I sum up the unit and work out how good value it is but as I cannot find any UK sites selling it I cannot give a value score. This also reflects on the other categories as well as if it was £100 or £200 or maybe more what the camera does changes. I am told it is for sale in Ireland, Italy, Hungary, Czech Republic, Netherlands and parts of the Middle East. Doing a search found it at link below £99.
It's a decent camera for someone with little knowledge to take reasonable images the touch screen is getting more popular but then the TFT is vulnerable to finger marks. If anyone finds the Polaroid M737t for sale in a shop or on a site let me know please.
http://www.play.com/Electronics/Electronics/4-/6534832/Product.html
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Comment by Marion Britten, 5 Sep 2008 10:45