1.7As the digital camera industry matures and some perennial manufacturers drop out (e.g. Konica Minolta), it’s a rare occasion that newcomers arrive on the field. Nevertheless, refrigerator and appliance manufacturer General Electric formed a branch called General Imaging and decided to create its own brand of digital cameras. In its first batch of releases is the GE G1, an ultra-slim model that totes 7 megapixels and an internal 3x optical zoom lens. The tiny, trendy G1 sells for a budget-friendly $199.
Picture Quality / Size Options (7.5)
The size and quality of the images can be selected from the Func/OK menu, where a long list of options resides. These choices appear for size: 7M, 6M (3:2), 5M (16:9), 3M, 2M, 1M, and 0.3M. That translates to 3072 x 2304, 3072 x 2048 (3:2), 3072 x 1728 (16:9 – 5M), 2048 x 1536, 1600 x 1200, 1024 x 768, and 640 x 480 pixels. The quality can be changed to Best, Fine, and Normal compressions to fit more pictures on the card: Best is recommended, of course. In the Playback menu, images can be resized to 1024 x 768 and 640 x 480 pixels to enable easy uploading for computer screen backgrounds, e-mails, and blogs.
Picture Effects Mode (6.5)
Color options are located in the Func/OK menu: Off, Black & White, Sepia, and Vivid. As users scroll through those options, a live preview appears. The Black & White mode shows lots of contrast, which looks good. The Sepia mode looks too orange-pink, rather than a brownish hue. The Vivid isn’t subtle; it really brings out colors and wouldn’t look good for most pictures. It may look decent for landscapes, but is too much for portraits. There aren’t many picture effects in the Playback mode. The only way to manipulate the image is the Red-eye Removal option. This doesn’t seem to work very well – at least it didn’t work on any of the test images that had red eyes in them.
