HP Photosmart R927 Digital Camera Review

 

There is no optical viewfinder on the HP R927, but there is a huge LCD screen that shows a live preview. Most point-and-shooters prefer the big screen anyway because it is easier on the eyes and more accurate. Indeed, the R927’s live preview showed exactly what will be recorded in the image. The view is large and there is ample resolution at 230,000 pixels. This is enough resolution for typical framing and photographing, but it isn’t enough to manually focus properly with the R927's dedicated method. When manually focusing, the center of the image is magnified digitally so it is hard to clearly see the edges of the subject. In spite of the awful manual focusing interface, the view is decent.

 

The camera’s back has a 3-inch LCD screen with 230,000 pixels. It is treated with an anti-glare coating that gives it a wide viewing angle in all directions. The coating aids viewing in daylight too. There is great contrast that makes it easy to see even when shooting under the sun outdoors. The screen’s brightness can be adjusted in the setup menu to Low, Medium, or High. Also in the setup menu, users can choose whether to turn off the screen after 15, 30, 45, or 60 seconds to save power. That feature can also be disabled so that the LCD never turns off. The screen is good quality and has nice features with one exception: There is no way to change the information on the LCD screen. Users always have shooting info and can never get a completely blank screen to frame with; this could be bothersome to users.

 

The Photosmart R927’s built-in flash is fat and the window is oval-shaped. It is located above and to the left of the lens. Unfortunately, this placement shows in the images. There is a bright spot that shows up right of center in the images, so coverage isn’t very even. The uneven coverage is somewhat balanced by HP’s Adaptive Lighting technology. This feature “automatically balances the dark and bright areas in a photo while maintaining the overall contrast,” states HP’s web site. It is hard to tell how well the technology works because there are no before and after pictures to compare; the R927 incorporates it automatically. The flash’s coverage is uneven, but even the brighter spot rarely blows out images. The built-in flash reaches as far as 15.4 ft, which is decent. The flash has the following modes: Auto, On, Off, Auto with Red-Eye, and Slow Sync. The flash takes about six seconds to recharge for the next flash; this would normally be a disadvantage, but the camera takes so long to write to the memory card that it doesn’t matter anyway.

With a standard 3x optical zoom lens, the R927 doesn’t have what it takes to photograph Madonna’s fake lashes from your seat in the back of the auditorium. The lens measures 7.5-22.5 mm, equivalent to 35-105 mm in the traditional 35mm format. The HP Precision zoom lens has maximum apertures of f/2.8 and f/5.0 and its smallest opening is f/8.5. The lens moves throughout its range smoothly, but noisily. The optical zoom is functional in the movie mode, but its noise is captured in the movie as well. The zoom’s control is very unique looking. It looks like a boomerang and requires the thumb to move a bit lower than on the more common zoom switch controls. The control itself isn’t very sensitive. When pushed as lightly as possible, there are only 6 focal lengths that the camera pauses at to frame subjects. This is average for a point-and-shoot camera with a 3x range. The marginal control performance coupled with the lens’ actual quality make for an overall disappointment though. There is considerable barrel distortion when photographing subjects at the widest focal length; it is especially noticeable in the Documents scene mode and when photographing subjects with 90-degree angles. The distortion only gets worse in the macro mode. Overall, the HP Photosmart R927’s lens isn’t as “smart” as it should be.

 

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