HP Photosmart R927

Auto Mode
The Auto Mode on the R927 allows individuals to shoot in full auto mode or access many of the manual control features listed below. The only settings which are locked when in Auto Mode are the aperture and shutter priority settings. It is still possible, however, to enter into manual White Balance, Focus, Flash settings, Exposure Compensation, Bracketing, and other options. The Auto Mode may be found within the Shooting Mode submenu listed at the top of the Capture Menu screen. Auto Mode produces images that occasionally struggled with White Balance, an easily fixable problem by entering into the preset and manual control settings of this basic feature.

Movie Mode
Twenty-four fps video at 640 x 480 resolution with audio may be recorded via a microphone placed on the front of the camera body. There is a playback speaker positioned on the top of the camera body on the far left side of the frame. There are two other settings, VGA Medium Quality and QVGA, which allow users to select slower frame rates and lower quality video resolution in order to save memory space and enable better email capabilities. It is still possible to engage the zoom when shooting in movie mode, although the noise created by the zoom will be captured on the microphone since it’s positioned so close to the lens barrel of the camera. The Menu/OK button may be used in playback mode to pause and extract stills from the movie, a far better option than real time alternatives which often leave gaps in the video clip. The monaural microphone can record simultaneously during video capture as well as autonomously to record audio clips that will be saved to specific still images.

Drive / Burst Mode
Burst Mode can be controlled through the Burst Mode setting found within the Capture Menu. The Burst Mode captures 3 images in succession at a rate of 2 frames per second, according to HP, but this claim was unable to be independently verified at press time. (Check back later for our speed tests in our full review.) The camera also has a self-timer option of ten seconds which captures one image, and a self-timer setting of ten seconds which captures two images.

Playback Mode
It is possible to enter Playback mode via two interfaces, either through entering the playback menu settings which appear when the user opens the Menu, or through the Shooting/Playback button located on the top of the camera body.

The Playback Mode allows users to select images for printing or sharing, upload images, engage in automatic slide shows with various durations, glean photo information, receive photo advice, and view in both multi-up and thumbnail formats. Users may delete either all images, or single frames. The Playback Mode Menu is easy to navigate, and like the other menus, appears as a transparent overlay, allowing continued viewing of an image while scanning image options.

Design Gallery featuring Color Modification, Added Borders, and Artist Effects is only accessible when engaged in Playback Mode since these features are only postproduction digital effects. Even once the altered digital image is saved to memory, the original image without the effect remains in place.

Custom Image Presets
The Photosmart R927 is able to provide users with numerous preset modes outside of Manual, Auto, and Shutter/Aperture Priority Modes. The R927 has the following self-explanatory custom image presets, found through the main Capture Menu page: Document, Sunset, Snow, Beach, Night Scenery, Night Portrait, Action, Panorama Left/Right, Portrait, and Landscape.

The Panorama mode is unique in its design; it eliminates the guesswork often encountered with usual Panorama modes which only use overlays to display previously captured images and their parameters. HP has enabled the R927 to select image information and highlight specific objects within the frame, making it easier to overlay images through the matching of obvious visual cues from frame to frame. The panorama stitches together up to 5 images that have been shot to create one overall image.

If users don’t understand the icons for the shooting presets, the in-depth submenu provides detailed descriptions and sample thumbnail images of when these shooting modes could be engaged.