Rating: 
Summary: Not bad...for a beginner
Review: I received an HP Photosmart 435 as a Christmas gift this year, totally unexpectedly. I've been wary of getting into the digital camera thing, due to the cost of a decent camera. After a few days of playing around with it, I've come to some conclusions about the 435 that you all might find useful.My photo quality is fairly good, better than what some other reviewers have experienced. It does appear to take better pictures outdoors, but I've had good results indoors, and with the flash. The digital zoom is useless, it results in terrible photos. Some have complained about the LCD screen quality. I haven't experienced any problems. It's a little small, but isn't blurred or otherwise flawed. The 435 is indeed a battery hog, and frankly, that reduces the value of the camera - your $100 or so savings will be going into the corporate pockets of Duracell or Energizer quickly enough. I have a 35mm camera that I adore and plan to keep as my main camera, but it's becoming more and more useful to have a digicam of some kind in this day and age. Given its low cost, the HP 435 is a decent camera, with decent photos. It gets the job done - no more, no less. But if you are looking to buy a camera for yourself and plan to make digital photography your main picture-taking tool, save up a little more money.
Rating: 
Summary: HP 433/435 good outside and durable. Bad inside with flash.
Review: I bought the HP 433, 128MB memory card, and rechargeable batteries for my 11 year old daughter to take on a trip over the holidays; she openned it early and we returned the HP 433 the next day. Outside, the camera works well in daylight and the pictures are sharp. Inside with flash, the color intensity is poor with a light blue tint - skip the movie mode inside, it's very very poor. The battery life seems the same as other cameras; I took 50+ picutes at the highest quality all inside with flash with one set of 1800 mA batteries before I got tired of taking pictures and stopped taking pictures. HP deserves praise for the durability of this product; my daughter slammed the camera on a wood floor when she lost her balance taking a picture and she fell backwards. The battery cover came off; when I put it back on the camera, the HP 433 functioned like a champ - no harm done and I stongly considered keeping the camera because of its durability. I like the fixed focal length for my daughter; fewer moving parts and every shoot appeared in focus and no blur for moving objects. The display on the back of the camera is very poor compared to a Kodak CX6200 and my old Kodak DC5000. We returned the camera, bought a Kodak CX6200, and were are please with the purchase of the Kodak CX6200. The HP 433/435 is easy to use and the perfect size for "on the go mode." I will conside a HP camera similar to the HP 433/435, if HP fixes the picture quality of inside shots with flash, improves/fixes the inside movies (currenty not worth using inside - outside movies works well and good sound quality), and improves the LCD display on the back of the camera. If HP can fix the above problems, this HP will have a home run on their hands - instead of the current strike out; also, weather resistant with infrared remote would be nice and I'd pay a little more for this.
Rating:
Summary: Battery Life Worst for this Camera
Review: I bought this Camera thinking HP Quality will be good, but I am totally dissappointed. The pictures taken are not what you see as it takes them after some delay. The Worst part is the Battery will die within 2 minutes. I kept changingg batteries rather and kept missing taking the good shots during my visit to Sea World.
My configuration is that I have added 256 Meg SANDISK SD Memory Card to it.
Rating: 
Summary: GREAT CAMERA FOR EVERYDAY USE
Review: This camera is great for those nonprofessionals out there. It takes great pictures and the movie mode is awesome. It's very lightweight and easy to use. For the money and quality you can't beat this HP camera.
Rating:
Summary: Terrible Pictures.....
Review: I was extremely disappointed when I took picture's with this camera. The picture's did not come out clear, they were very pixilated, dark, too bright- yellowish, etc. On top of horrible pics, I had this camera for 3 days and went thru 3 sets of AA batteries...it's a battery hog! Do more research before you buy, I wish I did before I waisted my time and $, although I returned it for a wonderful Canon S230...highly recommend!!!
Rating: 
Summary: Tim Robertson MyMac.com Review
Review: I love doing product reviews. I like to think, while writing one, that I am actually talking to someone, telling them about the product in question. And as a reviewer, there are some companies whose products I love to review. Hewlett-Packard (HP) is one such company. I have had a long and happy relationship with every HP product I have used and reviewed over the last decade. So it saddens me when, after testing the HP Photosmart 435 digital camera, it came time to write this review. The Photosmart 435 is a 3.34MP digital camera that you can also use to take small Quick-Time movies with. While not a large camera, the Photosmart 435 is by no means tiny. It fits easily in a purse, but not in the pocket of your pants. (Unless you are wearing cargo pants.) The camera is not stylish, but rather plain and boxy. This works for me, as I don't always want to call attention to my camera. It does not look expensive, and at $149 (US) it is not. If anything, the design reminds me of a 110 Film camera I owned in my teenage years. It has that feel in my hands, very familiar. Operation is simple. Slide the lens cover, which doubles as the on/off switch, and take a picture. There are a variety of options, from picture quality, shutter speed, flash, red-eye flash, zoom, and most of the other features every digital camera sports. So far so good. The Photosmart 435 has 3.34MP resolution at its highest quality setting. As I already own a 3.1MP camera (The Kodak DX3900) I had an idea what to expect in image quality. In fact, I was expecting somewhat better looking photos with the Photosmart 435, being a higher resolution camera. I was sorely mistaken. The image quality, most times, is decent to good. However, the quality of the pictures is not at all consistent. I found that out of ten pictures taken indoors under normal lighting conditions, eight of the ten photos would be of decent quality, while the other two would be very poor. I don't know why the image quality is so unpredictable with this camera, but after extensive testing, I would personally not use this camera. Also like most digital cameras, the Photosmart 435 has an image display viewfinder. The 1.5-inch LCD is used to set options, review pictures or movies, and can be used instead of the optical viewfinder. For those who hate looking through the tiny optical viewfinder when taking pictures, the image display viewfinder is a much better choice. The problem here is the quality of the Photosmart 435's 1.5-inch LCD display. It is far and away the worse I have ever used. In live mode, the display is a green and blurry mess, all but unusable. In picture review mode, it is somewhat better, but still far and away sub-par to any other digital camera I have used in the past. One of the biggest disadvantages is the zoom. There is no optical zoom on the Photosmart 435, but rather digital. A digital zoom is always sub-par than a optical zoom, and that is true here as well. The 5X Digital zoom works as advertised, but any picture zoomed became pixilated and not at all sharp. After playing with the various settings, I found that if I had to zoom up on an object with the Photosmart 435, it simply was not worth taking the picture. Taking photos of objects in motion, even a slow walking cat, really showed the Photosmart 435's shortfall. After taking pictures of a cat in both normal and action shutter speed mode, the pictures were blurry and unusable. The big test, however, came when I gave the camera to our eight-year-old daughter, Brittaney, and told her to take pictures around the yard of anything she wanted to. The conditions were very cold, around thirty degrees and frosty, but the sun was very bright and the fall colors look beautiful. Brittaney took a total of 17 pictures. One of the first problems I noticed was that every other picture had a nice close-up of a finger. Because the lens on the Photosmart 435 is receded, it is very easy to block the lens with your hand while taking a picture. Camera's that have a lens housing that sticks out some, extends from the camera body itself, usually prevents this. The pictures she took, about ten, that was unobstructed by a finger, came out blurry or the camera had too much light. Different setting made no difference. The Photosmart 435 does come with 16MB of internal memory, so you will not have to run out and buy extra storage. However, today, 16MB will quickly prove too small. It is nice, though, that the 16MB is internal, not a card that you will toss out when you upgrade to a 256MB memory card. This is great if, by chance, you fill your memory card up and still need to take a few pictures. I wish more digital camera's would have internal, built-in memory. Unfortunately, you can use one storage device at a time. If you have a memory card installed, the internal storage will not work. The Photosmart 435 takes the smaller SD / MMC Memory cards, not Compact Flash. The Photosmart 435 ships with its own software solution, HP Director, which you can use to store and transfer pictures. While the software does work fine, I preferred using iPhoto. The Photosmart 435 works perfectly well with iPhoto, as expected. But if you use the Photosmart 435 to take video with, you will need to use the HP Director software to capture that file from the camera, as iPhoto will not work. Also, the HP software does not find the Photosmart 435 when running Mac OS X 10.3 (Panther) but does under 10.2. If you do buy this camera, look for an update to their software if you are running 10.3. As I type of this review, there is no update for the HP software. In fact, I have not seen anything on the HP website that indicated you can download updates. The only option I have found is to order a CD-ROM. The video capture feature is more gimmick than anything. The clips are small, grainy, and not worth using to record your important memories with. But it is fun! My kids liked the ability to capture video and audio using the Photosmart 435. I have less worry letting them practice being the next Spielberg with this camera than I do turning over my Canon Camcorder to them. All the video recorded can be used in iMovie, so this is a neat and fun way to let kids learn the basics of shooting video and editing in iMovie. Unfortunately, the Photosmart 435 is a sub-par digital camera. The price, at US $149, makes it inexpensive. Simply reading the specifications in its documentation would sounds like a great deal: 3.34MP, internal 16MB of memory, able to capture video and audio, a 1.5-inch LCD, the ability to use an optional dock, and an optional AC adapter, and more. The reality is that the Photosmart 435 has horrible power consumption (I used three sets of batteries in one week of testing, a total of around 100 pictures!) sub-par picture quality, and a near-useless LCD display. I am disappointed with the Photosmart 435. I expect much better from HP. I am hoping that the next HP camera we review will better meet my expectations of quality HP products. The Photosmart 435 does not feel or operate at the expected quality of an HP product. MyMac Rating: 2 out of 5 Tim Robertson
Rating:
Summary: best camera ever
Review: this is a great camera that has a lot of pixels and comes at a low price. it is the best digital camera i have ever owned. i have had 5. this is also cool looking
Rating:
Summary: Perfect digital camera!
Review: This is a cool looking camera with small size and affordable price. The image quality is amazing and the prints look very professional. Its a perfect camera for most people, don't waste your money or more expensive ones. Get an hp and you won't be disappointed!
Rating:
Summary: Great camera, and great features
Review: The HP Photosmart 435 is a fantastic camera. It has alot of features (5x digital zoom, video cam mode, 3.1MP) and is a great little camera for the price. First off the 5x digital zoom is a sweet touch, and while using the maximum zoom is not recommended, it still works great up to 3.1x zoom. Second the video cam mode is awesome nice clarity, and perfect audio qualtity round off a smart addition to the camera. As far as the picture quality the 3.1MP is EXACTLY as advertised. I use advanced photo editing software, and speaking from over 4 years of photography experience the photo quality is quite close to 35mm. I can enlarge the pictures to 8x10 with no visable loss resolution. So, while not the best digital camera on the market today it is the best digital camera out right now for the price. Oh, and don't forget to buy the docking station. Directly connected via USB is great, but the with the docking station you can transfer images and video in an instant.
Rating:
Summary: review of reviews
Review: The specs on this camera are fantastic for the price. I was set to buy one for my daughter and another for myself. Then I read the reviews on amazon and couldn't believe the camera could be so bad. No rush. I waited a few weeks and checked elsewhere. When I came back to amazon and the majority of customer reviews confirmed the earlier ones. Despite the pretty glowing "editorial review" I am too scared to buy mail order this camera based on the "customer reviews". THANX.
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