Size, Shape, & Weight

Simply put, this is the single best-designed camera I have ever come across, including film SLRs. It is literally designed to your hands, both in terms of shape and size. You get a large, rounded hand grip, enough space for your right thumb on the back of the camera, and a well-thought-out layout for all the buttons (and there are many, but the camera is big enough so that you do not have to worry about accidentally pushing one or the other). The weight of the camera is also optimal, giving it enough inertia to avoid camera shake in most cases.

Viewfinder

One of the best things about this camera is its true optical ttl viewfinder. See, in SLRs and DSLRs, there is a mirror placed at 45 degrees in the way of the light coming through the lens, which directs the light upwards to a pentamirror or pentaprism that turns the picture back into its upright, laterally correct position, meaning you see exactly what will appear on the film or sensor after exposing the shot, with no parallax error. The disadvantage of this solution is that you don't see anything while you are exposing, and might just miss the decisive moment. The engineers of Hewlett-Packard (or Pentax - not sure which, as this camera used to be marketed as Pentax EI-2000 too) designed another type of true optical ttl viewfinder for this camera. They placed a beam-splitting prism in the way of the light coming through the lens, which directs part of the light to the viewfinder eyepiece - VERY conveniently located at the upper left corner of the camera body - and another part to the CCD. This way you get the benefits of an SLR without the drawbacks. There's no such thing as a free lunch, though: splitting the light also means weakening the light, and this in turn means that the CCD signals must be amplified more, resulting in quite a bit of noise at higher sensitivity settings, even when shooting TIFF (see more about this in the Image Quality section).

Exposure Modes

You get all the usual exposure modes: auto, P, A, Tv and M plus a variety of pre-set exposure programs. There is not much difference between the auto and P modes, except that you can set more MENU options if you shoot in P mode. Some people have also reported that pictures were consistently out of focus in auto mode, so you are better off using P. One bad thing about exposure settings is the fact that you can only change them in 1/2 EV, as opposed to 1/3 EV, increments which, given the limited latitude of digital, can be a problem. (A side note: the menu system uses the Digita operating system, and you might be able to write or download a Digita scipt that enables you to fix this up.)

Zoom

The C912 is equipped with a non-removable, 34-107mm equivalent Pentax zoom, which is controlled in a fly-by-wire manner. What this means is that you activate it by turning a rubberised ring around the lens body the way you would with a mechanical zoom but the lens parts are in fact moved by micromotors. This sounds like a weird solution, as it is slower and less precise than a mechanical zoom, and also adds to the energy consumption, but it is still more natural than controlling focal distance with buttons or a switch, as is the case with most other "power zooms". Note that the lens has some rather bad barrel distortion at full wide angle (though nothing worse than most of the competition, even of today).

Autofocus

There are two settings for the AF: spot and wide area. Use of the latter has been reported to produce consistently out-of-focus photos, so I always used the former. I have to admit that the autofocus did not prove truly reliable. Some shots were better focussed than others. This is true of frames taken in normal lighting too (low-light focussing was very poor, as the camera lacks an AF assist lamp/beam). However, you can override the autofocus by pushing the four-way controller down or up during focussing, thereby telling the camera to focus either on the closest or the farthest point within the AF area. You should absolutely try this out if you are experiencing problems with focussing.

Manual Focus

Manual focussing is possible using a combination of the TFT LCD panel and the optical ttl viewfinder. You set the focal distance from the menu(!!!), where there are some ten or so steps ranging from 0.1m to infinity. However, you cannot judge the sharpness on the TFT LCD panel, for that, you shall use the viewfinder. Awkward? Yes. But it is better than having no manual focussing at all, especially when you are having problems with the autofocus. The biggest drawback of using the TFT LCD panel is that it drinks up the energy from the batteries as a bum drinks his wine from the bottle!

Image Quality

Apparently there is no in-camera sharpening applied to the photos - this is normal practice with digicams designed for professional use but it might be strange to you first, if you have only used consumer or prosumer digicams before. You might actually ask: why do digital images need any sharpening in the first place? There are a couple of causes but the most prominent one is that an anti-aliasing filter is applied in order to avoid colour moiré and pixelated curves. A side effect of this filter is some loss of sharpness (or crispness, if you like). All consumer and most prosumer digicams do the re-sharpening for you but in this case, there is no or limited way for you to control the AMOUNT of sharpening applied. With the C912 you will need to sharpen ALL of your photographs, even well-focussed ones, in some image editing software such as Paint Shop Pro or PhotoShop. The exceptions are shots taken in macro mode (provided they are well-focussed and do not suffer from motion blur either). For it seemed to me that the photos taken in macro mode were sharp right as they came out of the camera. This indicates that the camera is best suited for macro projects. With the closest close-up point being at 2cm, you will indeed enjoy taking macro shots!

Bottom line: your photos taken in the normal AF range will, after some tweaking in Photoshop, print beautifully in 10x12cm (4x5in) size, while your macro shots are likely to be crisp and sharp all the way up to 13x18cm (5x7in)! Not bad for a 2-megapixel camera, now, is it?

Various Other Points about The Camera

As mentioned earlier, this camera uses a LOT of energy with the TFT LCD activated, so you might want to turn it off altogether. Speaking about it, the panel can be tilted upwards 90 degrees, which might come handy with table-top macros, but make sure to buy the AC adapter if you have plans for using the camera for this purpose, otherwise chances are that you'll get frustrated with it rather quickly. One other point to note is that HP supplies a handful of great accessories with the camera, and a good number of others can be purchased optionally. Accessories that come along with the camera include an infrared remote controller, a lens cap, a viewfinder cap(!), a protective piece of plastic for the flash hotshoe(!!), a neck strap with pockets for the remote control and the viewfinder cap, a 16MB CF card (mine was a fast one made by SanDisk) and a USB cable. The lens is threaded and accepts 49mm filters and converters (optional). The camera can be powered either by 4 AA-type rechargeable NiMHs or HP's proprietary lithium-ion battery (optional, and methinks quite expensive).

Recommended:
Yes

Amount Paid (US$): 300
This Camera is a Good Choice if You Want Something... Flexible Enough for Enthusiasts