Argus DC1730 Digital Camera

I bought this camera in 2004 at Wal-mart for $30. My expectations were not high for that price. I wanted to take pictures to e-mail my friends, and that was it. I did not want it to take high quality pictures, or to print. I knew since I was buying a camera just to keep pictures on the computer I did not need a lot of megapixels. I also figured since it had an LCD is had to be a half-way decent camera, right?

Wrong, very wrong. The camera package has everything you need to get started. It came in a plasitc package, with a driver cd, software cd, USB cord, batteries, and the camera. Not bad for $30, nothing extra to buy.

The camera itself is not exactly cheep looking, but you will not be able to fool any body into thinking it is a good camera. The metallic looking body is slim, and there is a tiny LCD on the back. There is a spot to put a wrist strap, but no wrist strap was included. There is the button to take a picture, and a power button, along with two buttons to scroll through pictures you have taken. The power on/off button serves as the mode button when the camera is on, allowing you to turn off the flash, delete pictures, or adjust the quality. More on features later though. The USB port does have a nice rubber cover to protect it. The camera is a good size for small hands, feel sturdy enough, and is small for travel. Those are some of the only pluses for this camera though.

The camera is feature poor. It has a flash, which is good, but not much else feature wise. You can adjust the quality of pictures, but don't bother, because at anything other that the highest quality you won't even be able to tell what you picture is. There is no zoom at all, and don't even bother cropping on your computer because, again, the quality will be so low you won't be able to tell what it is. Supposedly this camera takes video as well, but I could not figure out how to do it, and the lag is so bad that it will be a blurry mess. Also, the 8 megabyte internal memory will only hold a very short video clip (or 24 pictures) and there is no card slot for expanding the memory. The camera runs off two double A batteries.

The camera has .3 megapixel resolution, as mentioned, that is extremely low. But unfortunately, that is not this camera only down side. The no zoom is a bummer, but was expected. The battery life is also extrememly low, and that was not expected. The batteries last for about 10 to 20 pictures in my experience, and even if you have batteries left when you are done using it one day, when you go to use it the next day, the batteries may be dead then. Who would have thought? That was very upsetting and unexpected. When taking pictures, there is a major lag. That means you need a super steady hand to take pictures, or else they blur. It also means video is impossible to take for the most part. Another disappointment was a USB 1.1 connection, meaning slow picture transfer to your computer. The final disappointment was the unintuitive controls. Some buttons do more than one thing, and the settings are very hard to change on the camera.

Other than the unintuitive controls, the camera is easy enough to use, just point and shoot. For uploads just load the driver in, plug in the camera, and get the pictures using the software.

The software is nice, allowing you to do basic touch ups. But there is no software that could make these pictures look okay. Don't buy a camera just for the software, since software can be bought, or even downloaded for free, separately, and all cameras include software.

This may be okay to for a kid to play around it, but the pictures and battery life stink, so I would not even recommend it for that.