While Kodak's DC40 and Logitech's Pixtura produce the best printed picture and Apple's QuickTake 150 has the best monitor display,
Casio's new QV-10
stakes out NTSC video as its forte. Due this summer, Casio's entry into the digital camera market provides numerous design innovations that could steer things toward smarter, friendlier image capturing.
The 1.8-inch-square active-matrix color LCD viewfinder on the camera's back says that the QV-10 is not the standard point-and-shoot film box it resembles. Its through-the-lens view frames an object without parallax and brings WYSIWYG to the under-$1000 camera field. You can adjust contrast and framing before taking the
picture. Also, you can tilt the lens up or down, switch it to a macro for close-ups, and adjust the LCD's optimal viewing angle. Thus, it's easy to shoot with the camera placed in any convenient location.
The same LCD lets you review all 96 pictures, which you can store in the QV-10's 2-MB flash EPROM. To make comparison easier, the LCD can display four or nine pictures at once (and the images remain recognizable). You can also zoom in on a portion of an image for detail. You can delete any picture in memory, and the remaining shots renumber to make room for more. (In contrast, the Kodak family lets you delete only the latest image, and enabling the delete-last-picture option can reduce storage capacity by 30 percent.)
The camera's weak point is that it captures images at a resolution of only 480 by 240 pixels. All output from the camera is converted to 320 by 240 pixels (or interpolated up to 640 by 480 pixels) so print and VGA output will likely be acceptable only
in small sizes
. But on a TV or videotape, the image works well.
What will sell the QV-10 is its in-camera presentation abilities. Images are stored digitally but can be retrieved as either digital or NTSC video signals. In "autoplay" mode, the QV-10 displays stored images sequentially at a selected rate. Even better, you can download images from your PC. You can upload images from the camera to a PC, add graphics and lettering, reorder everything, and then download a presentation back to the camera. Hook the QV-10 to a TV, turn on autoplay, and watch the show. It can loop endlessly, including four- and nine-image screen displays, making catchy advertising for store windows or sales booths.
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Casio's QV-10: Portable Presentations
