Customer Reviews:
 Good budget camera, takes some work to get great photos June 25, 2008
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
Quick summary...
This camera is definitely worth $80, especially if you're a casual photographer and not planning on printing all your photos. It suffers in low light but outdoor, daytime photos are very high quality.
Pros:
- Solid build, doesn't feel like it's going to break
- 3.0" LCD is nice, high viewing angles from left, right, and top
- Quickly turns on and off
- Tons of configuration options and features, refer to the manual for a little clarification (more details below)
- Most automatic settings have accessible manual overrides
- Outdoor/flash photos are generally very high quality
- Video quality is very impressive
- On-screen display is very informative
- "Delete mode" allows photos to be deleted with a single click which is great when deleting many photos
- Works with 4GB SanDisk Extreme III SDHC card
Cons:
- Auto ISO, focus, and shutter speed for low light, no-flash photos usually results in bad photos (more details below)
- Zoom is noisy (if recording a video, the mic is muted while zooming)
- Battery life seems too short, read other reviews for a replacement
- Tripod hole is too shallow, I have to use a shim to mount this on my tripod
- Internal memory holds only 1 full-sized photo
- Video file size is very large (about 70MB per minute due to M-JPEG codec)
- No viewfinder but your nose would smudge the nice LCD anyway
More details...
The camera allows you to override a lot of settings, the most useful for me have been ISO and shutter speed. The shutter speed goes as fast as 1/2000s which was fast enough to capture a photo of water droplets coming out of a fountain with no motion blur.
Sometimes it can be painstaking and quite aggravating to get print quality photos without a tripod. The automatic settings of the camera make low light photos particularly difficult, especially when avoiding the flash. The Auto ISO setting goes up to 1600 which is way too high for any shot - the entire photo will have small colored blotches on it. Unfortunately, the camera chooses ISO 1600 very often in medium and low light.
Also, it tends to choose a longer shutter speed than necessary which results in blurry images. The shutter speed that the camera chooses is displayed at the bottom of the screen which makes it easy to know when you either need to hold very still or override the shutter speed.
For the casual photographer, most of these low light photos will still look OK on the camera, but they're not so great on the computer. Using the flash will help, although even with the flash I frequently have trouble with blurry photos.
 Norcent DCS-1050 Replacement Battery Found June 18, 2008
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
A number of people have been asking about the correct replacement battery for the Norcent 1050. It uses a Minolta NP-900 battery. Same as the Norcent 520 camera. Just make sure when you order a replacement from who ever that you get one rated at least 820maH - which is what came with mine. I purchased a 1000maH hi-capacity battery and it works great and lasts longer than the supplied battery. Most NP-900 batteries are 650 - 700maH, so you need to buy a higher capacity battery - they cost only a few dollars more (about $15 total cost online) Overall the camera takes very good pictures, as good as any 10 megapixel camera. Shutter lag is noticable, but this camera doesn't claim to be a $300 camera. For about $80 US, you can't go wrong. Hope this helps those looking for a battery replacement.
Gorgeous pictures, cheap price! June 13, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I purchased this camera for my son's 8th grade graduation. He'll be going away this summer to college camps and needed a new camera. I was skeptical that a 10mp camera could be so cheap, but I really didn't want to spend a lot. Surprisingly, the pictures came out as good or better than my $250 casio 7.2 mp camera. It does an excellent job on faces, and the 3" LCD display on the back is luxurious. I was impressed that the camera comes with a rechargeable battery. Additionally, this camera was able to read an SD card that my 2 computers and digital camera have been unable to read. Thus, I was able to load the SD card into the camera, plug the USB cable into the camera and computer, and download Christmas '06 pictures that I had been sadly missing. The flash on this camera is brilliant. I took a picture of my living room with only a dim light on and it lit it up nicely and produced a gorgeous picture. The only two things so far I have seen that are not as good as my casio is that this camera tends to blur out white objects, like my white cat. It didn't quite capture the variants of white as well as my other camera. Also, it sometimes take 2-3 tries to turn the camera on. I'm not sure if that is due to a not fully charged battery, or the electronic components inside. Time will tell, but for this price I'm very satisfied and so is my son.
A decent little camera for a great price May 20, 2008
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
You definitely get what you pay for! This camera is a steal...10MP camera for just over $100 (there seems to be a second version of it on amazon that is from other sellers at $60 and I got mine for $99 on ebay). It comes with a battery recharger, UBS line to download pictures to your computer, AV cables (haven't figured out what those are for yet), camera case, camera strap and (I think) a couple of other cords.
That being said, I haven't made up mind 100% on this camera.
Pros:
1. Definitely a great price.
2. Camera is very lightweight but doesn't seem fragile
3. There are a few bells and whistles including auto focus, redeye reduction, macro, image backgrounds and colors and more
4. Fairly straightforward to use
5. There are multiple quality options for picture taking to maximize number of pictures stored; from VGA all the way up to 10MP
Cons:
1. Camera battery is not a standard battery that you can find anywhere (ie AA, AAA) in case you wanted to pick up a spare---you will have to go farther afield than your local 711.
2. Camera battery life seems fairly short, although I may have broken some cardinal rule about letting it drain fully or when you should first charge it.
3. The autofocus, while helpful for clear pictures, is a pain in the ---. The lighting and angle of the camera have to be just so before you hear the pleasant beep and blue box that tells you it is OK to take a nice picture. Otherwise, the pictures seem to turn out at least slightly blurry around the edges (if you haven't been given the all clear and take the picture anyway). Also, I have tried pointing the camera straight down and got an OK on the autofocus but the pic still came out blurry. Perhaps my hands were shaking at that angle, but in this case, at least, the anti-shake function didn't work either. I have yet to play with autofocus.
All in all, a very nice camera for the price, but there are much better cameras around if you are willing to spend a bit more.
It is a good deal May 9, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
The camera is very smart .You can use it taking very nice pictures.The battery can use for a long time.The only thing I think it need be improved is the anti-shake funcation in dark environment.It is still a good deal for the prize.
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