dylan tweney if you're bored, you're not paying attention

Canon PowerShot S70

So you fancy yourself a serious photographer, but you don't want to carry a big SLR or a bulky enthusiast camera? The Canon PowerShot S70 is made for you.

It's fairly chunky, and at 10.8 ounces it's on the heavy side. But the PowerShot S70's solidly built, dark gray, metallic body conveys a sense of solidity and seriousness, and it feels good in the hand. The sliding lens cover protects the optics while you're traveling, and it doubles as a power switch.

The S70 has a daunting array of buttons on its back face, but its mysteries will reveal themselves in short order to the dedicated photographer. The function button provides quick access to the most-used creative features, including exposure compensation, drive mode, ISO speed, and special effects such as black-and-white or sepia-toned shots. Want to go further under the hood? The menu button lets you control such nitty-gritty details as flash synchronization, red-eye reduction, and autofocusing techniques.

The PowerShot S70 produces beautiful 7.1 megapixel images -- one of the highest resolutions of any camera in its class. We loved the S70's ability to capture skin tones, fine fabric details, and the particulars of distant objects. It even shoots in RAW mode.

Are there limitations to using the S70? Sure. It doesn't have as many automatic modes as other cameras; we noticed some purple fringing around the edges of bright white objects; and 10 fps makes for pretty choppy video. But these are nits. If you're serious about taking good pictures, it's hard to beat the PowerShot S70. --Dylan Tweney

Best Feature: Gives photographers total creative control
Worst Feature: Video recording is only 10 fps

SPECS
Canon PowerShot S70
$449
Weight: 10.8 ounces
Size: 4.5 x 2.2 x 1.5 inches
Specs: 7.1 megapixels; 3.6x optical zoom; 640 x 480-pixel, 10-fps AVI video recording; 1.8-inch LCD; CF card slot (32MB card included)
www.canon.com

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Link: Canon PowerShot S70

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Kodak EasyShare DX7590

Kodak's EasyShare DX7590 is a great choice for the X Games: It's a point-and-shoot camera that also has a powerful zoom lens, so you can get action shots of the half pipe even if you're stuck in the middle of the audience.

With a 10x optical zoom lens and a wide range of automated shooting modes, the DX7590 is just right for holding over your head for those from-the-crowd long shots. It's a bulky enthusiast camera, to be sure, so it's not going to fit in a pocket. But it's lightweight for its class, and with its lens cap securely fitted, you can drop the camera into a backpack with no problem. A rounded grip on the right side makes for comfortable and relatively stable one-handed shooting, and the controls are easily accessible.

A dial on the back lets you select shooting modes. The "SCN" setting leads to an on-screen menu of 14 scene modes, including action, snow, and even a "children" mode, useful for shooting hyperactive teenagers at the skate park. If you trust the camera's automated circuitry, just switch the dial to the auto mode and let it do its thing. In most cases, the shots will turn out great.

Image quality with the DX7590 is excellent -- particularly for outdoor shots and for indoor shots that are lit by the camera's pop-up flash -- with good detail and lots of rich, well-saturated blues and greens. The lack of image stabilization -- surprising for a camera with such a powerful zoom lens -- is its only serious drawback.

The DX7590 is plenty fast, with a 0.2-second shutter lag and a 2.9-second recovery time between shots. That speed, combined with its powerful and compact zoom lens, will help you get great shots, no matter how fast or far away your subjects are. --Dylan Tweney

Best Feature: Powerful yet compact 10x zoom lens
Worst Feature: Perplexing lack of image stabilization

SPECS
Kodak EasyShare DX7590
$449
Weight: 13.6 ounces
Size: 3.9 x 3.2 x 3.2 inches
Specs: 5 megapixels; 10x optical zoom; 640 x 480-pixel, 12-fps QuickTime video recording; 2.2-inch LCD; SD card slot; 32MB of internal memory
www.kodak.com

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Link: Kodak EasyShare DX7590

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Casio Exilim Zoom EX-Z50

The first thing you need to know about the Casio Exilim Zoom EX-Z50 is that using it will not, by itself, make you more attractive. It will, however, make you feel pretty damn slick. It's slim and light enough to fit into a shirt pocket or a tuxedo without mussing your lines. And when you pull it out, it powers on quickly so that you can snap pictures of the other swells at the club. If you're in a real rush, you can turn it on and take a shot within 2.6 seconds, but that first shot will be blurry and poorly focused. After that, however, shutter lag is a mere 0.2 seconds and the second shot fires in 2.1 seconds.

Image quality from the EX-Z50 is decent overall, and the camera excels at taking well-lit outdoor shots and indoor photos with the flash on. Like most ultracompact cameras, however, it struggles with low-light photography, producing blurry, poorly focused shots with the flash off. Curiously, it lacks a burst mode. If you want to capture motion, use the movie mode.

The EX-Z50's menus are cleanly organized and extremely easy to use. One nice touch: The menus appear translucently over the live image on the LCD, so you can keep an eye on the action while you adjust your camera. A variety of options lets you specify creative features such as ISO speed, exposure, and white balance.

If you're looking for a superportable camera that doesn't compromise too much on image quality, the Exilim Zoom EX-Z50 is a great choice. --Dylan Tweney

Best Feature: Sleek, svelte design
Worst Feature: Low-light shots only so-so

SPECS:
Casio Exilim Zoom EX-Z50
$305
Weight: 5.2 ounces
Size: 3.5 x 2.4 x 0.9 inches
Specs: 5 megapixels; 3x optical zoom; 320 x 240-pixel, 15-fps AVI video recording; 2-inch LCD; SD card slot; 9.3MB of internal memory
www.casio.com

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Link: Casio Exilim Zoom EX-Z50

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Fossil Wrist PDA

It was inevitable that someone would eventually try to cram a Palm PDA into a wristwatch. And finally, after many delays, Fossil has done it.

The Fossil Wrist PDA is a huge, gleaming chunk of metal and LCD that balances on your wrist about as elegantly as an elephant on a pogo stick. Its nearly 4-ounce weight is tiny for a PDA, but for a watch it's positively monstrous. Unless you have Schwarzenegger-size forearms, this watch is going to make you look like a puny, twig-armed geek -- and let's face it, that's probably who'll most likely wear it, anyway.

As a watch, the Wrist PDA has several shortcomings. The display is dim, the numbers are not very legible, the alarm is absurdly quiet, and the backlight merely turns the black-on-gray screen into faintly glowing white on blue. What's more, the battery lasts for only two or three days, and if it runs down completely, everything -- apps, contacts, data files -- is gone.

Granted, as a PDA the Fossil is an impressive feat of miniaturization. It's the smallest Palm OS device we've tested. It even runs applications such as AvantGo and Kinoma, although you'll need sharp eyes to read much on its tiny screen.

You can enter data on the Wrist PDA's screen using the included Jot utility, although the tiny folding stylus (stored in the wristband buckle) is annoying and goofy.

For geek cred, the Fossil Wrist PDA is top drawer. Sadly, it's too bulky to be attractive and its screen is too tiny to be effective, and the lack of a backup battery is unacceptable.
-Dylan Tweney

Best Feature Impressively tiny size for a Palm PDA
Worst Feature If the battery dies, it takes your data with it

SPECS:
Fossil Wrist PDA
$249
Weight: 3.8 ounces
Size: 2.3 x 1.8 x 0.5 inches (face)
Specs: 66MHz processor; 8MB of RAM; 4MB of flash ROM; 160 x 160-pixel, 1.4-inch, touch-screen LCD; infrared; USB port; Palm OS 4.1.2
www.fossil.com

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Link: Fossil Wrist PDA

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HP Photosmart R717

HP has figured out how to make excellent, user-friendly cameras, and it's not messing with the formula. We liked last year's HP Photosmart R707, a 5.1-megapixel camera with a virtually identical weight and profile. The Photosmart R717 adds another megapixel of resolution, a slightly bigger LCD, and kicks the image quality up a notch. The result is a capable, economical, no-compromise camera that takes great pictures in nearly all conditions.

The R717 has a somewhat unusual, inelegant, two-tone design, with a brushed-metal front curving around to a dark gray back. Its controls are simple and intuitive, with two fewer buttons than the already-minimalist control panel of the R707. Yet the R717's buttons and simple menus provide easy access to a wide range of features, from white balance adjustment, exposure adjustment, and even autobracketing, so you can shoot three quick shots with slightly different exposures.

There's even a manual-focus mode, although it's difficult to set the focus very accurately using the pixelated image on the R717's LCD. A mode button on the top of the camera provides access to a dozen useful preset modes for taking action shots, sunset photos, photos of documents, and so forth. A handy "museum" mode turns off the flash and all sound effects for when you need to be unobtrusive.

The R717 is fairly speedy, with a respectable 0.2-second shutter lag and 2.9-second shot-to-shot recovery time. It takes almost 5 seconds to power up and take the first shot, however. But where the R717 really shines is in image quality, indoors and out. We were astonished by its ability to snap indoor shots with the flash off; it captured photos with greater clarity and color than any other camera without built-in image stabilization.

In short, the R717 is a top-notch camera that doesn't require a PhD to operate. We recommend it to anyone. -Dylan Tweney

SPECS:
HP Photosmart R717
$300
Weight: 7.2 ounces
Size: 3.9 x 2.4 x 1.4 inches
Specs: 6.2 megapixels; 3x optical zoom; 320 x 240-pixel, 30-fps MPEG video recording; 1.8-inch LCD; SD card slot; 32MB of internal memory
www.hp.com

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Link: HP Photosmart R717

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