K-Mart $98 5.1 Megapixel Camera

[Chubby]

Ok, it's a Polaroid but it's still a 5.1 MP for under $100. Of course under the little pic of it on the front page it states "Limitied quantities. Sorry, No rainchecks" Guess how many they had?

one


And I'm the asshole that got it at the store near me :p I worked until 6am this morning, there's no newspapers out because the printing press is done but we had the inserts at work so I flipped through all the ads this morning and saw this camera. Went from work to KMart, waited til they opened at 7am and got the 1 camera they had.


That's still bullshit tho. One friggin' camera in the whole store? You know damn well they aren't getting anymore either.

[WrongWay]

Is it available on their WebSite?

[CraigSca]

Looks like that qualifies as the hot toy of the season!

[sterlingice]

Unfortunately, it's lacking in optical zoom so what you see is what you get with no adjusting. I thought it had external card as it talks about 16 MB internal memory but I think it also has an SD slot so no big deal. Having 5 MP but only ok picture quality, no presets, and no zoom is kindof overkill like having an HD tv but picking up your signal off an antenna. Still, for $99- if you don't need snazzy features on your camera, it's a pretty good deal :)

SI

[Chubby]

ok now that I am awake I can give some more specs on the camera. I figured it wasn't super but I don't need anything amazing. I just wanted something decent cheap to take pictures with.

a500 Digital Camera Specifications
- 5.1 Megapixel resolution
- 4x Digital Zoom
- 1.7" TFT-LCD Display
- 16 MB internal flash memory approx 11MB for picture storage
- SD memory card compatible
- PictBridge compatible
- JPEG compression
- Movie clip with sound
- Fill flash, Auto, Red eye reduction, Off
- Auto or manual exposure
- USB Cable

You guys can prob tell better than I how decent it is but I'm pretty happy with it for the price. I couldn't research it all as I saw the ad at work and knew they wouldn't have that many (but thought thye'd have more than 1).

[Airhog]

the only thing its missing is optical zoom, which can be nice, but it just adds moving parts to the camera, and if you drop it, the optical zoom is a liability...

[Pumpy Tudors]

That camera will probably be fine if you have no plans to zoom in on anything before shooting. Digital zoom is a complete waste, and I suggest not bothering with that at all. The 5.1 megapixel resolution will sort of compensate for the lack of zoom because you'll get a high-resolution picture, but still make sure that you're close enough to the subject that you're shooting.

[Chubby]

Let's put it this way, anything is better than a) a shity disposable camera or b) using my camera phone :)

Good to know to basically make sure I'm close to things, which is normal for the pics I take.

[sterlingice]

Digital zoom is worthless- it means your LCD can zoom in so you can see it. Optical zoom is what is important. That said, if you don't need it, you don't need it. And it would add quite a bit of cost to the camera- you would never be able to find a 5 MP camera with decent quality and a 3X or higher optical zoom for under $200. But, for instance, I like taking pictures at ballgames or other things where stuff can be far off and I couldn't deal with a camera with no optical zoom.

Also, I don't know the specifics on the picture quality of this particular camera. As with most things, some brands and products are better than others (ie a DVD player from Wal Mart Generic Brand X isn't going to be as good as one with the same specs from Sony but you also pay for that quality).

That said, in the end, $99 for a 5.1 MP camera is a good price unless this thing breaks when you take it out of the box or just has awful picture quality.

SI

[DanGarion]

I'm pretty sure that was in the Target ad this morning too. And they normally do rainchecks on almost everything.