Ready, Aim, Shoot!

A friend of mine recently bought a Kyocera Smartphone and liked it so much he decided to sell off his other Palms and Palm accessories. I decided to take his Kodak PalmPix digital camera off of his hands.

I had almost bought a PalmPix several times. It's one of those gadgets that inspire an almost overwhelming sense of technolust within me but somehow I resisted. When my friend gave me a good deal, I broke down and got it.

The camera snaps on to the hotsync port of any III-style device, and can be used with a V or Vx with a Bridge. It spans the width of the Palm with a slight overhang on each side and adds approximately half an inch to the length of the Palm.

The PalmPix lets you take either 1/4 VGA (320x240) or VGA (640-480) resolution pictures. The pictures are in color, although obviously they will display in grayscale on a grayscale device. The camera doesn't have a flash, so you must pay attention to available light when taking pictures. I found that even in reasonably bright conditions the pictures tend to be dark, so bear that in mind.

When attached the lens points behind the Palm, allowing you to use the screen as a viewfinder. Very little was recognizable on the grayscale screen, so I just randomly took some test pictures.

To take a picture, you must hit the Memo button. Exposures take some time - a progress bar on the screen lets you know approximately how much longer to hold the Palm still and indicates when the picture has been taken. I find it very difficult to hold the Palm still enough for a long enough time. Most of my pictures turn out very fuzzy, and I suspect it is because I moved the camera a bit while the picture was being taken.

The Palm application lets you name pictures and view them on the device. Both Mac and Windows conduits are available, although only the Windows conduit is on the CD that comes with the camera. I found the conduits on both platforms to be a bit stupid. They both kept the desktop and Palm in sync, so if I deleted a picture from my Palm it was deleted from my desktop during the next sync. If I want to save old pictures I need to manually move them elsewhere before I sync. The pictures should be either left or archived.

Go To Page: 1 2

Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic