Overall Rating
 2 of 5

Used product for
1 Year

Summary:
DS 7, uses too much power too soon and No Flash. I bought a DX 7 with Flash, this was very good, but lost it. I also have a DX 5 with Flash, best buy for the money the pictures are as good as the DX 7 just on camera screen. On DX 7 and DX 5 battery last like hours or some 100 to 200 pictures respectively. I am looking at a DX 9 for the Zoom, you really need a Zoom to get good pictures while on a vacation. Others are OK if your doing only close up work.

Strengths:
Cheap, you can find the Smart Media cards cheap if you look at retail or via auction on e-Bay etc.

Weaknesses:
No Flash and Battery goes South with a few pictures.

Similar Products Used:
DX 7 and DX 5

Customer Service:
Not needed yet.

Overall Rating
 3 of 5

Used product for
1 Month

Summary:
The camera is most useful in taking pictures for the web. The image quality is decent but it is strictly for beginners and amateurs. Overall very easy to use and so far reliable.

Strengths:
Good pictures in controlled situations (i.e. indoors, well lit) Good color representation. The three focus areas: closeup, midrange and long distance is helpful especially when using the closeup option.

Weaknesses:
Awful action shots No Zoom In certain circumstances the lack of flash might be a hinderance but Photoshop 5.5 has been able to fix any problems I have had.

Similar Products Used:
Olympus 2020 Nikon Coolpix 9? I can't remember!

Customer Service:
Pretty good I ordered an AC adapter from them and it went smoothly.

Overall Rating
 1 of 5

Summary:
I did not like not having a flash and also using only a 5 volt SmartMedia card. Spend the exyra and purchase the DX-7.

Overall Rating
 4 of 5

Summary:
I am quite impressed with the DS-7. My son had bought the same thing in an Apple model which is almost the exact same model although labeled differently.I'm wondering whether you can use 4M or higher Smartmedia cards in this camera. I see by one other review that someone heard that you could use 4M Smartmedia.I had no problem with the downloading of pictures. The software came right off the Internet and worked the first time I tried it. That's the main convenience of this camera. You can download all the photos, erase the memory, and go take some more. I got over the battery issue very quickly by getting some rechargeable batteries. I just have them sitting in the recharger and grab them when the camera is running low. The small recharger is ideal and has met all my needs.I bought two extra 2M Smartmedia cards for $20 each shortly after I purchased the camera. This way I have three cards and can take up to 90 high resolution pictures.If I ever move up in stature to a higher resolution camera, I'll check out Fuji first since this DS-7 has been very good to me.

Overall Rating
 4 of 5

Summary:
The first thing that I noticed when I picked up this camera was how well it fit in my hand. There are depressions where all of your fingers go and none of them are even tempted to cover the lense. The shutter button is right where you would expect it to be. I do wish that it had a different texture or a dot or two like the home row on a keyboard to let you know you were in the right place. I was slightly worried about the lack of a flash but the camera works very well in normal room lighting even at light. This is helped by two aperature settings. However, in very bright sunlight the pictures wash out. There are also three focus settings: landscape, portrait, and closeup. You will need to buy an AC adaptor (available as an accessory). This should have been packaged with the camera since battery life is limited and the camera needs to be on while downloading files to the computer. The camera is powered by 4 AA batteries and comes with a set of rechargables and a recharger. Photos are stored on a 2M SmartMedia card. I understand that the 4M card also works in the DS-7 but have not checked it out fully. The 2M card stores 30 pictures in standard (640 x 480) mode and twice that number in economy (320 x 240) mode. Picture quality is good. I did have some trouble getting the computer and the camera to recognize each other for downloading in Windows 3.1 but the software worked well in Windows 95. Both Toshiba and Fuji make a floppy disk adaptor that holds the SmartMedia card and allows it to be read in a 3.5 1.44M drive (drivers are included). I think this is another "must have" along with at least a second memory card. The list price on this is about $100 but street price is about $70-$80. This wold be my choice but there are also card readers and a similar adaptor for a PCMCIA slot. The controls are very simple to understand and it is easy to frame shots with the LCD screen. I took the camera into a classroom of 1st to 3rd graders and let them take turns making pictures which we then viewed on the television screen.(There is a video out port but the cable is extra.) They had no trouble using this camera. This is a great little point and shoot camera and I really like the ability to check the shot and retake if needed, deleting all of the extras and keeping the best. Also, adding pictures to newsletters is so easy with digital images.