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This is my third digital camera. I have owned a Fuji FinePix and a Pentax Optio S4. This camera performs so much better than either one of those. The good points: Great video, crystal clear images, super easy to use, removes red eye after pic is taken, adaptive lighting really works, good battery life. The bad points: a little slower than some cameras when it comes to processing images(but it is worth it), no case or SD card (seems to be a trend with most digitals).

I researched this camera and the Canon Powershot S410 and S500. When comparing the two, the HP had 2 or 3 better features than the Canon. I was hesitant about buying the HP, because it was so new that there was not a lot of customer feedback. I guess the selling point that just made my decision easier was the red eye in camera removal, since I take lots of close ups of my children.

I am so happy with my purchase. I would recommend this camera to anyone. The auto features make picture taking a no-brainer, but if you do want to get creative, you can adjust almost anything, in the manual mode.

A+++

I have the HP Photosmart R707 since a few weeks. This is my first digital photo camera. I bought the R707 because I want to take good pictures without worrying about all the manual control menu options and features. Point and shoot. However with this camera I do have those other options available for more experimenting when I want to.

My experience so far: I've taken pictures indoors and outdoors, sometimes in difficult situations like a bright light in the background of the subject or high contrast pictures alternating bright sunshine and dark shadows and I have loaded these into iPhoto within Mac OS X 10.3.4 I've also tried out the video recording feature.

Positive points:
The body is small, compact, easy to hold, it feels and looks classy. The buttons are easily reached and a number of options can be chosen by using the buttons without needing to scroll through menu items on the LCD display. The LCD display can be dimmed or brightened in 3 steps, enough to read well in bright sunshine. The R707 comes with 32MB RAM built in, so I can take 17 high resolution pictures (5.1 MB with middle strength compression i.e. 2 stars) without even inserting an sd card. The menu items are well organised and it is easy and fast to find the manual control I'm looking for. The optical zoom is good and the picture quality can be excellent. The level of details in the pictures is often surprisingly good. The imaging technology, for example the HP Adaptive Lighting, gives me peace of mind that my picture has a good chance of being accurately taken exactly as I see it through the viewfinder. The motto "what you see is what you get" seems difficult to achieve without professional cameras and photography knowledge, but the HP R707 manages this quite well indeed. Playback and viewing of pictures and video is easy and you can browse through thumbnails of the pictures or instead enlarge each picture to better control the quality of each shot. The in-camera red-eye removal works very well. The Image Advice feature is helpful in explaining what you can do to take better pictures next time. Video recording is very easy, just press one button to record. The quality of the recordings is fine for a camera, but not comparable to the greatly superior image and sound quality of dv cams. I didn't test the included software, because I didn't load it, as my iMac instantly recognized the R707 and iPhoto automatically launched and I just needed to click the "import" button in the software. You may want to read more at Digitalmagasinet.dk, which has an excellent English review of the HP R707. They compared it to the Canon IXUS S500, and the R707 won in most categories, especially price/quality ratio.

Negative points: 1) no case is delivered with the R707. You need to buy this extra. 2) I often use the optical zoom, but then the aperture can go to a minimum of f8.4 m, the consequence is I often need to use the flash, almost always when indoors. 3) the view finder doesn't show any menu items, so when the LCD display is not available due to low battery and you want to change the menu settings, you have to do this blindly. 4) the more manual controls and active filters you use, the longer it takes to process a photo and write it to memory. You can take another picture after 1-2 seconds, while the processing of the previous picture is still in progress, as long as the in-camera 32MB memory is not full. 5) Battery recharging can take a few hours. 6) The camera can heat up when in use for longer periods of time. In the Image Advice Screen some photos mentioned something like "camera was too hot, this can impact photo quality".

Conclusion: I was pleasantly surprised by the ease of use and the quality of the camera. The price I paid was less than that of a new but no longer produced Canon Digital Ixus 400 (Powershot S400) in discount stores. It is difficult to get better quality at a lower price than the HP Photosmart R707. I recommend it.

You won't find a better camera for this price. I bought this camera in August while on vacation. I had read raving reviews about the camera prior to getting it, and they were right. What I love most is that the camera fits in my back Jean's pocket. Now that it's winter I have it in my coat pocket every day. The battery lasts forever and has no "memory problems". The camera comes with its own recharger and the battery takes between 6-8 hours to charge, can be done when you go to bed. <br /> The camera has many features you only find on more expensive cameras at half the price. The 5 megapixel shots are astounding in crispness and color fidelity. It does not come with an SD card, but it has built in memory which allows you to take various shots depending on the quality setting. All the cameras that come with a card include one with so little memory that they are not even worth using and require the purchase of an additional card, so I don't see the lack of one as a drawback on the R707. I have taken pictures and had them developed at the kiosks in some of the stores for 29 cents a piece and I only have to develop the one's I like. I never have to buy or develop film, I can email the images to family instantly with the camera's features and can even print them on any color printer with the press of a button. If you want stunning photos and the lowest price with the easiest user interface, then this is the one to get; you can't go wrong.