Agfa ePhoto 780c

Digital camera manufacturers continue in their quest to make digital photography an everyday alternative to conventional film cameras. One such example is Agfa's ePhoto 780c, a serious attempt by the company to break into the consumer market. To achieve this, Agfa has inevitably been forced to cut a few corners, the most notable compromise being the camera's 350,000-pixel CCD, a far cry from the megapixel cameras we've become used to.

The 780c's external case design is well-conceived: the presence of hand grips on the left- and right-hand side of the case encourages a proper grip, which, in turn, helps avoid any obscuring of the flash. There's an optical viewfinder for taking photos without the LCD monitor, and a sliding lens cover that switches on the unit when opened. The blue metallic finish of the 780c makes it look curiously like a die-cast Thunderbirds toy from the 1970s, but the overall build quality is solid. It's encouraging to find a protective carrying case lurking in the box too.

The top of the unit is sensibly uncluttered, housing just four buttons - one to set the image quality, one for the flash mode, one for the shutter release and a button to activate theæ1.8in LCD on the back panel for framing shots without the optical viewfinder. The optical viewfinder is clear, with an internal LED to indicate the camera's readiness to take a shot. There's also a top-mounted LCD, which gives some basic information on the shots remaining, the quality and flash modes and on the state of the battery.

Five buttons to control previewing and camera settings flank the LCD at the back of the unit. The available settings have been stripped to the absolute minimum for ease of use, so the user isn't stuck with the usual adjustment options, such as white balance or exposure modes. In fact, the 780c's ability to switch the composite video output from NTSC to PAL is really about as technically demanding as this camera gets. The LCD itself is clear enough for a budget device, with a good update rate in reasonable light, although as with most LCDs, strong sunlight makes it hard to see the image.

One large advantage of this model over many far more expensive cameras is the time taken between shots. It's common for a digital camera to take several seconds to compress and store an image before the next shot can be taken, but with the 780c this is reduced to one or two seconds, and only slightly more if the flash is used. This feature goes a long way to making the 780c feel like a 'real' camera, so full marks to Agfa on that score. The rapid action also extends to switch-on times: slide back the lens cover and in most cases it's ready for use in under a second.

One casualty of Agfa's cost-cutting exercise is the focusing system. The 780c has a focus-free rather than an auto-focus lens, with a slider on the rear that can physically move the optics into close-up, portrait or infinity focus ranges. Behind a flap on the side of the unit lurks theæslot for the single SmartMedia memory card,æAC adaptor input, video output and serial connector. There's no USB, just the old and slow serial connection method. The flap on the bottom of the case opens to reveal four AA batteries, out of which you'll get approximately an hour of use with the LCD switched on. Four non-rechargeable batteries are supplied with the camera, but an AC adaptor is an optional extra.

There are four picture quality settings to choose from: 320 x 240 or 640 x 480 with moderate compression, 640 x 480 with low compression and 1,024 x 768 mode. Downloading images that were taken at the highest quality setting takes around 20æseconds per image over the serial link. Unfortunately, the SmartMedia card supplied with this camera only has a 2Mb capacity, into which you'll fit around 80 shots in the lowest quality mode. This equates to only around 11 shots at the highest quality mode.