Agfa ePhoto 1680

The individually styled Agfa ePhoto 1680 has no optical viewfinder, so all your shots have to be framed using the 42 x 32mm LCD. The lens barrel pivots on the main body so you can accurately compose a self-portrait or frame shots over the heads of crowds. Operation of the camera is extremely easy. A rotary dial moves you between play and record modes, and a scroll button navigates the five on-screen menus. These let you select image resolutions from 1,600 x 1,200 down to 640 x 480, a flash mode including red-eye reduction, an electronic zoom mode in 640 x 480, a night sight LCD enhancer and a set of user controls. This last menu includes both aperture and speed priority metering, macro focusing, time delay, external flash activation and white point setting. A final option allows you to save current settings for the next shot only or as a default. Two further buttons control the optical zoom (38 to 114mm) and activate a display of the current settings.

A serial cable is provided to move images from the camera to a PC, and you can use either the supplied Agfa PhotoWise software or treat the camera as a TWAIN device to import images into your favourite graphics package. When viewing the images in PhotoWise, additional data is extracted from the JPEG file which includes not just the date and time but the camera shutter speed.

The image quality is excellent, and even in dull conditions without flash the camera produces a good spread of colours and brightness levels. Discovering the camera sometimes uses a 0.25 second shutter speed explains why some images appear more blurred than expected. In bright conditions though, the photographs are extremely sharp. The flash is much more powerful than its diminutive size would suggest, and indoor portraits were very evenly lit even from 15ft.

As with all digital cameras there's a delay after each photograph is taken while the image is saved. In its highest resolution, the ePhoto 1680 takes around eight seconds to save to the SmartMedia memory card, and there's no facility for a fast sequence of images to be captured and saved later. An on-screen progress bar shows you how long you have to wait.

Overall, the quality of the images produced and the range of user controls outweighs the Agfa ePhoto 1680's lack of optical viewfinder, although this can make taking pictures in very dark surroundings a bit hit and miss. If you can live with this, the Agfa is a great camera.