As digital cameras are relatively pricey pieces of kit, you'd be forgiven for resorting to a cheap 35mm snapper to take pictures at parties, in the pub or on the beach, where the risk of damaging your camera is relatively high.

Now, though, with digital camera manufacturers such as SiPix releasing products like the £50 Style Cam Groove, your digital camera need never leave your side again.

The camera is built around a 1.3megapixel CMOS sensor, but uses interpolation to achieve simulated 2megapixel images and offers video capture, audio recording and web cam options in addition to taking the more traditional still shots.

The unit itself is tiny and feels flimsy until you slot in the two AA batteries that power it. At this price there is no zoom or LCD, so all shots must be framed using the viewfinder.

A basic calculator-style screen at the back of the unit displays a list of camera modes and image settings, which must be scrolled through one at a time with multiple clicks of the power/mode button. There is a separate button to scroll through the basic flash modes.

With 16MB of internal memory, the SiPix can store only nine 1,600 x 1,200 pixel images, but up to 155 at its lowest resolution, so naturally it yielded the kind of image quality you'd expect from a £50 camera.

Our shots were grainy, the outlines of objects were indistinct and colours were washed out. Areas of highlight tended to be burnt-out and areas of shadow were very noisy.

At this price, this is only to be expected, but the unreliability of the bundled software was more of a concern. On several occasions we could not persuade our PCs to recognise the Style Cam Groove at all, which made downloading our images something of a challenge.

Contact: Jessops 0800 652 6400
www.jessops.com

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