Sakar's Digital Concepts 5.1 Megapixel Camera: A Product to Avoid

Sakar International (Edison, Jew Jersey) is selling a series of low-cost cameras. We tried their Digital Concepts 5.1 Megapixel Camera that we purchased for about $70 plus the cost of a 1 GB SD card. Looked nice, but proved to be horribly inadequate.

Very poor interface, very limited control over images. When you take a picture, you have to hold the camera still for over 2 seconds as the screen goes black and tells you to wait - but you don't know when the photo gets taken or what exactly you're photographing. Very hard to capture a moment, very likely to result in blurring and low quality.

Worst of all is the flash. The camera overexposes terribly when flash is used. I don't think the flash is too bright, but the camera seems to not adjust its exposure time to compensate for the presence of flash. I called tech support a couple times to address this issue. First they said they were too busy and would call me back within 24 hours. Almost 36 hours later, no one had called back. Then I tried again and finally reached someone. They told me that the camera just needed to be reset to the factory default. To do this, just take the batteries out and wait 30 minutes (i.e., go away and try calling us again later). He assured me that "everything will be alright" if I do that. I didn't believe it because we had that problem right out of the box with factory settings - and there are so few settings that it's hard to imagine what could be incorrectly set. So I asked to speak to a supervisor. When I reached the supervisor, he asked what kind of memory card I had in the camera. When I said it was a 1 GB card, he said that was the problem. The camera can only take SD cards up to 512 MB. Again, I was incredulous. First, how could that cause the problem? He said the bigger card put too much stress on the camera and made it unable to process the image properly. That sounds crazy. And second, I pointed out that their own printed materials state that it can take a 1 GB card, and pointed specifically to page 3 in the user manual, for example. Oh yes, they are aware of that typo and are working to fix it. Really?? So he said that all I needed to was run off to the store and buy another card with 512 mB or less and all would be rosy. I also asked why the first tech support guy gave me a different story. "Oh, he didn't know you had a 1 GB card." Right. Well, I borrowed a 256 MB SD card and found out, as I expected, that it made no difference. The camera grotesquely overexposes with flash regardless with 256 mB cards as well as 1 GB cards. And now that it has been over 30 minutes with the batteries out, I've also tested the initial "cure" and found, naturally, that resetting the camera doesn't solve its overexposure problem.

Others at Amazon.com have reported this overexposure problem, so it's not just me. But tech support doesn't seem to understand the problem and certainly not the cure. 

Even without flash, image quality is poor. Stick with your cheap cell phone camera or buy a real camera. This one doesn't even provide the basic functionality that you expect in a cheapy like this. And their tech support, if you can reach them, won't be of any help. Stay away.

Cheap doesn't have to mean ridiculously poor.

On the plus side, it is small enough to fit into a pocket. For best results, keep it there.

Sakar, you've got some serious product quality problems. I hope you can get them fixed quickly before you lose whatever customer base you have.  

tags: photography  

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