The package is fairly surprising for the price and encompasses 4 Mega Pixels, a 4x Optical Zoom, 60 Second video recording with sound and voice image stamping.

Fairly small for its size at around the same size as your average APS camera, it fits snugly into even the smallest of hands and is weighted perfectly for use in the hand and not on a tripod. (I will come to this later)

Made from Magnesium Alloy like is big brothers the DImage 5 & 7 makes the camera feel plasticy but this material makes it both light and durable, although I wouldn’t like to see what damage is done if you drop it.

The camera itself is a fairly simple affair, with 5 buttons, a control wheel and a directional joy pad which controls the zoom and menu features. Having used the Dimage 7, I did think the directional joy pad felt a little cheap when compared to the one on the Dimage 7. The S404 s controls being made from rubber and the Dimage 7’s being made from Magnesium alloy. I would have liked to see this carried over as the price difference couldn’t be so huge!

The other buttons on the camera are the shutter release button (takes the picture), the Bin/Quick View button, (removes a picture/View a picture after taking it), the mode selector button (switches between the modes of the camera displaying these on the LCD next to it) and the menu button (brings the menu up on the LCD screen on the back of the camera).

The LCD s on the camera allow you to configure the different settings on the camera. The one on the top displays the current status of the camera, such as battery life remaining and the number of images available on you memory card.

On the back of the camera the screen can be used as a view finder in camera mode, a view screen in playback mode and when the menu button is pressed the cameras image setup menu is displayed. Turning the settings dial to setup will also display the camera setup menu on this screen.

On the side of the camera is a little door which when the release catch is pressed will open. This houses the Compact Flash memory slot, which is of the Type 1 variety, and the connector for the PC connector cable (supplied), Also in here is the connection for the TV out, which will play back pictures, video and sound to your TV when connected. This cable is also supplied.

On the underside of the camera is the battery housing, surprisingly enough where you put the batteries!. This has a very sturdy locking mechanism on it, which would prevent the batteries leaving the camera of their own accord or accidentally being knocked out.

On the bottom of the camera is a tripod mounting, however this is in the corner of the camera and would make tripod mounting very awkward as the balance of the camera is not at its centre.

So, what makes the S404 a good camera?

The Dimage S404 main feature is that it will take pictures at 4 megapixels, this gives and image size of 1720 x 1500 which is more than adequate for the average home user and should produce excellent printed images at any thing up to A4 size. Larger images are possible but the image is best suited to A4.

The 4x Zoom is excellent on the S404 although the automatic controls are a bit slow. Press the + and - buttons on the dial on the back of the camera and the camera zooms quite merrily in and out through its 6 different positions. With this is the Auto Focus which does a good job, quickly, but only works when the capture button is pressed. This can be switched off, as there is a manual focus ring around the bottom of the lens.

If you wish to get a little bit closer to the action there is also a 2x digital zoom built into the camera, but this degrades the quality of the image slightly. The switching from Auto to manual is done by turning the controls dial from auto to manual.

When to turn the camera on it produces a cute little sound from the internal speaker to alert you that it has been switched on. The camera also produces a little noise when it takes a picture and when the camera is switched off.

Other features of the camera are the ability to take 60 seconds of video with audio, however this is quite memory hungry and you would need a large specification memory card to take lots of these.

Also, there is a function to add a voice tag to any images you take. If set the camera will prompt you to speak when an image is taken. This then adds the voice tag to the image. Nice, but alas it uses shed loads of crucial memory space.

Overall, I would highly recommend this little camera, It’s fairly cheap at around £400, packed full of useful features and its so easy a monkey such as myself had no problem learning its features in less than a few hours.

The images that it produces are really good although I would recommend that you run your images through the colour correction software included with the camera as the Dimage colour range is slightly wider than RGB so the colours need to be corrected slightly. However this does enhance the images so its worth doing.

If you’re after a cheapish!! Digital SLR type camera then this could be for you.

Links
» Digital Photography Review (Superb Site) - http://www.dpreview.com/

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