The Style Cam Blink camera.

Note: With technology being updated so quickly nowadays, this review written in Nov 2003 is rather outdated, but may be of interest to someone.
Additional note: It is still working as of April 2007, so should be considered reliable.

I purchased this little camera about a year ago, the main reason I wanted it was because I often take pictures when I am out cycling, I did use a tiny film camera, it was basically just a film cartridge with a lens, but the view finder broke and I needed a replacement. All the normal camera's I looked at were too big and heavy, unless you paid a lot of money, which I didn't want to do, as things often get broken while cycling. ( Not that I fall off a lot! )

So having seen various small digital camera's in the Gadget Shop, but still being undecided, I did a search on the internet and found a couple of sites that hosted pictures taken with the various camera's.
From the pictures it was obvious that the picture quality was better on the Blink than the L'espion, so later that week I became the proud owner of a Style Cam Blink.

Unpacking the camera at home, it came with a neck strap in a rather girlie sparkle finish, that was discarded in the bits and pieces box in the spare room. More usefully it also came with a weighted stand so that it could be used as a web cam, a USB cable was also supplied and a battery, manual and software CD.
Consulting the very good manual, I began to install the software, this consists of the drivers for the camera, which you must install and its also a good idea to install PhotoImpression by Arcsoft. The camera comes with a lot of other software toys for playing about with your pictures, but after one or two goes you will probably never use them again and they are fairly greedy of disc space, so unless you enjoy grafting your head on other peoples bodies or making montages I would not really recommend them.

The Arcsoft program VideoImpression is included to enable you to use the camera as a web cam, but I found this bit of software rather unsatisfactory and used a freeware web cam program I found on the internet.
After installing all the software you want, you connect the USB cable to the camera and then the computer, ( Don't do it the other way round as Windows gets upset! ) Windows will then search for the drivers and mumble to itself for a minute or so, after that you are ready to go.
If you leave the camera connected to the computer you can use it as a web cam, it seems to do a pretty good job, the picture is reasonably clear and updates fairly fast. Although I have only seen a couple of other web cams operating, it seemed to give a picture of equal quality, as I said before the only let down was the software provided, but swapping to another program greatly improved the ability to record from the camera. ( I believe the software was called SpyCast Webcam Studio but I can't be certain as I have not bothered to reinstall the web cam feature after doing a Windows reinstall. ) The small stand that comes with the camera is quite stable and sat on top of my monitor with no problems.

Naturally after you grow bored of the gimmicks the main use of the camera will be to take pictures, so how does it fair at that?
First a few specs, the maximum resolution is 640*480, which gives you a hundred picture capacity, you can also use the lower resolution of 320*240 but the pictures are poor. The camera gives the best results outside in fairly bright conditions, but it can be used indoors if you put all the lights on and hold the camera very steady as there is no flash.
There is also a video setting, this takes a stream of low quality pictures, that are then stitched together to make an AVI file, again this needs very bright conditions and a steady hand to work well, it is also best if the object you are filming is not moving too fast, a tortoise or snail is ideal!

For normal outside pictures the results ( Depending on how fussy you are. ) are not bad, its best with close up objects, rather than landscapes, the photos on my pictures page are taken with the Blink and then enhanced with DCE Enhance.

The camera has a small LCD display that shows what mode it is in and allows you to delete pictures if you wish, there is also a battery power indicator, which is essential as the camera eats batteries very,very fast. Although the instructions say that you lose your pictures if the battery is removed, I found you can swap batteries and retain your pictures if you are quick about it.
Because I carry the camera about with me in my pocket all the time, I made it a pouch to protect it out of an old wallet, which is just big enough to hold the camera and one battery. And then if I wish to take a photo I just load the battery take the picture and then download the picture onto the computer when I get home.

Downloading the photo's is very easy, just open PhotoImpression and select the camera, thumbnails of your pictures are then downloaded and you can choose which you wish to save or discard. You can also enhance or print the pictures using PhotoImpression, although as I said earlier DCE Enhance ( Which you will find on my Graphics & Photos page ) is better for enhancing purposes.

The Blink has now been superseded by the Snap ( That is what is in the picture. ) which is basically the same camera but with a capacitor to help when the battery fails and better photo registration, ( Whatever that means. ) although its not as good looking.
The price is £40 or $67 or 57 Euros.
For another £10 you can also get the Groove which comes with a flash and better picture quality and would probably be the one I would go for if I needed a replacement, although I would also look at the L'espion Enigma 1.3 which has a similar spec.

So in summary if you only take snaps and are not too demanding of quality, you will probably enjoy using the Blink or Snap, but if you are looking for high quality you will be disappointed. Used for fun as it is intended, it is a great little camera at a great price and I am very pleased with mine. The cameras only serious fault is the battery life, but this can be overcome with a little forethought.

Rob Goldfish Web Site

Copyright 2005 Rob Goldfish.