NHJ Snap! Spycam Review

The camera features an internal, non-replacable battery, and 8 megs of memory. This is enough to capture about twenty-five 640x480 images, or around 90 if you cut the resolution in half. The file size of the high-quality images does not get much bigger than 40 or 50 kilobytes. The only concern with this set-up is that the pictures vanish when the battery dies! I charged up the battery for about an hour and shot all 25 of the "hi-res" images, and the batteries seemed to hold out just fine. The camera shuts off after 20 seconds, just to be safe.

The back of the camera only has a miniscule lcd status display, but the viewfinder is surprisingly accurate. The camera also does some neat stuff, like taking multiple exposures, timed exposures, and also doubles as a webcam! I hooked it up to my computer for a minute, and it seemed to work for live video, though I am sure there are better choices for not much more money.

I really enjoyed shooting with this, as the pictures are almost instantaneous. Most digital camera have to think about it for a while after you hit the shutter, but these snapped right away, as long as you remembered to turn the camera "on" first. It even comes with a chain to let you wear the camera around your neck, which made it really easy to take pictures on the fly. On top of that, it looks more like a gaudy piece of jewlery than an actual camera! Guess few people would be threatened by a camera this size.

Here are some of the better shots I took today. I didn't bother cropping them, or try to sharpen them up even, since they have a certain dream-like quality that doesn't seem to like being manipulated after the fact. The pictures aren't all that clear, and get downright blurry around the edges, but for the price alone this camera is a no-brainer, just for the novelty if nothing else.