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Product Description

A wearable camera--who'd have thought? The tiny 2.0-megapixel, 128MB Philips keyring camera is just that. While not the most stylish accessory one could want, the camera is tiny enough to carry conveniently or to conceal, and also small enough that users will frequently be met with "That's a camera?" upon taking it out to shoot a picture.

The best picture we took with the Philips Keyring camera. (See larger image.)

Because it's so easy to take anywhere, we tried taking pictures with it everywhere, with widely varying results. We concluded that it's perhaps best to think of this camera as something of a novelty item--not something you'd want to rely on for births, weddings, holidays, and so on, but something that's fun to have for taking quick, fun snapshots on the fly.

Our best results with this tiny device came happened while we were using it at a cafe: The sky was overcast, we were sitting in a window seat, and we snapped a picture of a friend who was facing the sun. When the camera was in our friend's hands, though, and it came time to snap a picture that was ever-so-slightly backlit, the results were much less exciting: A lot of dark and a lot of bright and not a lot in between.

This shot was framed very differently in the viewfinder.

And creative framing? Forget about it. With the camera back in our hands, we set about composing a picture of what we thought would include our friend, the windows behind her, and a beautiful piece of cake sitting on the table in front of her. Instead we got the photo you see at left.

A photo from sunrise in the mountains--nice, except that the climbers (circled) were meant to be in the center of the image.

In addition to problems with framing, which occurred frequently due to the camera's simple viewfinder and lack of LCD, we also found that with the camera's one-exposure-fits-all internal settings, we could never quite guess what our shutter speed was. Pictures with complex lighting--in the snow, at dusk, inside, in bright sunlight, mixed bright sunlight and deep shadows, etc.--tended to be muddy. They also tended to have a mysterious gradient effect, which could be a function of some problem with our particular sample.

But despite all this, we enjoyed using the camera and found that if we weren't precious about making every shot a keeper, we could enjoy the ease with which the camera could be pulled from a pocket or from around our neck and a nice moment captured almost instantly. It's almost a camera phone without the phone part--or perhaps in this case, like a mass storage drive that just happens to have a lens. Since the camera is charged and photos are downloaded via a capped USB interface, the camera can also be loaded up with 128MB of images or data for easy storage or transfer.

In summary, this is a handy, fun little camera, worth its price for the novelty factor but not a serious enough piece of equipment to be your main camera.--Sarah Sternau

Pros

• Tiny enough to be carried anywhere
• Just flip open the shutter and it's ready to go
• USB interface for photo transfer and recharging is extremely convenient

Cons

• Picture quality is low
• Focus, framing, and exposure are unpredictable
• Cover for USB interface is not attached to camera and is easy to lose

From the Manufacturer
Capture any action and emotion with the ultra small and sleek 128MB Digital Camera Key010. Snap up to 300 pictures at 2.0 Megapixels and share memories on your PC via Direct USB. Wear it on the go while making memories happen.

Ready to wear, Ready to go

• Fashionable neck-strap - wear it everywhere!
• Ultra lightweight, strong and durable magnesium body
• Small and wearable - weighing just 1.6 ounces

USB Plug & Play

• Direct USB for easy file transfers without cables!
• Direct battery recharge via USB

Your pictures, your data on the go - everyday

• USB mass storage to store and carry your data files
• Snap up to 300 quality 2 Megapixel pictures
• 128 MB built-in memory

good camera
Reviewer: Hugh Cooney

It is small, handy and decent quality, take your photos as if its a disposible camera (i.e. what u see through the lense is what you get!) and you will enjoy this camera.

Excellent Camera !
Reviewer: richb

I received my Key010 camera a little over a week ago and I have been more than pleased with it. I took pictures out in the sun and with overcast, even some inside with lights turned on, and all of them came out great. The colors and picture quality was better than I expected. I compared the pictures to my much larger one that takes 2meg pictures and this little one is equal to it. I even printed out on photo paper some 6"X8" prints and they look great. Sure it's not as high a quality as a much more expensive camera but the photo print are much better than from most cameras I have seen. When a picture is taken what you see in the lens finder is what you get. So it's not good for long distance. Overall I am impressed with it.

Good picture quality but some limitations
Reviewer: R. Sagar

I'm really torn with this product, because it's really nice to have, the picture quality is good, it's small and easy to carry around and it didn't cost too much. However, I think I would get more pictures with a real digital camera (including flash and LCD).

The upside is that the image quality is really good, it's easy to transfer the images to PC (as it goes straight in the USB slot and appears as a drive) and there's no worry about batteries as it's internal battery charges over USB.

The flaws are as follows:
- What appears in the viewfinder isn't always comletely in the image - chops peoples heads off on occasion for instance).
- No LCD to preview images - a big deal when it chops peoples heads off and you don't know!
- Doesn't work well in low light conditions
- Not clear if/when the image is taken

I think, if you have an extra $50, look for a real digital camera with zoom, flash and LCD, unless you really need the ultra-small formfactor of this device.

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