HP Photosmart R927

Despite the well-known instant gratification that digital photography offers, many manufacturers overlook one critical aspect: editing. Most cams can resize and recolor, but how many allow creative manipulation? Enter HP’s Photosmart R927, the latest entry in its R-series of cameras that helps you lose ten pounds—instantly! At least your photo can look that way with this camera’s Slimming effect.

The HP R927’s pedestrian form factor won’t win any design awards with its unremarkable finished metal look and somewhat bulky body, but curved edges provide a solid, comfortable grip. Dedicated buttons for on/off, playback, flash, and other options align the top of the camera. The setup is unusual but effective; everything is easy to reach with the forefingers and nonintrusive. Freed from a jumble of buttons, the back of the camera has plenty of real estate for housing an intuitive two-button navigation scheme and the massive three-inch LCD.

The roomy screen grants a spacious view of a subject and makes targeting and shooting a breeze, once you’re accustomed to the location of the shutter button. Unlike most cameras that have the trigger located directly on top, it’s positioned slightly toward the camera’s face; a video button is in the normal shooting location. We experienced a few instances of accidental filming, but after five minutes of playtime, the layout felt far superior to the knob-turning and menu-surfing most cameras require to activate video.

The presets contain an auto-adjust feature that performed admirably in both bright and dim locales, making for clean photos. Colors remained crisp, and the lens brought out small details in objects. The 8-MP pictures came out very well, but the VGA video was grainier than we expected. The most annoying aspect of shooting was the grating noise the R927 made when we were adjusting or focusing the camera. It was much harsher than the usual swirling sounds heard in most cameras.

The HP R927’s biggest selling point is its unique photo editing features. They won’t replace Adobe Photoshop, but photographers can pimp photos with a number of in-camera tweaks from the Design Gallery. We applied the Cartoon setting to a laptop, and after an approximate four-second load time it was transformed into a highly stylized, comic book version, complete with sketchy pen strokes and bright colors. We could increase or decrease the intensity of the stylization with the arrow keys.

Slimming is guaranteed to please as it compresses an image, giving subjects an overall thinner appearance. Like the Cartoon feature, the Slimming feature offers different effect levels, but on the higher settings people began to look less like themselves and more like funhouse mirror reflections. Navigating the menus was a cinch thanks to a sensible layout, handy text descriptions, and thumbnail examples of the options’ functions. All of these helpful cues will keep your eye on the LCD and not on the Quick Start Guide.

An invaluable feature for vacations or sporting events is the R927’s Panoramic mode that allows users to take two to five shots from left to right (or vice versa) and stitch them together into one picture. We found this mode remarkably simple to use; even novices will be able to snap terrific wide-angle shots effortlessly.

The most problematic aspect of this camera is the door that covers the battery and SD Card slot. It has a switch that is insanely difficult to move with a thumb swipe; to open it required actually digging a fingernail into the switch and pushing it over. At least your battery will never fall out while taking a picture.

Priced at $399, the HP Photosmart R927 may be out of the range of the budget buyer, but it is a worthy investment for someone looking for a camera that’s easy to use. It also produces excellent photos, even if sometimes they’re a little less than real.