HP Photosmart M307

245

Comments

  • I told you these things don't work at all with "regular" batteries. I have a similar Samsung camera and it does exactly the same thing with regular batteries. You MUST use the high energy variety or the higher MAh rated rechargeable.

    The shit on the shelf at Walmart is designed for remote controls, LED flashlights, and other low-drain stuff.

    Here:
    https://www.microcenter.com/product/481628/8-hour-4-position-aa-aaa-nimh-battery-charger-includes-4-x-aa-nimh-2400mah-batteries
    https://www.microcenter.com/product/481627/4-pack-aa-rechargeable-batteries-2,400mah

    Get one of these and with only light use they will last several years of recharging.

  • edited April 2019

    @SomeGuy said:
    I told you these things don't work at all with "regular" batteries. I have a similar Samsung camera and it does exactly the same thing with regular batteries. You MUST use the high energy variety or the higher MAh rated rechargeable.

    The shit on the shelf at Walmart is designed for remote controls, LED flashlights, and other low-drain stuff.

    Damn those fucking batteries.

    Anyway I bought 2 more AA batteries and tried to take a picture via the internal memory as quick as possible, got it successfully and imported it to the computer.


    3 Megapixels and the image looks pretty good actually.

    Here's the link to the video.

    https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/486583888613998592/563395923586056202/IM000228.MPG

    Gotta tell you that this is a classic low-spec MPG video, makes sense for a camera in 2004. The specs are kinda average of 2004. 3 megapixels and 240p video.

  • Your lens needs cleaning. It's hazy.

    And judging how it's default center weight contrast autofocus sensing, you need a sharp detail where you point the af spot. I can tell as nothing is in focus, hard to tell image quality.

  • edited April 2019

    @yourepicfailure said:
    Your lens needs cleaning. It's hazy.

    And judging how it's default center weight contrast autofocus sensing, you need a sharp detail where you point the af spot. I can tell as nothing is in focus, hard to tell image quality.

    I cannot do that, as I don't know how to set focus on this thing, and when I try, the camera will die midway of me trying to find the damn thing.

    Well, the AA batteries issue pissed off somehow, don't know and why, but I didn't care. So I decided take some more pictures (and videos.)

    1 picture and 1 video got corrupted because of the fucking camera dying while being on, causing the memory to not write them properly.

    I took pictures, quickly moved them to my computer, swapped the batteries, blah blah blah... and we are here.

    Here is the photo I took of some flowers, (without the flash)

    Well, I thank you all through this journey getting to camera to work and making it take some pictures since 2005! (The last time this camera took a picture was from 2012.), at the end, I didn't get the SD Card that I said but the internal memory can do the job for me. This is a not well-known camera too, so it makes me happy to see this camera work and do what it was made for it to do, apart from frustrating me with its fucking battery issues... Thank you everyone for helping me accomplish my goal! <3

    With the internal 16mb of memory, this camera can hold around 15-16 pictures or 2 minutes worth of video.

  • Oh and I was right, obviously this camera doesn't support higher class SD Cards over 2gb, when I inserted one in, it said "UNSUPPORTED CARD".

  • Your camera looks real nice for pictures and video. :)

  • Try doing a few more tests in daylight with the highest quality compression. I'd like to see a bit more of this camera's capability.

    FYI, my tip on the sensor was to help achieve a better focus and see if your lens needed cleaning. Contrast autofocus sensing (what most point and shoots and phone camera use) is real dodgy and is hit or miss. Why I recommended something with sharp detail or change. Rather than a large, flat & low detail area.

  • @yourepicfailure said:
    Try doing a few more tests in daylight with the highest quality compression. I'd like to see a bit more of this camera's capability.

    Sure thing, here you go. The weather was great today anyway, so this made for a great oppurtunity.

    These are outside shots aswell.
    The image is little dark because the camera adjusted to the bright conditions outside.

    Image #2, The camera shoots directly at the sun.

    @retropc said:
    Your camera looks real nice for pictures and video. :)

    Don't know if that sarcastic or not, but thanks!

  • edited April 2019

    @Windows99SE said:

    @retropc said:
    Your camera looks real nice for pictures and video. :)

    Don't know if that sarcastic or not, but thanks!

    Sorry for sounding sarcastic. I was trying not to.

  • edited April 2019

    The camera should not be underexposing that much in daylight. That is almost 4 stops underexposed. Something is wrong with the light metering system.

    It appears the right amount of light is making the camera over-compensate incorrectly. But since that canera appears to not allow changing aperture and shutter, I'd check iso and ev compensation. Make iso 100 and ev should be 0.

  • @yourepicfailure said:
    The camera should not be underexposing that much in daylight. That is almost 4 stops underexposed. Something is wrong with the light metering system.

    Yeah, I think the settings in the camera were tampered or the settings were default. Well, I don't think it is a huge problem for me.

    The camera had alot of potential to be successful though. I think the one of the problems is primarily the batteries. And at the price of between 150-250 dollars, it would be a great price back then. I think by 2004, cameras costed more than 500 dollars. Don't know if that is true, but that is my assumption. And with 3.2MP and 240p video (which most cameras had), it is good quality (for the time).

  • edited April 2019

    Did it still work after pointing it at the sun? That will damage many digital cameras.

  • edited April 2019

    CMOS sensors are immune to solar damage. The worst that happens is the light meter gets jinxed for a bit until a power cycle in the case of SLRs. But rare with modern meters. But with point and shoots, metering is performed through the sensor, which is immune.
    CCD sensors are more prone to persistence from the charge build-up, but will dissipate over time and be gone through a poweroff cycle or two.

    So if you're using a traditional mirror DSLR, you'll do more damage to your eye than the camera. Point and shoot/mirrorless, turn it off and back on and the sensor will lose any persistence if affected at all.

    Tube optics will be wrecked by the sun. But they aren't in mainstream consumer use anymore so that...

    Anyways, here is an image taken at around a similar time, similar condition for comparison:

    From the d2x. I resized 50% because huge png. No jpegs allowed.
    I got it in 2006, but was released 2004 a little later than yours. But a msrp 4.000 euro price tag (~$6,500) and being a pro oriented camera, not a fair competitor.

  • @SomeGuy said:
    Did it still work after pointing it at the sun? That will damage many digital cameras.

    How so? I've pointed a digital camera at the sky near the sun a few times before, and it still works fine.

  • Well, one I have seen will always think you are taking a picture in the dark and vastly over adjust. I heard a number of people damaged cameras trying to take pictures of that solar eclipse a few years back.

  • @SomeGuy said:
    Did it still work after pointing it at the sun? That will damage many digital cameras.

    No, it is still working fine.

    @yourepicfailure said:
    From the d2x.
    I got it in 2006, but was released 2004 a little later than yours. But a msrp 4.000 euro price tag (~$6,500) and being a pro oriented camera, not a fair competitor.

    That's nice. And yeah you are right, it ain't fair. That is also quite impressive for a camera in 2004/2006. Because most consumer digital cameras were priced just under/over 1000 dollars and they were 6 megapixels.

  • edited April 2019

    @Someguy,
    Those are extreme cases where someone pointed their camera at the sun for a prolonged, extreme time. In most cases the aperture blades melted unless they used live picture, then they melted their sensors.

    In those cases it was not the large amount of light that caused damage, but the large amount of energy radiated by the sun within the non-visible spectrum that physically destroyed components aside from te sensor. In contrast to tube optics damaged not only by those invisible spectrums but can be damaged by large amount of visible light as well.

    So yes, the sun can damage the camera if you point it at the sun for an extreme length of time trying to get a perfect picture. But simply pointing at it, snapping a picture and driving on will not. Tube optics, instant damage.

    @Windows99SE
    But the image does help to show how your image is lacking saturation and and is too dim. Don't bother comparing detail level, only color and exposure.

  • The MicroSD card actually worked so that saved me the trouble of me buying an SD card to insert.

  • According to the camera, the 2gb (micro)SD card can contain:
    ~2000 high-definition photos
    3.25 hours of video.

    That is pretty impressive.

  • Did you ever get batteries that work well enough to warrant such capacity?
    Here are what I use in my film camera setup:

    The Energizers are good for burst draw, e.g. fire flash then the transistors pull large current from battery to recharge capacitors then back to little to no draw. I use them in my speedlight and they last for over a hundred blinks. Hell, the last time I recharged those batteries was three months ago, and they're still working. Alkalines push maybe 50 or 60 if I'm conservative and don't leave it on standby.
    Great if you plan to be firing flash a lot or periodically using the camera then turning off, then back on later. Not good for recording something with video, or slow long draws.

    The x2 batteries are much higher capacity than the Energizers. But they don't like quick burst use. Rather they are great when used in the camera where it constantly draws a steady current and maybe a little more from time to time to maybe wind film. So good if you plan to go videoing stuff or leaving the camera on during a tour so you can quickly pick up and snap a picture.

    Alkaline batteries are great if you want to keep paying battery makers your hard-earned money and also pay for a chance for a destructive leak during the battery lifetime.

  • Found a way to extend the battery life on the camera, since the screen contributes to the camera dying fast, I found on the settings to set the settings on the brightness to low.

    Sorry for bump by the way.

  • Bumped again. Well the screen thing didn't work, but I achieved something I wanted since making this post. Making this camera work. Well this is the end of the post... Making something work again since they were abandoned makes me very happy. And this isn't a well-known camera, either. There are few documentations and videos talking about this camera. Once again, thank you everyone for everything.

  • edited July 2019

    Update 7/13/2019. The last update, yesterday finally got me some GOD DAMN rechargables, and now can last even much longer! The rechargables lasted longer than any alkalines I ever put. Thanks everyone for telling me this, and I am leaving this last post to end it here, also

    @yourepicfailure said:
    And judging how it's default center weight contrast autofocus sensing, you need a sharp detail where you point the af spot. I can tell as nothing is in focus, hard to tell image quality.

    And no, it isn't possible to set the focus on this thing, (with the brand new rechargables) I checked every setting on the camera and I didn't find one that adjusted the focus on the camera...

    Also forgot to mention that nowadays that rechargables are so fucking hard to get on stores, they all sell the same shitty alkalines. I should be lucky to get them...

  • Well that was a suggestion to help your camera focus on something better. Most cheap P&S cameras that era use that as a de facto method. Some pricier ones had multi-point, and most ones today have it as well.

  • @yourepicfailure said:
    Well that was a suggestion to help your camera focus on something better. Most cheap P&S cameras that era use that as a de facto method. Some pricier ones had multi-point, and most ones today have it as well.

    Huh. Never knew that.

  • edited July 2019

    Now that I have successfully restored the camera to a working state, I did some digging on the internet all about this camera (and with my findings while playing with the camera) and here is my conclusion to shed some light on this camera that probably no one as ever known or heard of.

    HP Photosmart M307:

    • Has a max. resolution of 3.2 MP. (pro)
    • Was announced in August of 2004.
    • Costed around $100 - $200 US dollars. (pro)
    • About the batteries, do NOT use alkaline batteries on this. They're so shit. I used alkaline batteries and it sucked. Use rechargables instead. You don't wanna go through the same fucking pain as I did. (con)
    • Video recordings on this camera is 320x240, MPEG-1 encoding @ 1000kbps, 64kbps mono audio @ 32kHz. (pro)
    • DOES have focus. However you have to lightly press down the capture button. (pro)
    • If you are outdoors on a sunny day and you bring this camera with you, the sun can make it hard to see the viewfinder. (con)
    • A compact camera that fits in your hand and isn't big and bulky. (pro)
    • The only way you can get images/video out of this camera is via USB or SD/MMC. Unless you have a SD Card or a USB cable, you are screwed. Oh, also doesn't have Bluetooth either. (con)
    • Has a crappy internal storage that can hold a couple pictures or short video clips. So in order to take pictures or record video you MUST need an SD card. (con)
    • Other photo resolutions are 1280x960 and 640x480. This can be used if you are running low on storage space. (pro)
    • Has only a year warranty.

    The cons of the camera are outweighing the pros. Probably made sense as to why this camera never went successful.

    And yeah. All of the information of this camera that you need to know. (and the camera that has pretty amount sparse information on the internet.) So far. Also thank you people for helping me do this.

    Here is something amazing that I want to share with y'all. So while I was digging thru the 'net I encountered a ebay-like site that was selling this camera and... it costed $1,100 US DOLLARS!!! Yeah.

  • edited July 2019

    When you plug it to the USB, does it just appear as a USB mass storage device? I've found that beats the heck out of anything that requires proprietary software. If so, any OS that supports OS and mass storage devices will work and should continue to do so indefinitely. Wireless always seems subject to constant change and security problems.

    The batteries still beat the hell out of anything with proprietary or non-replaceable batteries. Unfortunately most people have gotten used to just throwing away entire devices when the battery dies. I'm surprised people these days don't throw away their entire house when a light bulb burns out. (How many consumertards does it take to change a lightbulb?...) Typical stores don't care about selling things that actually work, they want you coming back for moar moar moar. Places like Microcenter have to carry the right thing because they get the few customers that actually need stuff to work right.

    I assume you mean it has no manual focus. My Samsung is also like that. I eventually figured out that partially holding down the take picture button for a few seconds until it makes a "good beep" sound does additional auto focusing and red-eye control. Not obvious.

    These kinds of cameras were not really intended to use their built-in storage. SD cards were pricey, so they wanted to keep costs low by making that a separate purchase. The internal memory is ONLY so the camera can claim to be functional when one is not installed.

    One year warranty, but it has outlasted a typical "smart"phone.

  • edited July 2019

    @SomeGuy said:
    When you plug it to the USB, does it just appear as a USB mass storage device? I've found that beats the heck out of anything that requires proprietary software. If so, any OS that supports OS and mass storage devices will work and should continue to do so indefinitely.

    When I plugged it in the USB, it shows the storage of the camera, internal storage if no SD card is present. Also you are right, it defeats the purpose of having software installed for the camera. So the USB just makes the software intended for the camera completely useless if the USB can already do what the software can do easily.

    @SomeGuy said:
    The batteries still beat the hell out of anything with proprietary or non-replaceable batteries. Unfortunately most people have gotten used to just throwing away entire devices when the battery dies. I'm surprised people these days don't throw away their entire house when a light bulb burns out.

    Oh god... And yeah, people throw away their devices when the batteries die. Why? Because people don't know how devices or batteries work! And they don't care at all. So if the batteries die, people think their devices die and guess what? It ends up in the garbage!

    @SomeGuy said:
    One year warranty, but it has outlasted a typical "smart"phone.

    lol. Probably true.

  • edited July 2019

    What OS are you using? On Windows Vista and above it will rely on MTP instead of USB mass-storage class support. Windows 9x and 2000 don't really have MTP support available (2000 with WMP10 technically yes, but I had issues).

    What probably plays a factor in killing lots of battery-powered devices nowadays is the shitty non-rechargable Duracell batteries. They have leaked in four different devices of mine in the past couple of years and the only brand to leak at all!!!!

  • edited July 2019

    Correction: I am retarded, there WAS a focus on this camera, you just have to lightly press down the capture button, gets a pretty good focus. I wonder if you can do the same with the record button. Also taking zoomed in shots are difficult if your camera is not standing on some sort of ground or a mounted tripod. Also the way that the M307 zooms in 18x is pretty smart. It zooms in by zooming in to the view. For example, if the zoom exceeds 3x, then the camera will show (2.9MP, 2.8MP, 2.7MP, etc.). Just decreases the resolution area. I wonder if the focus is mentioned anywhere in it's manual.

This discussion has been closed.