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“As far as I know the Nisis QP3 Pen camera is currently...”

written by Lex. on 05/10/2002

Good Points
Very small and light, yet high resolution sensor; great picture quality, adjustable focus, flash memory for pictures.

Bad Points
Not suitable for low light, slow shutter speed, battery hungry, loud beeping sound, no Mac support from the manufacturer.

General Comments
As far as I know the Nisis QP3 Pen camera is currently the only camera with such an impressive ratio of megapixels versus device size. You can take excellent pictures with it, if two essential conditions are met:

1. There must be enough light: there is no flash and the sensor does not perform well under low lighting conditions. The minimum is about the light from a 60W bulb at 1m distance.

2. You must hold the camera still: the sensor 'scans' the entire image when taking a picture and this takes around 1/8sec. If you move, the image will be both smeared and warped. When using it as a camera, it's best to fix it into its support, or move very slowly.



The lens is adjustable for distances between infinity and 40cm. Unlike many other tiny cameras, the quality of the lens is very good and does not show the typical spherical aberrations in the image corners.



The camera has separate (fixed) storage for images and movies, 16MB each. The image memory is flash, so no worries when removing the batteries. The movie memory, however, appears to be SDRAM, because the movies are erased when removing the batteries.



The loud beeping sound when it's turned on/off or when images are taken could be annoying. This is not optional, making it not a very inconspicuous 'spycam'. (I managed to open the camera and solder a resistor to the buzzer to reduce the sound, but don't try this at home unless you have a lot of experience with opening tiny electrical devices. Of course this voids any warranty.)



The power consumption is about the same as a flashlight, and you can't turn the camera off yourself (it shuts down after draining power for an extra 60 seconds after the last action). Connect the USB cord whenever possible, because it will then draw power from the USB port, saving the batteries. I also recommend removing the batteries whenever you can (mind the movie SDRAM!) and only putting them back when you're about to take a picture.



There is no support for Mac OS, but the included software works with VirtualPC. The camera will soon be supported by "macam" for OS X (see the VersionTracker site). At this moment it can already download the images.



Overall I would say that this is a great gadget to take with you all day so you can capture those unexpected moments without the burden of a large camera. The high image resolution is really unique for a camera of this size.