Rating: 
Summary: Noise and focus problems...
Review: After doing a lot of research and reading the rave reviews of this camera, I was surprised and disappointed at the resulting photos produced by the R707. This is the first digital camera I've owned, and my goal was to replace my very generic film camera with something a little more high-tech. It was still very important to me to have high-quality prints, and after having seen good results from a 3MP professional camera, I figured a 5MP point-and-shoot model would do the trick.
Over the course of a month of holiday photos, I found that my indoor photos consistently had specks of noise in darker areas. These weren't terribly noticeable in my 4x6 prints, but were obvious on screen and I feared they would appear more clearly in any enlargements. I tried using the various adaptive lighting features to no avail. In fact, they often made the speck effect worse.
I also had some mis-focus problems in darker rooms - some of which were not really obvious from the viewfinder and so I didn't realize the photos were out of focus until I tried printing them. I highly suggest dpreview.com to view samples of photos and to read a very thorough review - apparently the noise and focus problems are known issues with this particular camera.
In addition, I got about three times as much red eye from this camera as I did with my film camera and there were a few photos where the flash created ugly bright white spots in people's eyes that were impossible to correct electronically.
On the positive side, the camera has been very easy to work with and the battery seems to have a nice long life. I particularly loved the camera's pocket size and smooth feel, which is what ultimately sold me on the R707 over the Canon A95, since I wanted to use it for travelling.
However, to me, the picture quality is the most important thing. As much as I wanted to like the R707, it's now in a box back to Amazon, and it seems I'll be sticking to film a little while longer.
Rating: 
Summary: Great in low light
Review: After reading through a few other reviews I thought I'd mention something I haven't noticed anyone else talking about with the R707. I've owned mine for a couple months now, and put it through its paces on a recent tour of Europe. I used the camera in many cathedrals and such, where flash photography is inappropriate. However, when the camera is held perfectly steady (such as rested somewhere or on a tripod), it can take some absolutely incredible low-light pictures without flash. It uses long exposures - my longest was 8 seconds - but the results can be outstanding. Using the flash in low-light changes the picture considerably, tending to hide the background and mute colors even with adaptive lighting, but if the camera can remain steady, I noticed virtually no problems with focusing and consistently got crisp, clear, even vivid pictures after 3- to 4-second exposures on average without flash. The camera is more sensitive to movement while taking low-light pictures, even with flash. This can make it appear to have trouble focusing when it is simply motion blurring a bit. And on rare occasions the camera can't find a focal object, you can still manually focus for clear pictures.
I could go on about this camera, but most of the rest I'd have to say has been said in other reviews. It is definitely a worthy purchase for amateur photographers, although people seriously into photography may find even the many manual options such as control over F-stop this camera has to be insufficient. The camera does have its shortcomings, as does every consumer digital camera I've seen so far, but I'd definitely place it among the top.
Rating: 
Summary: Taking it back
Review: As a serious amateur photographer, I have resisted switching to digital for a while, but decided to make the jump. After reading all the reviews, I bought this camera. What a disappointment, while it has a lot of bells and whistles, it doesn't have a very good focus or color saturation. I'm still going to try and go digital, but will stick with a camera company, like Nikon or Olympus, that know how to make lenses and take pictures. All the computer tricks in the world, can't make up for a poorly focused picture.
Rating: 
Summary: LOVE IT!
Review: First, I am no expert photographer. I am your average person who loves to take photos of family gatherings, while on vacation, etc. I've used several digital cameras, this is the first I have purchased.
After only having it for one weekend....WOW! It is so easy to use! You don't get lost in the menus trying to make adjustments, change settings, etc. I could figure it out without even opening the User's Manual. I love that there isn't the dial-style mechanism for changing settings....just a few well-placed and easy to use buttons. We've tried recording a few short video and audio pieces and they were great. Of course, one must keep in mind that this is not a camcorder. The pictures we took came out FANTASTIC!
This camera is also very comfortable to hold. We did a great deal of research before buying, and we considered a couple of Sony models. To me, they just felt awkward and I have rather small hands.
We also wanted a camera with a lithium-ion battery. We did not want to deal with AA batteries that would have to be replaced non-stop. I would much rather spend $50 on an extra lithium battery to start than to always be carrying around AAs.
One final point; this model was rated a Consumer Reports Best Buy in their November 2004 issue. It was the only 4-5 megapixel camera that got that rating out of about 40 different cameras. I think they are right!
I would highly recommend this camera to just about anyone!!
Rating:
Summary: HP Delivers with the R707
Review: HP finally delivers a Camera that puts themselves above the crowd. I've been a fan of HP for a long time and the HP R707 is a big jump in quality from their previous cameras. The first thing I noticed was the speed. Everything from taking pictures to navigating the menus was lightning fast. HP has also packed the camera with great software. Built into the camera are features for removing red eye, making panoramic scenes, adjusting bad lighting in pictures...ect. The camera also does not use double A batteries, which I always burned through on my previous cameras. I was able to use the camera continuously for about two hours constantly using the flash and lcd screen with the lithium-ion batteries.I had no problems with the software and the camera was synced in under 10 minutes. I really like the Arcsoft panoramic maker. I give the Camera four out of five stars because I thought HP should of included a Secure Digital memory card with the camera. It does not come with a removable memory card and I thought that was cheap on their behalf. Overall, I highly recommend this camera if you are looking for a point and shoot device.
Rating:
Summary: Great camera!
Review: I bought this camera a few months ago and I absolutely love it! It takes crystal clear pictures. I don't know much about photography and the great thing about this camera is that you don't have to. It's really quite easy to use. I just bought a memory card for it so that I can store more photos. The size of each photo generated by this camera is rather large. Overall, this is a great camera for a reasonable price.
Rating:
Summary: Great combination of quality and features
Review: I compared r707 and Canon SD110 3.2 Megapixels which were tagged at the same price. Both of them are great cameras, infact I chose to buy r707 as it has 5.1 megapixels and I could not find any problems with the picture quality. I took several pictures in different settings using both the cameras, and the results were amazing......Picture advice is also a good feature..
Rating:
Summary: Ugly, terrible quality
Review: I could live with the absolutely ugly styling on this camera, since I got it as a prize so didn't have to pay for it, but the quality was totally bizarrely bad. First of all the menu didn't quite work and had a slight lag, which was very annoying. Then after a week of light use it completely went dead. (It came in retail packaging and was apparently a new unit.) At first I thought it was the battery but it wasn't. The camera just had very bad quality.
Rating:
Summary: Fantastic Camera
Review: I have had this camera for about a week now and my pictures are the best I have ever seen. The Image Advise feature has improved my photo skills 10 fold. I now feel like an expert photographer. The panorama feature makes for some stunning shots. And the "in camera Red Eye Removal" works flawlessly. This is truly the greatest pocket camera I have ever owned. I recommend it to all my friends and would buy it again in a heart beat.
Rating:
Summary: what you see is what you get
Review: I have the HP Photosmart R707 since a few days. This is my first digital photo camera, although I already own a digital video camera from Canon. I bought the R707 because I want to take good pictures without worrying about all the manual control menu options and features. Point and click. However with this camera I do have those other options available for more experimenting when I want to. My experience so far: I've taken a few pictures indoors and outdoors, sometimes in difficult situations like a bright light in the background of the subject or high contrast pictures alternating bright sunshine and dark shadows and I have loaded these into iPhoto within Mac OS X 10.3.4 I've also tried out the video recording feature. Positive points:
a) the body is small, compact, easy to hold, it feels and looks classy. The buttons are easily reached, the LCD display can be dimmed or brightened in 3 steps, enough to read well in bright sunshine. The R707 comes with 32MB RAM built in, so I can take 17 high resolution pictures (5.1 MB with middle strength compression i.e. 2 stars) without even inserting an sd card. b) I find the buttons are easily reached and a number of menu items can be chosen by using them without needing to scroll through menu items by using the LCD display. The menu items are well structured and it is easy and fast to find the manual control you are looking for. c) the optical zoom is good and the picture quality can be excellent. The level of details in the pictures can be suprisingly good. d) the imaging technology, for example the HP Adaptive Lighting, gives me peace of mind that my picture has a good chance of being accurately taken exactly as I see it through the viewfinder. The moto "what you see is what you get" seems difficult to achieve without professional cameras and photography knowledge, but the HP R707 manages this quite well indeed. e) playback and viewing of pictures and video is easy and you can browse through thumbnails of the pictures or instead enlarge each picture to better control the quality of each shot. d) I didn't test the included software, because I didn't load it, as my iMac instantly recognized the R707 and iPhoto automatically launched and I just needed to click the "import" button in the software. I also didn't test the in-camera red-eye removal, as I think it is faster to do this in iPhoto. Negative points: 1) no case is delivered with the R707. You need to buy this extra. 2) I often use the optical zoom, but then the aperture can go to a minimum of f8.4 m, the consequence is I often need to use the flash, almost always when indoors. 3) the view finder doesn't show any menu items, so when the LCD display is not available due to low battery and you want to change the menu settings, you have to do this blindly. 4) the more manual controls and active filters you use, the longer it takes to process a photo and write it to memory. You may need to wait up to several seconds before taking another picture. 5) the time to photo makes it necessary to anticipate when you will have the right "picture" so you can already press the "photo" button halfway down to enable autofocus and lighting to be calculated before making the real picture. There are ways to shorten this delay, but maybe this problem is similar to other consumer compact digital cameras. Summary: I was pleasently surprised by the ease of use and the quality of the camera. The price I paid was less than that of a new but no longer produced Canon Digital Ixus 400 (Powershot S400) in discount stores. It is difficult to get better quality at a lower price than the HP Photosmart R707. I recommend it.
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