PSP Camera review and full res sample shots

Wanted to find some samples of what PSP camera can do before buying but it, but there weren't any. I bought it so here's a little review and some shots.


I'm using the dax 3.03 OE firmware - all photos and videos was taken by XMB "Photo -> Camera" tool.

1. This camera have two focus modes - regular and macro. That was a surprise for me =) In regular mode camera takes focus from 30cm to infinity, in macro mode camera focuses somewhere about 10 cm. To switch between modes you need to turn a lens.

2. Photo resolution differs from 320x240 to 1280x1024 (4:3) however only 1280 is usable, because in 480 and 640 mode it use some creepy resize method (not bilinear or bicubic resample - more like "nearest neighborhood"). I hope they'll fix it later.

3. There is digital zoom. The less resolution you choose - the more zoom you'll have. (320x240 - 3x-zoom, 1280x1024 - no zoom at all).

4. It really can take 1.3 MPX shots. But you'll need perfect conditions for it. A lot of light and an iron hand =) Don't move you hand after the shutter sound - PSP takes a photo aprox. 2 seconds after the sound =)
Indoor low light photos have a lot of color noise.

5. Colors are good! What you see is what you get. There's exposure settings (from -1.5 to +1.5) and white balance. You can choose them manually.

6. Video mode rulz. 30 fps is really flawless. But again - you need a lot of light. You can film 20 minutes of video in 480x272x30fps mode on 1gb memory stick in one piece (ChottoShot software have a restriction on only 15 seconds of video - in XMB you can film as much as you want)

I attached some sample shots. Сigarette and coin was taken in macro mode.

Here you can download a 40 seconds video converted with 3GP (480x272 - you need 3.03 OE-B firmware to view it on your PSP):
~3 mb
http://www.koneko.ru/PSP/MAQ04849.MP4
http://www.koneko.ru/PSP/MAQ04849.THM

So. I think this will be usefull for those who didn't make a decision on buying yet.

Wow, lol, that camera picks up the "Marlboro Lights" text on that smoke nicely, it's just too bad you were less than three feet away from the object you were taking a pic of, that's a photographers rule... Looks good to me if you were into that kind of thing... How much space does each image take up?