Agfa's Point-and-Clik Camera

Images, Images, Images...Eventually

All images are stored on Clik media. The Clik drive is located on the camera's side, and a simple push lets the matchbook-size Clik disks slip easily into place. To remove the media, you just push the spring-controlled mechanism on the disk itself to eject it from the drive. Each 40MB Clik disk can store up to 60 full-resolution (1440-by-1080) or 360 low-resolution (640-by-480) frames. When a disk is full, you can swap it for a fresh one in a matter of seconds. Iomega's 40MB Clik disks typically sell for $15 apiece.

Because the disk must spin up to record the image each time you take a picture, the CL30 has a relatively slow recycling time: It takes 7 to 10 seconds to boot up, and 10 to 13 seconds between shots. So, if you like to take shots in quick succession, the Clik will slow you down considerably.

There are other digital cameras that offer similar high-capacity memory storage, such as the $839 Panasonic PalmCam PV-SD4090, which uses $9.95 LS-120 120MB floppy diskettes, and the $999 Casio QV-3000EX, which saves to an IBM 340MB Microdrive (sold separately for $399). Those cameras are considerably more expensive and complex than the CL30, but both offer superior image quality and performance.

For uploading images to your PC, the CL30 package comes with a Universal Serial Bus cable. However, as with the Panasonic and Casio cameras, if you want the fastest and most direct means of offloading images from the CL30, you'll need to buy a separate drive to connect to your PC. We compared transfer times using the USB cable as well as two alternate devices offered by Iomega for reading Clik disks: the $199 Clik Drive for Digital Cameras, and the $149 PC Card drive. The PC Card drive was fastest, taking less than 6 seconds to transfer eight JPEG-compressed images (about 2.5MB of data total). The USB interface transferred images at a respectably fast 10 seconds; however, because the camera by default enters a sleep mode when it's not in use, the connection with the PC was often severed in between image transfers and couldn't be reestablished without rebooting the PC. And the parallel port drive-and-cradle solution that comprises the Clik Drive for Digital Cameras package took 20 seconds. To put this in perspective, uploading the images through a serial interface would take minutes, not seconds.

The camera is powered by four AA batteries, and it comes with an AC adapter. Since the camera is USB enabled, it can be used with both PCs and Macintosh systems.

The CL30 is a good choice for point-and-shooters who want a basic, affordable, easy-to-use camera with plenty of image storage. For more serious digital photographers, though, the CL30's inexpensive media doesn't quite offset the camera's key drawbacks--awkward handling and slow shooting speed.