Me too! I've been looking for a wide angle camera to take pix of the rooms I work on. Fellow professional organizer, Sarah Roberts, from Texas, discovered the RealPIX at $299.
I like the Realpix because it's true that the most important parts of the camera for quality pix are the lens and the flash. If the RealPix camera truly has a lens that doesn't distort the way most wide angle lenses do, AND a built in flash that will project to 20 ft - $299 is a fair price. I paid nearly that much for a wide angle lens and nearly $200 for a powerful flash unit for my 35mm (non-digital) Nikon system. Eventually, if the camers sells well, it will become cheaper. Especially if they sell it through places like B&H Photo, Butterfly Photo or www.Amazon.com. (I've purchased at all these places and the service / hipping was great.
Here's what I don't like about the RealPIX.
- No LCD viewer to see the pix you've taken, so if the picture does not come out right, you don't find out till you get back to your computer to upload it.
- No memory disks so that you can transfer pix without a cable - it holds 400 shots in internal memory and you upload with a USB cable (as if I don't have enough cables on my desk already! : )
- Battery is built in - which means it is designed to eventually just be thrown away and if you do let it discharge completely, you can't just throw in spare batteries. It says it will provide many years of service, but that depends on how you use it. It does come with a car charger.
- 640x480 is the only picture size it takes - They designed that for uploading to real estate websites using and auto uploader. But for websites like mine, I can go bigger. And often I crop out the ceiling etc that people don't need to see. With this camera, this is no room for cropping.
All in all I think they limited their market and should have considered interior designers, real estate stagers, and professional organizers. That would have doubled their market. Or at least come up with another version of the camera that offers the quality pix with some of the other basic conveniences of digital cameras. Even if it is more expensive. Personally I'd rather pay more for a camera I like than pay less and not be happy with it.
The only other wide angle I've found is the Kodak Easy Share v705 7.1 megapixel 5x ultra wide angle Dual Lens optical zoom, ($230 on Amazon Retail $349)
but according to the reviews, there is some distortion and the picture is "soft" or not sharply focused. That's probably because it's an optical zoom lens and not a fixed lens.
But at least it has an LCD viewer, memory disk, replaceable battery, and all the other conveniences we've become used to in a digital camera. This means you can use it for your wide angle shots and for other purposes such as closeups of work you've done. It even takes video clips and has digital image stabilization. And the spare battery is only 16$
It's predecessor was the 5 Megapixel version and on that page you can see LOTS of photos taken with camera including 49 photos that have been uploaded by customers. This cute cat was the only one I found of a wide angle shot indoors. As you
can see it is a little dark...and there is distortion. Not sure they used flash - it doesn't look like it. But with a wide angle lens, you will see more distortion the closer you are to an object. This looks like it was taken pretty close.
The panorama stitch function may be better for some rooms. See the panoramic photo taken inside a van by one of the Amazon reviewers. (Click to see it larger)
***UPDATES***
1) Thanks to Susan Kousek for sending me an email pointing out that with the Kodak camera "the flash won't fire while you're in panoramic mode."
2) Thanks to Brandie Kajino for pointing out 2 more wide angle cameras - Panasonic Lumix DMC-FX01 and the Canon PowerShot SD800 See my update post
They all sound great! I don't know what I'll get right now, but either way I'll post pix and let you know when I do. Maybe I'll get them all and test them out! : )









