Weighing about 100 grams, the Oregon Scientific DS6639 two-megapixel digital camera (right) is about the same size as a mobile phone.
It packs a lot of features into that small body - metering and flash modes, and a range of image quality and white balance settings - and is very easy to use.
The menu system is intuitive and easily navigated on the built-in 1.5-inch thin-film transistor display. The controls are small but surprisingly easy to operate, the body seems well built and the manual - as miniature as the camera it describes - is clear and to the point.
Its standard eight-megabyte media card is not really big enough, storing only 15 images at the camera's fine/standard setting (1,600 x 1,200 pixels) but it can be upgraded to 256MB.
However, any user doing that would be well advised to invest in some rechargeable lithium batteries because the camera can burn its way through a pair of alkaline AAAs after about 30 images.
The pictures it takes are fine for snapshots - it would not be fair to expect too much from a lens that small - and the 2x digital zoom does a fair job.
The camera also claims to achieve three-megapixel output (2,048 x 1,536 pixels) at its super-fine setting through software interpolation but the image quality did not seem noticeably better than that achieved on its fine, two-megapixel setting. A three-megapixel model (below left) is expected to come on the market soon.