Polo D3000 - tacit confession

According provided by Polo SharpShots Camera D3000 HD Camcorder many thanks to Alexander Shokur.

Polo SharpShots Review D3000 Hd camcorder

I do not review digital cameras with non-removable optics, but this time the owner of the camera called me and suggested, as he put it, a Chinese counterpart Nikon D3000 with three lenses. I was interested in this, but when the package arrived with the camera and lenses, I was very surprised 'analogy' :).

There is nothing special or exclusive in the cell. To be very brief, then Polo SharpShots D3000 HD Camcorder is a photo sensor from a Chinese phone, placed in a beautiful body of a pseudo-mirror with three attachment lenses without any automatic focus and without the ability to control the main shooting parameters, which creates a very poor image quality.

The same camera can be found under a different name - Protax D3000.

It looks like Polo SharpShots D3000 HD Camcorder without mounted lens attachment. The white bayonet mount is made of plastic, from which the paint is clinging. The camera can be used even in this mode (without a lens attachment).

Although the camera has a bayonet mount and a button for removing lenses, the fact was and remains that these are not lenses, but special attachments for the camera. Calling them 'lenses' can only be conditional. Polo D3000 It marvelously shoots and functions even without lenses, with one bare lens - as it already has built-in lenses for its matrix.

Polo SharpShots D3000 HD Camcorder. Built-in flash.

The camera is made well to the touch, but as soon as you start looking closely, you realize that it is made very roughly - with rough edges, a flimsy battery cover, minor flaws, and a plastic mount. When you put on a telephoto lens, you notice a huge gap between the lens and the camera, and so on and so forth. This miracle weighs 450 grams.

Polo SharpShots D3000 HD Camcorder. A modest number of controls. Everything is extremely simple.

The good news is that the Polo D3000 can run on either a rechargeable battery or 3 AA batteries. It is immediately evident that the battery has an inscription 'Nokia 8210'(phone made in 1999). The battery capacity indicated in the instructions does not match the capacity written on the battery itself. And it is very good that the Polo D3000 uses a 3 "LTPS LCD TFT display. The display is covered with very thin plastic, and if you press lightly on it, you can see how the crystals start to 'float'. The display has 230.400 pixels (960 * 240) and these pixels are visible when viewed.

Polo SharpShots D3000 HD Camcorder

There is also a built-in flash, to activate which you need to raise it manually, no button is provided for this. The flash is low-power, when shooting with a flash, the gap between the test pulses and the main pulse is very large. There is also an optical viewfinder, but it only works when the flash is raised, and its viewing angle does not coincide with those lenses that come with the kit. The viewfinder is terrible, without diopter adjustment. To use the viewfinder and not to use the flash, you must disable the latter using a special button that controls the flash mode.

Polo SharpShots D3000 HD Camcorder

Also, the camera has a hot shoe, but it does not have sync contacts and serves only to install additional diode illumination on the camera. One gets the feeling that when you work with the camera at every step you will find another swindle.

Polo SharpShots D3000 HD Camcorder. Lever digital zoom.

The camera, like any soap dish, has bright stickers with basic technical data. One of them is the ability to shoot with the maximum photo size on 16 megapixel... The only problem is that 16 MP is pure interpolation. The camera sensor has only 5 'pure' megapixels (2560 X 1920), which are software-swollen three times!

Polo SharpShots D3000 HD Camcorder. THIS IS NOKIA!

When shooting with an image size of 2 MP, the camera managed to take 55 shots in 60 seconds, as a result, the average shooting speed is slightly less than 1 fps. But when shooting with an image size of 16 MP, the camera performed only 30 frames in the same 60 seconds, as a result, the average speed was only 0.5 fps. Most likely, the camera does not have a frame buffer and the next picture cannot be taken until the previous one is recorded on a memory card or internal camera storage.

Polo SharpShots D3000 uses memory cards SD and SDHC, and the camera also has 28 MB of free memory where data can be recorded. When I shot with a 2GB memory card everything was fine. But as soon as I inserted a 32 GB card, the camera froze several times in a row when turned on.

Polo SharpShots D3000 HD Camcorder. That feeling when a flash costs more than a camera.

The camera always shoots in automatic program mode. No control over shutter speed, aperture or ISO cannot be obtained. Probably, this camera itself has no idea what to do with these parameters :). If you delve into EXIF shots, you can determine that the camera always shoots using ISO 75. The longest excerpt, which the camera could set - 1/3 of a second, and the shortest - 1/2749 s. The built-in lens has an F / 3 value (shooting always takes place at this F-number, the same number is indicated in the instructions), and additional attachments only reduce the already small aperture.

Polo SharpShots D3000 HD Camcorder

The instructions and one of the attachment lenses indicate the focal length f = 7.45mm. I have established by experience that EGF built-in on-camera 'lens' is 50 mm (just put it next to D700 and at 50 mm focal length, the viewing angle of the Polo D3000 and D700 matched). Knowing EGF and FR can be calculated crop factor: 50 / 7.45 = 6.7. As a result, the Polo D3000 uses a matrix 45 times smaller than a full-format camera. If you look at the tables, then this crop factor have matrices with a diagonal of 1 / 2,7 "(physical size 5.4 mm X 4 mm). To be honest, nowadays even the cheapest 'soap dishes' use a 1 / 2,3 ″ matrix, which is more than the one installed on the Polo D3000. As a result, even from one matrix size, I can conclude that any digital camera will be better than the Polo D3000.

Polo SharpShots D3000 HD Camcorder

When connected via USB, the camera light turns red if the camera is off, and yellow if it is on. If you try to turn off the camera while USB is connected in standby mode, or switch the mode using the main disk, the camera freezes (the display starts to writhe in a fit of misunderstanding). The connection mode selection menu turns on for just a couple of seconds, and if you did not have time to select 'Disk' or 'Camera for', then a mysterious window appears in the style of Windows 98 and to the question 'Confirm EXIT Usb Function?' prompts you to answer 'Yes' or 'No'.

Polo SharpShots D3000 HD Camcorder

The camera has MP3 music playback function. To do this, just drop audio files into a folder called 'MP3', which is automatically created on the memory card. When connecting headphones, the camera will ask what exactly needs to be connected - 'headphones' or 'audio / video' ?. The player is controlled by a joystick easily and easily. The volume can be adjusted with the digital zoom slider. You cannot take photos or videos while listening to music. I've always wondered what am I missing on my cameras ...

Polo SharpShots D3000 HD Camcorder.

There is also a voice recorder function. Audio is recorded in '.WAV' format with 352 kpbs / 44 Khz bitrate. All functions are selected using the main dial shown in the figure below. There are 5 functions available:

1. Photo and video shooting.
2. View filmed material.
3. Voice recorder.
4. Settings.
5. Player.

Photography is only available if the first mode is selected. In all other modes, the shutter release is locked, and when you press the shutter button, the red diode on the left side of the camera lights up.

Polo SharpShots D3000 HD Camcorder

Camera can shoot video in HD format 1280 × 720 30 fps with h.264 codec in '.mp4' format. I didn't like the quality of the video. Video recording and stopping is carried out with a special convenient button. Sound is recorded using a mono microphone.

The camera menu is very simple and consists of two sections - the 'Menu' itself, which is called by the 'Menu' button and 'Settings', which are activated using the control dial.

The 'Menu' contains the following items:

• Video resolution. You can select the mode of HD, VGA, QVGA. Image stabilization in the last two modes does not work.
• Resolution. You can choose 2M, 5M, 8M, 12M, 16M. It is unfortunate that you can not choose 36M, I was hoping so. There are no other image quality settings.
• Stabilizer. You can turn it on or off. I suspect that there is no real stabilizer in the camera, and most likely stabilization occurs programmatically. And this is another swindle.
• Night shooting. You can turn it on or off. This item allows you to sight with longer shutter speeds, which is why the image on the display slows down. The shooting quality is not affected.
• Flash You can enable, disable and set auto mode.
• Quick way. The item is responsible for the shooting mode. You can select single, burst, or self-timer. During the self-timer, the speaker does not pick up, and the red indicators in the front do not blink.
• exposure. You can select an amendment exposure from -2 to +2 EV. When shooting, the exposure can be changed with the joystick, but only cyclically: +0.5, +1, +1.5, +2, -0.5, -1, -1.5, -2, 0. This method just freaks out.
• Flicker. You can select 50 or 60 Hz.
• Date stamp. The function prints the shooting date in photographs.
• White balance. Available values: auto, sunny, cloudy, daylight, incandescent lamps.
• The effect. Sets the shooting mode: normal, black and white and 'classic' (as sepia is called here).

Polo SharpShots D3000 HD Camcorder

The 'settings' section is still more modest:

• Sound signal. Turns sound alerts on or off. I determined that the signal level corresponds to the last volume level while listening to the player.
• Auto off Auto power off, you can turn it off, or set the interval for 1, 3 or 5 minutes.
• Audio-video mode. Determines how to use audio / video output.
• TV system. NTSC or PAL.
• USB mode. You can choose 'Camera for PC' or 'Disk'. Yes, Polo D3000 can be used as a webcam.
• Language.
• Pictogram. Enables or disables information icons during shooting.
• Clock.
• Format. Formats a memory card or internal memory.
• Silent confession. Oh this Machine translate. Run, Forest, Run... This function, or rather its translation, blocked all the negative from communication with the camera. It would be correct to name it 'Reset preferences' or 'Default settings'.

Polo SharpShots D3000 HD Camcorder

Three lenses come with the camera. In fact, these are not lenses, but optical lenses.

1. f7.45mm F3.2 BFL 2.85mm Multi Coating Lens / 2P2G - stock 'lens', does nothing, just covers the camera mount. Most likely, it still has some kind of weak coating of its only plastic lens.
2. WAL-83E 0.5x - wide-angle attachment. If we take into account that the focal length of the 'main lens' is 7.45mm, then with this attachment it turns out EGF 25 mm. The attachment has a strong distortion, almost the same as that of fisheye lenses.
3. OSTL 21x Optical Super Telephoto Lens - 'telephoto lens', unlike the first two lenses, has a focusing ring with a distance scale in meters, the ring travel is 90 degrees. MDF is 25 cm. During focusing, the front lens does not rotate, but the trunk moves forward. The lens uses a bayonet hood that can be mounted backwards for transport.

All of these are fixed 'lenses'. But the camera has 16x digital zoom, which multiplies by zero the already poor image quality. The amount of flare is simply amazing, below is a small video aimed at showing flare on these three 'lenses' and 'no lens':

Polo SharpShots D3000 has no autofocus and no contacts near the mount. Focusing with the first two lenses occurs through the focusing ring located near the camera mount. The ring has two labels: 'flower' and 'mountains and two men'. You can focus on the focus very quickly with this ring, but not accurately. With all this, the camera does not have a quick increase in the desired area, over which it would be possible to perform precise focusing. Instead, you have to use the slow digital zoom.

Polo SharpShots D3000 HD Camcorder

All three lenses are made with cheap plastic, very flimsy in the hands. The focus ring of the OSTL 21x Optical Super Telephoto Lens is rubberized but rotates jerkyly.

Polo SharpShots D3000 HD Camcorder

The lenses of the first two lenses are made of plastic to the touch. The rear protective cover is very easy to put on, but it is rather difficult to remove it. Near the rear lens on the lenses there are two arrows labeled 'Stuck' and 'Release' for attaching and removing the lens.

Polo SharpShots D3000 HD Camcorder

I would say that this is a camera like 'BKI ' - 'No Quality Image'. The picture quality is very bad and even worse. And picking in RAW won't help here, because this format is not in the camera :). Lenses are the most unsharp (even my phones gave / give the best quality). In the secret laboratories where they were produced, scientists were apparently tasked with creating the most blinking lenses in the world. I don't even want to write anything more about image quality :(.

Caution, sample photos are hazardous to health!

Here link to the archive with the originals - 73 MB, several photos from the camera on different lenses.
Results

If you do not have a camera on your mobile phone and have nowhere to put 150 USD, then the Chinese have created an amazing gadget especially for you - Polo D3000 :). But for the same money, you can buy a point-and-shoot camera, which will have an optical (not digital) zoom, automatic focus, much smaller dimensions, the ability to control the main shooting parameters, shoot FULL HD, and give a much better image :).

By the way, 'SharpShots' translates as 'Sharp Shots', apparently the creator of the camera had a great sense of humor.

Hurry up to buy the updated 2023 model Here!.

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Material prepared Arkady Shapoval. Training/Consultations | Youtube | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Telegram