A few friends and I were talking before dinner, when the subject of e-mail came up.

"I send pictures to my family over the e-mail all the time," said the cook.

"So do we," said another mom.

A lot of families could be saying the same soon, thanks to Hewlett Packard and the Photosmart 215 digital camera. At $199, this digital is probably less expensive than the 35mm point-and-shoot you may be using now. With the 215's features and quality, anyone with a computer and an e-mail account would do well to consider it a great choice for their first step away from traditional film and paper photography.

First off, there's the camera's 1.3 megapixel resolution. At 1280X960 pixels, a picture taken in the camera's 'superfine' mode will reproduce a nice snapshot-sized print using your inkjet printer and photo quality paper. With 30-bit colour depth, the print looks so much like a traditional photo, you'll never have to apologize for the quality.

Getting to know the Photosmart 215 doesn't take much time. It weighs only 265 grams (without the batteries) and fits easily in the hands. Just load the four AA batteries, flick the on switch and select one of the four modes offered on the back. You have the option of using either the through-the lens optical viewfinder or the 1.8 inch LCD display back to compose your shot. Be aware that the big, bright screen takes a lot of power to run continuously. Since Hewlett Packard doesn't recommend using rechargeable batteries in this camera, indiscriminate use of the screen could cut into the money you'd save on traditional film processing.

The only problem I had using this product was understanding the operation of the scrolling button on the back, which is used for both flipping through your shots and for entering selections. I finally realized that pushing the rolling mechanism straight down does the selecting - but I got the rolling-to-scroll part right away.

The camera comes with a 4MB CompactFlash memory card, which allows you to save five shots in 'superfine' mode, 10 shots in 'fine' and 36 shots in 'basic' mode - still a large enough photo to e-mail the folks. The nice part about going digital is you can check out your shots on the display and scrap those ones where the kid had his eyes closed or crossed, leaving nothing but your best to download onto your PC. The USB connection allows quick downloads, so you can be out andshooting again right away.

Mac owners beware; the 215 is not compatible with any Macintosh operating system. Neither will it work with older PCs running Windows 95 or NT. If your computer does measure up, you can take advantage of an excellent software package included with the camera. The ArcSoft PhotoImpression 2000 application allows you to crop and adjust your photos before you send them off to Grandma, and PhotoMontage 2000 allows you to organize those pictures for later reference.

Drawbacks to the Photosmart 215? If you can live with the "no rechargeables" clause, and you're not using an older or 'exotic' platform, this camera is a great, inexpensive way to go digital. If you're looking for a lot of adjustability and higher resolution, HP offers some impressive alternatives, but if you're just looking to keep those folks up to date, take a look at the 215.

315 a step up

So you want the most and latest digital photography features you can get for under $300 - who doesn't?

If you haven't checked out the Hewlett Packard Photosmart 315 digital camera, you could be missing a very competitive camera. The company claims over a quarter of households they surveyed plan to buy a digital camera within the next 12 months - and they expect to pay about $375. These households have newer (under two years) machines that are Universal Serial Bus capable, and they're used to using digital images along with e-mail and a variety of other software applications.

Hewlett Packard also admits the market is quickly filling with good cameras in the $300 to $400 range. But most of these offerings are products with around one megapixel in resolution - an area HP covers with its inexpensive ($199) Photosmart 215 model.

The Photosmart 315 offers an impressive 2.1 megapixels of resolution in a package that's as easy to use as the 215, but without some of the entry level's drawbacks.

To deal with the high resolution image files this model creates, the 315 comes with a 8MB CompactFlash memory card - double what most of the competition offers. You'll be able to save from about 10 pictures at the high-end, 1600X1200 pixel setting, up to about 80 photos in the camera's 'basic' mode.

The 315 does away with the 215's 'roll-and-press' multi-function button, and goes instead with a four-way controller that makes scrolling and manipulating the images you shoot easy. You get more options on how to display and save your photos, plus ArcSoft PhotoImpression 2000 and PhotoMontage software to manipulate and catalog your photos.

The Photosmart 315 has the same 1.8 inch LCD display as the 215, but the 315 lets you use rechargeable batteries - unlike its less expensive sibling. The 315 also downloads through its USB cable to Windows NT and Macintosh operating systems, along with Windows 98, Windows 2000 Professional and Windows Me.

If you can't quite get close enough for that great shot, the 315 offers variable digital zoom up to 2.5X. The camera also offers the features you'd expect in a good point-and-shoot 35mm model - like tripod mount, red-eye reduction flash mode and a 10 second, self-timing shutter.

The folks at Hewlett Packard have included another interesting capability with the 315's feature package. If you have a HP printer with infrared capability, the camera can use JetSend technology to beam the photo files directly to the printer. If you want prints fast, without any manipulation, you can fire up your printer, sit the camera in front of it and, voila! Digital prints.

There are fancier (and more expensive) digitals out there, but, for an easy to use, high resolution point-and-shoot, you can't go wrong with the Photosmart 315.

PHOTO: Courtesy of HP.