I spy a tiny hidden camera

Miniature cameras bring out the James Bond and Nancy Drew in all of us. Sure, they’re convenient and clever, but with them come overtones of espionage and intrigue.

Digitization has made them all the sneakier, so much so that they can be hidden inside other gadgets, including personal organizers and phones. It has also made them more than a novelty.

Miniature digital cameras started showing up a couple of years ago in watches, MP3 players and even teddy bears. But that generation of tiny cameras mostly produced images that looked more like Rorschach tests than anything you’d put in a scrapbook.

This week Palm introduced its latest organizer, the Zire 71, that sports an exquisitely hidden camera. Yet it produces images with 10 times better quality than the watch cameras. This Palm doesn’t look much different from recent models, albeit a touch slimmer and lighter. But slide down a cleverly concealed panel and it’s Hardy Boys time.

The images made by the Palm and recently introduced cell phones with built-in cameras, such as the Nokia 3650, do not have the sharp focus and color balance that standard digital cameras or even the omnipresent disposable film cameras can produce.

But the hidden cameras are undeniably convenient, especially when high quality is not an issue. Times photographers who spent a few spent a few hours trying out a Zire 71 camera got some photos that were so lovely, the lack of high technical quality could be somewhat forgiven. But they had two advantages over me -- professional lighting and talent.

The camera is unobtrusive on the Zire ($299, list price), which is certainly a high-grade organizer for the money. It has a bright color screen and is almost as fast as Palm’s next highest model, the Tungsten T, which lists for $399. Also, the Zire 71 is slightly lighter and thinner than the Tungsten.

Compared with the Sony’s Clie model organizer ($299, with no camera), the Zire 71 is again thinner and lighter.

The camera follows the Palm tradition of being user-friendly: You don’t need the manual to take your first picture. A discreet raised area at the bottom of the unit marks the spot to push to reveal the camera and, as it moves into place, the screen shifts into viewer mode.

You just frame the shot on the screen and push the shutter button. The image appears frozen on the screen for a couple of seconds, then it returns to viewer mode and you’re ready to take another shot. The picture resolution is about one-third of a mega-pixel, which is 10 times better than many earlier miniature cameras.

The Zire 71 camera does best when pointed at still images; all pictures of my dog were blurred, until I took one of him asleep. And there was a slight but bothersome delay between the time the shutter is pressed and picture actually taken.

The pictures are easy to transfer to a desktop computer during the Palm’s normal hot-sync operation that updates the appointment address information. Then the pictures are ready to be e-mailed or printed.

The Nokia 3650 phone ($499, list price but about $299 or less if bought with service plan) takes pictures with the same resolution as the Zire 71. And although it does not have nearly as good a viewing screen, it does have a huge advantage: The pictures can be directly sent to an e-mail address or another picture phone.

Not that it’s easy; the instructions for sending a picture are so vague and complicated that it seems drawing a picture and hand-delivering it would be faster. Over time, I got more used to the process, although it never was easy. But, hey, here I am complaining about a process that enables one to take pictures with a mobile phone and then send them directly anywhere in the world.

It’s an amazing, beautiful thing. And will be even more so when the quality and ease of use improve.