Most users know how to upload photos, but don’t want to hassle with USB cords and slow upload speeds when transferring images onto a computer or photo-sharing site. Camera docks and memory-card readers built into PCs have attempted to alleviate these transferring problems, but these so-called shortcuts still require a certain amount of dedication to the process.

In the past couple of years, a handful of companies have gone a step farther by introducing Wi-Fi enabled digital cameras, notably Nikon Inc. and Eastman Kodak Co. But this capability works only in certain cameras and even then requires users to walk through a number of steps to send the photos through a service created by the company instead of sending them to a computer or Web site.

Little Effort Needed

This week, I tested a refreshingly simple gadget that solves this problem and does what most technology products don’t: It works in existing devices and requires next to no effort. The $100 Eye-Fi Card by Eye-Fi Inc. (www.eye.fi) is a two-gigabyte SecureDigital memory card with a built-in wireless chip. It slips into any camera with an SD-card slot, and whenever the camera is turned on, looks for a familiar Wi-Fi network and uploads your photos to your Mac or PC and one of 17 photo-sharing sites. After a quick, one-time setup, the user does nothing more than turning on the digital camera.

I thought this thing was too good to be true and set out to find its flaws. But after using it with two digital cameras (one brand new and the other over three years old), three different computers (each with different operating systems) and five photo-sharing sites, I’m convinced that the Eye-Fi is a terrific little tool. It works quickly and is a no-brainer to get going. The only people who won’t like it are those who enjoy razzing their lazy friends for forgetting to share digital photos.

Minor Inconveniences

The Eye-Fi’s flaws are minor enough to dismiss. For one thing, it doesn’t work on Wi-Fi networks that use log-in pages like those in Starbucks; instead, it’s meant to work on home networks or other “open” networks. Secondly, there’s no way to know when Eye-Fi finishes transferring photos unless you check your computer. Finally, your digital camera must stay on for the duration of the wireless transfer, which slightly taxes battery power, and slower networks and/or transferring numerous higher-resolution photos will require a bit more juice. Likewise, Eye-Fi looks for Wi-Fi networks whenever the camera is on, though the company says this only uses a minimal amount of the camera’s battery power.

The Eye-Fi Card comes in a small, colorful box that reminded me of a pop-up book: Pull one side and a quick-start guide appears on the right while the left swings out a piece holding the Eye-Fi card reader and SD card. This reader is only needed for the initial setup on each computer, which only took a few minutes per system.

I tried my Eye-Fi first on a Windows XP machine, plugging the card reader and card into a USB port. The software setup walks users through clear, quick steps like testing the computer’s firewall to be sure it can work through it and asking which folder should be designated to receive wirelessly transferred images. Here, I also typed in my account information for sharing images on Kodak Gallery; later I added Shutterfly, Snapfish, Picasa and Flickr. Other online destinations included blogs like Vox and TypePad, along with social-networking giant Facebook. The last step instructed me to insert the Eye-Fi SD card into my camera to snap the first test photo of myself, making sure it was working properly.

Managing Your Photos

Transferred photos are all reflected in the Eye-Fi Manager, a Web-based, password-protected site that tells which images were uploaded to photo-sharing sites and the computer. Users can opt to only upload from the Eye-Fi to one or the other or both, but only one photo-sharing site and one Mac or PC can be selected at a time. Account information for any of the 17 sharing sites can be saved within Eye-Fi, making it a cinch to switch where you want to send photos.

Around the office, within my registered Wi-Fi network, I took photos that showed up seconds later on my computer screen. At home, I entered my password-protected network’s information one time and watched as captured photos transferred wirelessly from my camera to either my Mac or Windows Vista laptop.

Quick Transfers

On average, it took about 40 seconds to upload each image to a Web site and about 40 seconds more after that for a photo to transfer onto my hard drive. I got home from a friend’s cocktail party and set my camera on a table with its power on. Ten minutes later, I turned on my computer to check the transfer and 12 photos from the party were uploaded to my Kodak Gallery account and my iMac’s hard drive.

Images upload in JPEG formats using their original, full resolutions. Some sharing sites change the formats for photos, but this varies between sites and isn’t related to Eye-Fi.

Eye-Fi won’t do absolutely everything for you, so for certain photo-sharing sites, you’ll still need to log on to send out emails for sharing albums with friends. But double clicking on any of the images in the Eye-Fi Manager takes you directly to wherever that image lives — whether on Picasa, Flickr, or your own hard drive.

I swapped the Eye-Fi SD card from one camera, an older Konica-Minolta Dimage X50 that still works well, to a new Kodak EasyShare V1253, which ironically has built-in photo emailing capability that isn’t nearly as easy to use as Eye-Fi. The Eye-Fi didn’t miss a beat and operated the same way in both cameras.

The Eye-Fi Card is as simple as it sounds and works with most cameras that use SD cards (for a complete list of compatible cameras, see http://support.eye.fi/compatibility/). If someone you know is constantly taking pictures that are never seen again by anyone else and they use a Wi-Fi network, Eye-Fi will serve as a carefree solution that takes the aggravation out of transferring photos to share with others.

Edited By Walter S. Mossberg

• Email mossbergsolution@wsj.com

It’s a good time to be in the market for such a camera. According to research from Olympus, unit sales for these gizmos has grown about 30% in the past two years, while dollar sales grew at about half that rate, indicating declining prices and improved technology. In fact, digital-camera prices have dropped an average of $30 over the past 12 months.

This guide offers an overview of the basics that you’ll need to know when buying a digital camera. It also explains many of the fancy features that are popping up on these devices, such as facial recognition — a camera’s ability to detect when faces are being captured in photos, thus appropriately adjusting exposure, focus and flash. This guide isn’t geared toward hobbyists, but rather toward average users who want good quality photos but don’t want to struggle with confusing product specs and promotions.

Point and Shoot, or Flaunt and Pocket

As you begin looking for a camera, selecting a preferred size and shape will help narrow your choices. Like iPods and cellphones, stylish pocket cameras are fashionable accessories; some come in shades like Precious Rose or Noble Blue. These pocket models, designed with emphasis on small size, are as easy to carry as they are to use for taking good photos: most offer seven or eight megapixels each, a 3x or better optical zoom lens and a stunning viewing screen. Good examples include Sony Corp.’s $400 Cyber-shot DSC-T100 or Nikon Inc.’s $300 Coolpix S50.

If you don’t mind sacrificing style for a camera that’s sturdier in your hand but bulkier in your purse, point-and-shoot models will be more your speed. On average, these cost less than their showy cousins. They’re more likely to have protruding zoom lenses that don’t collapse entirely into the camera body and often feature larger buttons. More point-and-shoots offer optical viewfinders, which have become practically extinct on pocket digicams where real estate is scarce. Examples of point-and-shoots with optical viewfinders include Eastman Kodak Co.’s EasyShare C653 and Canon Inc.’s PowerShot A460-both cost $130.

A third category of digital cameras, the single-lens reflex or SLR, continues to be marketed to regular consumers rather than to the photography enthusiasts for whom they were originally intended. SLR prices have dropped a couple of hundred dollars in the past year, but many models still start around $800 and come with detachable lenses and flashes. Average users can steer clear of SLR cameras.

Megapixels

Most cameras today offer anywhere between six and 10 megapixels; cameras with four megapixels or fewer are rather rare. But while higher megapixel counts are easy to find for less money, such as Hewlett-Packard Co.’s $300 PhotoSmart R967 with 10 megapixels, such intense resolution is really only necessary if you plan to heavily edit or blow up your photographs for jumbo prints, which most people won’t be doing.

Zoom Confusion

While most camera makers offer clearer marketing strategies now than a year or so ago, some still try to dupe consumers by listing only a camera’s total zoom — the optical and digital zoom multiplied together to create a larger, more impressive number. The truth lies in optical zoom, an enhancement made by a physically moving lens, not digital zoom, which instead magnifies a photo using the camera’s digital circuitry.

This year, companies also created a new category for cameras with 10x or 12x optical-zoom lenses — these are often referred to as high zoom digital cameras. In reality, a camera with about a 4x optical zoom is sufficient for most people.

Facial Recognition

This category is likely to become more popular. Facial recognition makes the camera smart enough to recognize that the subject contains a face and must be captured with the correct balance of color and lighting. Sony’s Cyber-shot G1 can detect up to eight faces in one image; Canon’s technology can detect up to nine per shot.

Image Stabilization

Image stabilization, or IS, was once only available in high-end SLR cameras. Now, almost all of the top-name consumer digicams offer this because without optical viewfinders, users must shakily hold cameras out to look through viewing screens. Referred to as antishake or vibration reduction by some manufacturers, there are three kinds of IS: optical and mechanical image stabilization, which physically steady a camera even when your hand is shaking, or digital image stabilization, which can improve a shot when the photographed subject is moving.

Some cameras, like the $250 Olympus Stylus 760, offer dual IS. This means the camera is equipped with both digital and mechanical or optical image stabilization, the best of both worlds. If you’ll be using a camera specifically for shots of moving objects, digital IS will work.

Storage — on Your Camera or on a Web Site

The cost of memory cards has dropped by half compared with last year: one-gigabyte memory cards now only cost about $30, and $50 two-gigabyte cards are even more popular thanks to people who want to record videos for uploading and sharing on Web sites. Data can be transferred from these cards by plugging them into a computer using an adapter or a card slot, or cameras can be connected to PCs with USB cords.

Now, Kodak, Nikon and Sony offer cameras with wireless Internet connection capabilities, or Wi-Fi. This allows you to take pictures and, when connected to a Wi-Fi hotspot, upload them directly to a Web site for sharing or storing, saving you the step of transferring the images to a computer first. These cameras are the $200 EasyShare One from Kodak, Nikon’s $350 Coolpix S50c and Sony’s $600 Cyber-shot DSC-G1.

Although using Wi-Fi in a digital camera is a smart idea, it could be a real drain on your camera’s battery. Wi-Fi is by no means a necessary feature, but some people will find it a useful add-on.

Battery Tips

Camera battery life can be affected by new features like extra-large screens — especially those that can play slide shows of your photographs — built-in Wi-Fi and even in-camera editing, which requires your camera and LCD screen to be on for longer periods. If you rarely take shots indoors, your flash will likely be used less, which might help your camera’s battery life. A spare battery is useful, and some cameras will work with drugstore batteries for the sake of convenience.

In-Camera Editing

The large, bright LCD viewing screens on cameras — some of which measure up to three inches or even three and a half inches diagonally — encourage everyday photogs to share their shots. To make even these images look better, camera manufacturers are incorporating in-camera editing for fixing mistakes on the spot, without a computer.

Cameras from all of the major manufacturers now enable red-eye fixes either as the photo is captured or after the fact. Companies such as Kodak offer zooming, cropping and panoramic shot stitching, while H-P cameras offer touch-ups like blemish-removing and ways to make a subject look slimmer.

* * *

The digital camera category is exciting right now, as these portable devices become more like computers thanks to in-camera editing, greater memory and built-in Wi-Fi. But remember that your photos come first, no matter how many bells and whistles are added to a camera.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg

• Email: MossbergSolution@wsj.com

Pocket-size digital cameras keep getting slimmer and more powerful, with larger viewing screens and added features. But there are some trade-offs. For instance, the optical viewfinder has largely disappeared from these models, as bigger and bigger screens have claimed more of the limited real estate available.

This week, we took a look at three pocket-size models that will hit shelves next month. They are the Olympus Stylus 710 and the Nikon Coolpix S5, each $350, and the $400 Canon PowerShot SD630.

These cameras are impressively svelte. All three are less than four inches in length, a little more than two inches wide and only four-fifths of an inch thick. The Olympus weighs in at just 3.6 ounces, the Nikon at 4.8 ounces and the Canon at 5.11 ounces.

Yet they all have plenty of power to take very good pictures. The Nikon and the Canon boast a maximum resolution of six megapixels, while the Olympus can reach 7.1 megapixels. That means all three can take images that can fill a large, high-resolution computer screen or be blown up to large sizes when printed. Each has a 3X optical zoom.

The Nikon and the Olympus, which feature curved or tapered bodies, have 2½-inch screens. The Canon, which is squarer, squeezes in a three-inch screen. In our tests, all the screens remained usable, if somewhat washed out, in bright sunlight. But only one of the cameras, the Olympus, has any form of image stabilization, which can prevent blurring of photos caused by a slight shaking of the camera when holding it at arm’s length to frame a shot using the screen.

Two of the three models, the Nikon and the Canon, offered iPod-like navigation controls: dials or wheels that scrolled through menus and photos. The Nikon S5’s wheel has tiny ridged marks for easier turning and can also be pressed down in three places. Canon calls the SD630’s wheel a touch control dial — it doesn’t physically turn but instead comes to life when your thumb rests on it, displaying an on-screen icon of the dial and its functions.

We tested the three cameras indoors and out, at parks and shops and in houses and offices. We found all three easy to use and got good pictures from each. But we preferred the photos from the Canon and Nikon to those from the Olympus. The Olympus seemed weaker at handling dark areas and shadows in our outdoor tests, and its indoor flash pictures were too washed out. The Canon and Nikon pictures seemed about equal outdoors, but the Canon was slightly better at indoor flash shots.

Overall, we preferred the Canon. In addition to its superior pictures and larger screen, the Canon had a much cleaner user interface than the others. Many things about the Canon felt more like a tiny computer than a digital camera. Selecting an option, such as no flash, automatically moved that icon from the center to the edge of your screen. And when the touch control dial was used, the function upon which your thumb was hovering would suddenly be magnified on the viewing screen.

Also, when viewing images in playback mode, the Canon automatically rotates them if you merely turn the camera vertically or horizontally.

Our first impression of using the Nikon Coolpix S5 was how quiet it was. It turns on almost unnoticeably and zooms in and out without much sound at all — quite a switch from the typical whir of most zoom lenses. Unlike the Canon and Olympus lenses, the S5’s lens doesn’t protrude from the camera, even when zooming.

A special portrait button is positioned on the top ridge of the Coolpix S5 so that whenever you’re taking pictures of people, which happens often, you can press that button and automatically set the camera for the best portrait results. A Mode button on the back of the camera generates a circular on-screen image labeled with eight different modes, and the scroll wheel easily navigates around these options.

The Nikon also has some nice features, including a special setting that can combine 10 of your pictures into a little movie, complete with music. Unfortunately, you can’t play back these movies on a computer — they only play on the camera itself or on a TV using included AV wires. Nikon also provides an adapter that allows the S5 to dock with Kodak’s EasyShare printers. But, in our tests, the Kodak printer couldn’t locate the pictures stored in the Nikon.

One big downside of the Nikon: It’s the only camera in this group that requires a cradle to connect to a computer or TV. The others can be connected from ports right on the camera body.

The Olympus Stylus 710 has the best combination of specs and weight among the three. For instance, in its continuous-shooting mode, it can take 3.7 frames per second, versus a bit more than two frames for the other cameras.

But its user interface seemed old and clumsy, and its picture quality fell short in our tests. Also, the Olympus uses the oddball xD storage cards, rather than the more common SD cards found in the Canon and the Nikon.

The Stylus 710 offers 23 different scene modes, including such specifics as Night + Portrait, Self Portrait, Fireworks and Cuisine. But we were dubious about who would take the time to choose the correct scene setting before taking a picture. We tested a few of these scene-specific settings, including one called Night Scene, but we waited a full five seconds for our photo to appear on the screen after it was captured. When it was displayed, it looked blurry.

Without a clever scroll wheel, like those found on the Nikon and Canon, the Olympus was more of a pain to use. For example, when we looked through the 23 scene options, we had to press down the control arrow 23 times. Scrolling would have been nicer.

Each of these cameras has its strengths, but we like the Canon SD630 best in this group, followed closely by the Nikon Coolpix S5.

• Email: MossbergSolution@wsj.com

And the camera makers keep turning out attractive new pocket digital models. Over this past Memorial Day weekend, my assistant Katie Boehret and I tested five of the newest pocket digital cameras from Nikon, Fujifilm, Kodak, Canon and Konica Minolta. These cameras range in price from $349 to $499; all weigh six ounces or less, not counting their batteries; and all are an inch or less thick. (Except for the Konica Minolta and Canon, these are official list prices; buyers may be able to find the cameras for less.)

Each of these cameras has a maximum resolution of about five megapixels, except for the Canon, which is $100 more than any of the others, and can capture up to 7.1-megapixel images. Unless you do very heavy editing of photos, or make prints larger than 8×10’s, five megapixels is more than enough for any casual photographer.

Zooming In

They all have the capability to record short video clips. And all have 3x optical zoom, which is sufficient for casual shooters. But only two of the five cameras — the Kodak and Canon — have lenses that physically protrude from the camera body. The others use internal zooming technology, which means that the camera face always remains flat, even when completely zoomed in on an object. All five use proprietary batteries and seemed able to sustain an average day of shooting.

Four of the five models, all except the Canon, have huge, 2.5-inch LCD screens on the back, up from the 2-inch or smaller screens common in pocket cameras only a year ago. But, to make room for the bigger screens, three of the five have omitted an essential feature, the optical viewfinder, which is a far better tool for framing a shot than the screen is.

Only the Canon and the Kodak have optical viewfinders. That means you can easily frame shots even when bright sunlight washes out the LCD screen, and your shots can be steadier than when you rely on the screen alone, which requires you to extend the camera away from your body.

In our tests, all of these cameras took rich, sharp pictures, indoors and out. You wouldn’t go wrong with any of them. But, because I consider optical viewfinders so important, I recommend the Canon or the Kodak. And of those two I lean toward the Kodak because it is $100 less, is thinner and lighter, and manages to combine both an optical viewfinder and the larger 2.5-inch screen. The Konica Minolta, which I have recommended in the past, is no longer my favorite because it has lost its optical viewfinder in its latest iteration.

Fujifilm FinePix Z1 List price: $399.95

The Kodak also benefits from being able to dock with the company’s snapshot printers and with nonprinting docks that work with Kodak’s EasyShare software to allow users to easily share pictures via email on a PC or Mac.

We should note that the Kodak that we tried out was a preproduction unit. In our tests, it was slower than the other cameras to ready itself to take the next shot. By contrast, the Canon seemed the fastest at shot-to-shot speed. But Kodak claims that the shot-to shot speed is much faster in production units.

The $400 Fujifilm FinePix Z1 caught our attention because of its sexy appearance. Instead of taking on the typical look of a digital camera, the front of the FinePix Z1 looks (in its closed state) like a simple black rectangle with silver-accented buttons and edges. A thin piece that covers the entire front side of the camera slides across to reveal the camera’s lens and flash, while simultaneously turning the camera on.

The Z1 measures just 0.7-inch wide, making it the slimmest of the five cameras that we tested. A generously sized 2.5-inch LCD viewing screen takes up most of the back side of the camera, but it lacks an optical viewfinder.

Focus Alert

Nikon Coolpix S1 List price: $379.95

We snapped photographs using the Z1 and found a few helpful features. An indicator lamp directly to the right of the LCD viewing screen blinked green when we held the shutter button halfway down, and then glowed steadily once the image was in focus, so we knew when to take the picture. The FinePix Z1 also is one of three cameras we reviewed that comes with a handy docking cradle for charging the camera’s battery and transferring its photos onto your computer.

The $380 Nikon Coolpix S1 also comes with a docking cradle, and it, too, earns points for its stylishly sleek appearance. Its most striking feature is how quietly it operates. When we pressed this silver camera’s “On/Off” button, a small metal circle instantly and almost noiselessly moved, revealing the camera’s lens like something out of a James Bond movie.

Lighten Up

When using the Nikon, we especially liked a feature built into the camera called D-Lighting, which allowed us to improve the lighting of a photograph after it was captured. We simply pressed the “OK” button while reviewing a captured image, and two small shots appeared on the screen — one that showed the image as it was, and one that showed how it would look after D-Lighting brightened the image, thus allowing us to choose to lighten it or not. We found that most of our pictures benefited from this in-camera editing process, especially shots that were taken indoors.

The buttons on the back of the Nikon proved a bit tough to operate. In keeping with the coolness of the camera, the Menu, Playback and Delete buttons are all tiny, smooth circles. But we found ourselves pushing them extra hard to get results, which was annoying. The Nikon lacks an optical viewfinder, forcing users to rely solely on its LCD screen for capturing photos.

Canon PowerShot SD500 Estimated street price: $499

The chunkiest of the cameras that we tested was the $500 Canon PowerShot SD500. But even though it weighed the most and was thicker than the rest that we tested, the SD500 is still a rather compact pocket camera.

We were impressed by the Canon’s quick start-up time, which seemed to be almost as fast as the 0.5-second start-up time of the Konica Minolta Dimage X60. And its mode dial — which many other Canon cameras also have — helps users easily switch between playback, video camera and photography modes.

The Canon offers a way to adjust color tones in photos by using a My Colors mode that allows you, for instance, to turn grass red or blue. But this seemed more of a gimmick than the Nikon’s genuinely useful D-Lighting feature.

And, unlike the stealthily quiet Nikon, the Canon seems to announce its presence with noise — its zoom lens whirs as it moves in and out, and special “click” sound effects can be heard whenever you take a picture.

The $400 Kodak EasyShare V550 combines its large screen and optical viewfinder in a slim, black matte body that has etched buttons on the top that light up blue, like the metal keypad on the iconic Motorola Razr cellphone.

Kodak EasyShare V550 List price: $399.95

It’s laced with touches of Kodak’s user-friendly approach, which we liked, including a blurry-picture alert and explanations of what picture-capturing mode you’re currently using (i.e. “Auto — use for general picture taking”). This camera also comes with a dock for charging the camera and transferring photos. This camera’s control buttons flank the left and right sides of its large LCD screen, and the optical viewfinder is oddly situated on the left side, which took a little getting used to.

Taking pictures with the Kodak was easy, and we liked the view screen better than any of the others, because it showed very rich colors. You can adjust the screen’s brightness by simply pressing the left or right arrows.

The last camera that we tested was the $350 Konica Minolta Dimage X60, the follow-up camera to the company’s Dimage X50, which is one of mine and Katie’s favorite digital cameras. The X50 had a 2-inch viewing screen, but still had an optical viewfinder. This new X60 has a 2.5-inch LCD screen but is the first Dimage X model we tested that ditches the viewfinder.

Trade-Offs

Konica Minolta Dimage X60 Estimated street price: $349.99

The Dimage X60 still has the same simple user interface that made its predecessor so popular, but because of the larger viewing screen, its buttons are much tinier. Its super-fast start-up time is a real boon for those who want to capture an image quickly. But, without the viewfinder, it’s no longer our top pick.

Overall, the quality of the images from all five cameras was impressive. Most of the colors seemed true to the actual subject, though the Konica Minolta’s images tended to have slightly rosier hues, which showed up in skin tones, and the Nikon had a somewhat yellow tint in some of our shots.

The Canon and Konica Minolta seemed to start up almost instantly, while the other cameras were a little more sluggish. But the shot-to-shot time for the Canon and Fujifilm cameras seemed to be the fastest overall.

There’s plenty to choose from in this crop of new pocket cameras, depending on your budget, tastes and needs. But the Kodak EasyShare V550 and the Canon PowerShot SD500 are the best of this lot, all in all.

With reporting by Katherine Boehret

Write to Walter S. Mossberg at mossberg@wsj.com