The r927 is a patient photographer's camera. It works very well, it takes high resolution images for its age and they are both sharp and low noise. The problem is that it requires a substantial delay to write the images to its SD card. It will take three or four 8 megapixel images (even 5 in burst mode) in short succession and then it will pause for a significant period of time as the memory access light flashes repeatedly. It will refuse to take photographs while this is going on.

The video mode is a bit too grainy to really use and the sensitive microphone picks up everything that happens to the camera and its holder at the expense of what is being recorded.

There are some built in image editing tools in the camera which are relatively speedy and relatively useful but cannot compare to a dedicated image editing suite on a computer.

Probably the best feature, and one which lets you work around the slow performance of the camera, is the ability to use the point and shoot camera in full manual mode - so that shutter, aperture and focus can all be set by hand (combination of the three can prioritised). The interface for this is not perfect, there are not dedicated buttons so it must be done by manipulating the 4 way direction button. The lack of a visual viewfinder is a crippling issue in accurately focusing manually and can lead to hit and miss results but the capability to focus arbitrarily is a useful tool for creating creative effects.