14 out of 14 people found this review helpful.
A Capable Point and Shoot
Date of Review: Mar 14, 2009
The Bottom Line: The camera's small size, ease of use and photo quality makes it an excellent traveler's companion for ad hoc picture taking opportunities.
I was on a trip over a month ago and had forgotten my camera, so I bought this one on sale (well under $100)at a big box store as a stand in. Since then, I've shot 500 or so photos.
Background/Specs.
Overall: Dimensioned at 3.6”X 2.2”X 0.8,” it is among the latest generation compact point and shoot cameras. The small size will comfortably fit in a shirt or pants pocket and not convey a crowded feeling. The camera has no view finder and uses a 2.7” LCD exclusively for viewing the subject. The camera comes with an aspherical 34 mm lens that extends when the camera is turned on. It is capable of 3X optical zoom and up to 5X zoom with digital augmentation, with up to 8.1MB images in its highest resolution mode. Shutter speeds auto select between 4 to 1/1400 sec and the CCD provides for ISO speeds steps of 64, 100, 200, 400, 800 and 1600.
A movie feature yields 15fps in 640X480 resolution (30fps available in 320X240 resolution). 16 MB of internal memory is built in and a slot is present for an SD Card. Users will want to purchase a SD card, as the internal memory will hold only a few pictures.
External: The front of the camera only has the retracting lens, autofocus sensor and flash. When the camera is turned off (lens retracted) a protective door closes over the lens, keeping the lens clean and free of scratches. The camera’s top edge has on/off, flash on/off, “take picture” buttons and a small wheel to change modes/settings. These controls were found easy to use and the buttons are almost flush to the body edge. They are responsive and their small profile prevents them from being accidentally activated when in your pocket.
The rear is dominated by the 2.7” LCD screen and several buttons: Rocker style wide angle/telephoto, picture delete, joy button (access key features), menu (mostly camera utilities) and picture review button. These buttons are smartly located and easy to manipulate with your thumb when holding the camera.
The right edge has a door to house the supplied Kodak proprietary 770 mAh Li-Ion battery and SD memory card slot. Both were found to be easy to access for change out. The battery slot has a small plastic retaining clip that must be pressed to eject the battery.
The left edge has a USB slot and a traditional AC-adaptor plug. Interestingly, a USB cable was supplied and it will charge the battery when plugged into to a computer. Alternately, a special AC adaptor was supplied that uses the USB cable as the wire to plug into the camera. It is unclear why the traditional AC-adaptor plug is provided at all. The camera battery will fully charge in about two hours when plugged into the USB slot.
The bottom edge contains a plastic tripod mounting plug. If a tripod is used, the camera should be carefully screwed in, as the plastic threads could be cross threaded – potentially ruining the feature. A proprietary slot also exists for plugging the camera into Kodak’s separate picture printing product.
Software/menus: The camera’s internal menu set features setting you will find in most cameras, plus features specific to it. It is arranged as three tabs organized by image aspects (MB size, color/BW setting, print date/time stamp), a separate tab to turn on/off blur warning and the third tab for utilities (LCD brightness, auto power off, etc).
Two interesting features in the utilities menu are the orientation sensor and set album features. The orientation sensor will detect when the pic was taken with the camera is being held perpendicular and rotate the image in saved memory to a landscape mode (default is portrait mode). This prevents having to rotate the image later on in editing or viewing software.
Coupled with the supplied software, users can predefine photo albums and store photos in memory locations defined as albums (basically subdirectories). When connected to your computer, the software will automatically download the pics and save them off as individual albums. I have attempted to use this feature, but it appears to need more work by Kodak. First, you must define albums in your PC. The camera will not allow you to define an album. That is not how I take pictures.
I carry this small camera for ad hoc photo taking and do not plan my photo taking jaunts in advance. For example, when in San Francisco, over 100 photos were taken of the Chinese New Year’s parade that we stumbled upon. Attending the parade was not preplanned. If the camera allowed me to define an album there, it would have been a nifty way to organize my parade photos separate from the others on the fly.
Another software feature is the presence of 18 image presets. These configure the camera settings for various portrait and lighting conditions. Options include: 2- Portrait (full face photos), 2 – landscape, 2- panorama (combine 3 photos into one), sport, snow, text (photo documents), macro, self portrait, children, when a backlight is present, candle light conditions, beach, sunset and fireworks. Text is provided to describe the general photographic conditions these presets are covering. This allows the user to understand and use the preset for alternate but similar conditions.
I have used a number of these settings for snapping pictures. In general, they work as advertised. Often the pictures are excellent and sufficient info is stored to allow plenty of room for touch ups with image editing software such as Photoshop. Expect many, but not all, images to blur under low light conditions if a tripod is not used. Image blur under these conditions is to be expected for any camera operating with a slow shutter speed.
General Impressions. This is a feature rich point and shoot snapshot camera and it does that function well. Do not expect it or any camera of this class to give pro quality SLR images. On the other hand, this camera’s small size means you can carry it almost anywhere. Its features allow you to attempt almost any type of photo under most lighting conditions with the reasonable expectation you will get a decent photograph. In fact, photos under daylight or bright indoor conditions are often excellent.
I am very impressed with the camera’s battery life, given its small size and LCD centric operation. Expect about 125 photos with flash on a single charge.
Bottom Line. Especially for the price paid, I am very impressed with this camera’s performance and features. It takes photos well and the image presets help to insure you will get a good image. It is sufficiently intuitive that the most technically challenged individual will find it easy to use and get good results. The camera now has a permanent home in my brief case and I will not be without a camera again when traveling.
