Digital Camera Review by: Michael Gazzola

 

In a market where most cameras are the same and striving for new features, Kodak have gone in the opposite direction and just maintained the basics opting for simplicity. It has provided an 8 mega-pixel sensor, with a 2.5 inch LCD screen, a 5x optical zoom and the option for ‘old school’ AA batteries.

The camera styling is compact, thick and very easy to hold. The hard plastic silver casing is colour coded from top to bottom with a couple of chrome highlights. The back of the camera, like most these days is taken up by a large and bright 2.5 inch LCD which has a nifty option to select ‘orientation’ of an image and selection of buttons with an easy to use mini joystick for navigation.

The menu navigation is also very simple with big text – forget your glasses! Most of the options are via the menu button to trigger the navigation and joystick to scroll and select them. Otherwise the few buttons on the back only really cover ‘review’, ‘flash’ and ‘delete’. A note worth mentioning too is that if you ever delete an image and then decide you want to keep it, there is an ‘undo-delete’ option which may prove very handy for any accidental deleting of images.

In keeping with the simple design, there is a dial on the top with 6 options, however most will only ever use the Auto or Scene options. The Scene has 21 different modes covering portraits to snow to text and even a museum setting – to keep the ‘curators’ happy! And for those feeling a little adventurous there is a semi-manual and manual mode which can be a great introduction to unlocking your creativity.

The 5x optical zoom has a great range of 37–185 mm (35 mm equiv.) with an f/2.8–4.4, 12-step aperture. The Schneider-Kreuznach Variogon captures images cleanly and coupled with Kodak’s Perfect Touch Technology the camera for its price range does very well. The image we took outside in trial were vivid, bright and clear. But when using the flash indoors as the sole source of light the images reproduced slightly dark and cool. However, this does not pose as a problem as all images when printed in a good photo lab are colour corrected and light balanced – much in the same way it was done for film photography.

Overall I enjoyed giving this camera a run and for its price range I think will satisfy most.