Zoomed back to base... (Kodak Easyshare DX3215)

Member Name: King Leopold

Product:	Kodak Easyshare DX3215
Date:	18/07/02 (361 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Ease of use, Great Software, Docking Station

Disadvantages: No Case, Low Pixel Resolution, Low Memory Capacity

Sadly, it's now gone back to John Lewis (the shop). Well, not so sadly, as I'll explain below.

I'd never owned a digital camera before this one. I wanted to get into this new(ish) form of photography, but not have to fork out hundreds of pounds in order to do so. Hence, I opted for the Kodak DX3215 at £189.


Initially I was rather impressed with the camera and its associated bits and pieces. It arrived in a colourful Kodak box. Inside, was the camera itself, which was a nice and chunky-looking piece of kit, strap and lens cover, the camera dock (which I'll explain more about, later on), Kodak software to manage your photos on your PC, lithium battery (alkaline batteries not recommended), USB lead and mains adaptor. Sadly, no case was included (which I did think was more than a bit cheapskate), nor a paper instruction book, just a virtual version for your PC, which makes things difficult when you have to strap your home computer to your back for a walk with your camera in the New Forest.

Setting up the camera was simple. Once the software was loaded, it was time to connect the camera dock to a USB point on your PC and then place the camera with battery installed, on top of it to charge up.

The camera dock not only charges the battery, it sends your pictures direct to the software at the press of a button. Kodak advises the camera be left on the camera dock at all times other than when you are snapping away.

Taking pictures was easy, literally point and shoot. The camera has a built-in flash and 2x optical and 2x digital zoom. It also has a macro facility. At the back of the camera is a small colour screen that enables you to see the shot you are taking without having to look through the viewfinder. In addition, when you've taken your pictures, you can review them and delete those you are unhappy with, via the same little screen. This is one hell of a big advantage digital cameras have over conventio
nal ones, along with it being possible to have a photo you've just taken, developed and in your grubby little hand literally a few minutes later.

The DX 3215 has a 1.3 Mega pixel resolution - try and go for the highest number of pixels you can afford for depth of image quality - and 8MBs of internal memory. This will allow 20 best quality images (5 x 7inch prints) and 80 good quality ones (3x 5inch prints), more suitable for e-mail and on-screen viewing purposes. Ideally, invest in an additional memory card to increase the number of shots you can store in the camera at any one time.

I took about 80 pictures in total on this camera. Once the photos were uploaded to my PC, the Kodak software kicks-in and organizes them for you. You can do simple manipulation tricks and improve the quality in a limited way. The software will also take you right through to printing, and create actual photo albums should you desire. Once printed on glossy photo paper, I was reasonably impressed with the overall quality and depth of the images. That said, in my view, you just cannot compare digital photos taken on a camera of this price level to those taken on even a bog standard 35mm camera and developed using high street methods.

After two weeks of happy Kodak DX3215 ownership, disaster struck! My camera docking station began to go crazy. A red light began to keep flashing, which according to the manual, can be a serious battery fault. Rather than send the damn thing back for investigation, I asked John Lewis to be allowed to exchange it for a Fuji Finepix 2600, which for about £40 more, seems to have much better features, including far superior memory and pixel resolution. I said goodbye to Kodak DX 3215, today.

On balance, I would say give the camera a try, but I cannot really recommend it, due to the fault/potential fault mine developed early on. I would also warn on battery life. From my brief experience, I was lucky to get 20 minutes or less
of camera life from a full 2.5 hours of charge, which I was definitely not impressed with.

Summary: