Close but no cigar! (Kodak Easyshare DX3900)

Member Name: markbuk

Product:	Kodak Easyshare DX3900
Date:	05/08/02 (441 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Docking Base, USB Connection, Easy to Use

Disadvantages: Expensive unless at offer price of £250, Picture Quality not excellent, Only 2x Optical Zoom

Kodak DX3900 Digital Camera


Introduction

After a couple of years using my company's Olympus C-920 Digital Camera for both business and personal use, I decided it was time I purchased my own camera.

I wasn't ready to make a purchase just yet but when I saw a newspaper offer for the Kodak DX3900 at a local store, my curiosity was piqued.

Normally, I don't particularly rate Kodak for digital imaging prodocuts - my experiences, reveiws I have read and opinions expressed by other camera users have led me to a conclusion:

While Kodak produce reasonable products, they are often over priced and of inferior quality to the competition. I've read reviews of a number of Kodak digital cameras in the past, where the reviewer has commented that the camera is good but the Olympus, Fuji or other produce a similar specced product for £50 less and still gives the edge with regard to picture quality.


So why did I opt for the DX3900?

Well, the price was a good - While accepting that this model was probably near the end of its production life, I can recall seeing this particular camera being marketed at £350 just before Xmas 2001. So when I saw it on offer for £250 I was interested.

A word of warning here though - this model of camera has been marketed in two formats - both with and without the Kodak EasyShare Docking Base. The price difference between the two is approximately £50 - the base costing £70 if purchased seperately.


The Camera

The camera isn't packed with features but has more than enough for the average home user. The Docking Base is a bit gimmicky and personally not enough to tempt me on its own, but it does provide a handy and quick method of downloading your shots, rather having to reach behing the PC, grabbing the lead and plugging directly into the camera.

It has has 2x Optical Zoom and 3x Digital Zoom - giving a total zoom capacity of 6
x Zoom. Sadly this is where the Olympus C-920 has the edge, even though it is a 3 year old camera. The Olympus has 3x Optical Zoom and no Digital Zoom at all - now that seems like a disadvantage but the Digital Zoom is not a patch on Optical.

With the Kodak, it is very noticable, even when viewing a potential image thought the LCD screen - When you zoom in on your chosen shot everything seems fine. Then the zoom hits a natuarl stop - pressing the zoom button again re-commences zooming in further but this time you are in the realms of digital and the degradation is very obvious.

The camera has a slide lever to open and close the lens cover, built in flash and the ususal settings for close and distance shots, flash over ride, a ten second delay timer. It also has a setting where it is possible to take black and white or sepia toned photos, should you chose to. Images can be time and/or date stamped, video out options allow viewing on PAL or NTSC format equipment.

The unit, in common with most Kodak cameras, utilises the CompactFlash type of memory card. This is the most versatile type available, as it can also be used in most PDA's as well. Included in the kit is a measily 8MB memory card, which in 3.1 Megapixel mode allows you to store a sum total of 7 pictures! Fortunately, higher capacity cards are not too expensive - a 64MB card can be purchased for around £35 - £40, providing you are not fussy about buying non-Kodak accessories, the most common alternative being Maxell.

Something I've noticed is that the higher the resolution of the camera, the more precise you have to be to get a good quality shot. What I mean by this I can explain better with an example - The Olympus I keep reffering to is 1.3 Megapixel - good for its time, while the Kodak is a 3.1 Megapixel.

One of my complaints with the Olympus was that taking a quality shot with it seemed quite sporadic - I have taken some amazing photographs with the Oly
mpus and some awful ones too - and I can never understand why! Why I can take a photo of my girlfriends baby daughter and I t come out beautifully and yet I can take one of my g/f sitting right next to her and it be awful. That said, the majority of hsots come out well and with little preparation.

The Kodak needs a lot more setting up - and my personal feeling is that this is at least partly down to the high pixel resolution highlighting and amplifying slight setting differences that the lower resolution model doesn't pick up on.

I found that some of the Kodak's automatic settings tended to over or under compensate and even misread situations - last night I took a photo acorss a field of corn near my home - it was at about 8pm and while the light was indeed fading, it was still quite light. On the autosetting, the image came out as black except for the corn in the immedaite vicinity - whereas when I took the shot again but with the apature setting to 1 second - the resulting picture looked as though it had been taken in daylight!



Conclusion

Overall this is a reasonably performing camera. Picture quality is good if not excellent, but a big factor is that it is one of the simplest cameras to use on the market. If you can find it still avaialble at the ofer price of £250 (with base) then don't think you will be disappointed. If you can't then spend a little more time researching the rest of the market, before you make a decision.

Summary: