It's a camera. It's Digital. It's Kodak (Kodak Easyshare DX4900)

Member Name: yeldarb

Product:	Kodak Easyshare DX4900
Date:	11/04/03 (215 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: High resolution, rechargable with docking station, standard compactflash slot for storage

Disadvantages: No movie facility, Low optical zoom, Docking station costs £50

So, after years of living in the analog photography world, being held hostage to the photo processors charging for me to remember my holidays, over Christmas I go and take the plunge and buy myself a digital camera.

I had an advantage at the time - I was in the US, where the roads are wider, the grass is greener, and the prices are cheaper...

But which one. Such as dazzling array. megapixels, optical zoom, digital zoom, compact flash, memory sticks... what to choose.

The first thing I wanted was a standard memory card format. That rules out sony with their memory stick, a proprietry format that may or may not succeed. (we all know that Sonys standards don't ever make it mainstream... SACD, minidisc?)

I wanted one nice and small, ideally with a docking station. This attracted me to the Kodaks. I liked the idea of a pod, permanently connected to my PC, keeping my camera fully chanrged ready for when I needed it. No more flat batterys for me!

And the resolution - 4.0 megapixels! wow. when most other camera were proudly boasting their pathetic 3.1mp, there was this Kodak, sitting there with 4.0 proudly stated on it's housing.

The kodak has very useful compactflash slot for it's storage. Comes with 16mb, which is pretty useless actually. I bought a 128mb card for the pictures, and it will store over 200 pictures on there. So it tells me. Useful too, as the compactflash is also supported by Cisco routers. Useful when you need to transfer a large IOS between two non-connected 3745 routers... But i wander from the point...

Truthfully - the resolution of 4.0 megapixels is a lot. a VERY lot. I've not bothered with it to be honest. I find 3.1 mp more than adequate thankyouverymuchly. that said, if I was to use it printing out at picture of me at a large size, I have no doubts that those extra 900,000 pixels will allow me to see every pimple and blemish on my skin... Suddenly thos

e 0.3mp cameras have uses :)

The camera comes with the normal small LCD screen, about 1.5 inches in size which can be used for viewing the pictures after they've been taken, or as a live viewer - this does seem to eat battery power mind.

One thing it's missing, which I didn't realise at the time is that it doesn't take small movie clips (never assume, it makes an.. well, you know the rest)
It will take series of small picutres, but they are individual JPEGS and are only about 5 or 10 per second, not an actual MPEG or AVI. Pity, as they are quite good fun, and when you have a large amount of storage space on the camera they become quite nice to have.

And the zoom? 6x, but that's combined. The optical zoom is a mediocre 2x, and there's a 3x digital zoom on the top, but as we all know, the quality decreases rapidly as the digital zoom is used.

So would I reccommend the camera? Yes. The resolution is supurb, the quality of the picutres excellent, and the size and weight of the camera, while not fantastic, is fine. The docking pod (available seperately) is a nice way of keeping the camera fully charged, but AA batterys will work as well.

I'd like to see a better zoom, and a movie facility, but I'm sure that if I'd have spent another $100, I'd get them.

Just an update now. There are better camera available that are smaller. I wouldn't go for this camera NEW, the 6000 series are much better. That said, if you can pick one up second hand, it's well worth it.

Summary: