Get a snap of this! (Kodak Easyshare C913)

Member Name: AmyAmy

Product:	Kodak Easyshare C913
Date:	01/03/09 (269 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: fab features, cheap

Disadvantages: memory not clear

First of all, I would just like to set it straight that yes I should be revising for that Geography mock I have on Wednesday, but I am a little over-excited to do so! Why? Well let me tell you...!

Okay, it's my birthday tomorrow (yes, on the 2nd March 2009 Amy will be turning seventeen!), but my Dad was unable to come across, so instead he decided to pop over today and deliver my present. I knew what I was getting, so I wasn't too overjoyed by this, but was still eager to investigate. As I peeled back the shiny blue wrapping paper I revealed a slight hint of yellow from the card board box. I took it further and found the red lettering of the 'Kodak' logo. Before long, the entire paper had been torn off and in front of me was indeed a box. With a camera in it.

I had quite a job finding a camera I liked, at a cheap price. I always bought mobile phones because of their camera, and was struggling to find any decent cameras on those either, which was why I decided to buy a proper digital camera, and use my mobile simply as a means of communicating. At first I refused to go lower than a 10 mega pixel (MP) camera, but the ones I found were either extortionate, hideous or had very little features. It was actually my Dad, surprisingly,who pointed the Kodak C913 out to me in the Argos catalogue, and although only 9MP, it seemed to offer a lot more, so that is what it was to be.

Now I know I said i was aware of what I was getting, but that is not strictly correct. I was unaware of whether my Dad had managed to buy this camera or not, which was worrying. My Dad has a tendency to buy something different to what I had asked for. One year I asked for a cheap foot spa which suited me fine, but he decided to pay more for something absolutely diabolical. It was agony on my feet, not relaxing at all! But anyway, that's another story, and if I get started with my rant I'll never stop! So moving swiftly on...

Thankfully this was the camera I had initially set out to get! On-line I had not fully explored all of its features, so was keen to get going to see what it had to offer. I pulled out the contents from its inner cardboard shell to have a look. With this you got: CD-rom software, guidebook, a leaflet for 20% off accessories, one of those dull warranty leaflets, a stand for the camera, batteries, a USB cable, a strap for the camera, and oh, the camera itself! The camera was a gorgeous black colour with its silver features. The screen on the back was quite large, yet the camera itself was so petite. Never had I seen something so attractive in the world of cameras!

I took out the batteries and inserted them into the camera. Unlike some cameras which are quite complicated to work out, this one was straight forward to switch on, done so by pressing the On/Off button. When I did so, the little lens whirred out and I was greeted with the camera screen, ready to take an 'Auto' picture. This setting allows me to take general pictures with no specific preference.

On the top, there is a little Mode Dial. Turning this to one of the six options allows us to alter what we do. Naturally, one of these options is the 'Auto' mode. We also have a video capture option which we will explore later, symbolised by a little camcorder. There is a setting for Blur Reduction, which minimalises any blur when the subject is in motion. The picture of the mountains works with landscapes and distant photos, and when moving to the picture of the flower, you will find this option is ideal for taking close up photos.

Now, the final option on the Mode Dial is SCN. I found this option to unbelievable! When you move over to this, you then have a further fifteen on screen settings to choose from in order to perfect your photo! The first is Portrait. This basically works on full frame portraits of people. After this is Night Portrait, which helps to reduce any red-eye (the devil is about!) which can occur in dark or low light areas. Night Landscape is next, which helps to focus the photo on the distant scenery in the dim light. There is another option to perfect photos of movement, under Sports, which is good if the subject is is action. There's a picture of me when I was little where I am spinning a hula hoop around my leg (remember those? They were fun!), and it looks quite eerie, as if a ghost is entwining itself around my feet! This would have been handy then! The next setting is Snow. This apparently helps scenes of bright snow. I have no idea how this would help anything, but it's nice to know it's there if I ever need it! Beach is after this, which I think will be handy in Summer, as it helps to control the bright sun light shining down. Following this is another I will find useful, which is Text/Document. This enables photos of documents to be taken accurately without fuzz or shine. Backlight follows, and this controls the light behind the subject. If you go to Manner/Museum this takes photos without flash or sound. This is handy if in a quiet location or, well, a museum! Fireworks is another option. This helps focus on the bright colours of the displays. High ISO works on low light scenes in doors and helps prevent red eye. Children is another setting, quite a bizarre name ( a bit...disturbing actually!). This helps control action shots of children, specifically in bright light. We have another Flower setting which again works on close-up objects, and Sunset option focuses around the bright sun light. Now the final is the one I will use a lot, as is called Self-portrait. This is when you take close-ups of yourself, turning the camera around. I do this a lot, every day!, so this will certainly come in handy!

Now we've explored the options, it's time to explore the capture options. Clicking on menu, there are various options. You can choose to turn the self timer on, which gives you choices of a delay of 2 seconds, 10 seconds, or 2 shots. You can choose the MP settings too, from 9MP to 1.2MP, but why anybody would want it so low beats me. You can switch from Colour to Black and White to Sepia. I take a lot of pictures in black and white so this will be very useful for me! There is an option to tamper with the photo storage, choosing from in the camera to external memory. This is good as you are able to insert an SD card into the bottom of the camera to ensure you have more memory.

We then come to the Setup part of the menu, where you can alter many settings. There is a 'Set Tag' option, which allows you to tag photos, with things such as 'Birthday' or 'Holiday'. I am going down to London in April and visiting Elstree, so then I can put 'Elstree' there! How nice! Here you can change camera sounds, turning off the clicks. You can also alter the LCD brightness from High Power to Power Save. There is an auto power off option too, which is automatically set on three minutes, but can also be changed to one minute, five minutes or ten minutes. You can also change the date and time, so they can show up accurately on your photos if required. There is a blur warning icon to tell you if the photo is blurry or not, and changing the language here is an option too. There are twenty languages to choose from, including English, German, French, Polish and Portuguese.

I think it is safe to say that there are plenty options for us to choose from to perfect our own photos! Now we know what to do, it was time to take a few photos! First of all I chose the close-up option, or the Flower, from the Mode Dial. I didn't bother with tampering with self timer or anything. I called over Tish and thankfully she remained for the camera. Holding down the Shutter button the camera flashed and there on the screen was a picture of my gorgeous little kitty. It was such good quality, I couldn't believe it! From going from a 5MP phone camera to a 9MP digital, the transfer was amazing!

Now it was my turn. I set the camera to Self-Portrait. Turning it around, mirror in front of me so I could see what I was doing, I held down the Shutter button. When the flash went off I was quite surprised. Being so close to my face I thought the camera would have disabled this. With most cameras I am flooded with a bright white light if I forget to turn Flash off when doing this. So I was amazed when I turned the camera back around to see the photo, only to find that the quality was incredible, very clear (and yes, HD!), with no white light! I couldn't believe it!

I wanted to view my two photos, so I followed the instructions in the manual and clicked on Review, which is located just under the menu button. Both pictures popped up in icons on the screen. I could click into them easily to seem them. If you wish to delete them, you simply press Delete on the camera, and then Yes on screen. The magic here is that if you delete a photo you wished to keep, you can undo it! Also, there is an option to lock photos to protect them from any accidental deleting. Pictures can also be cropped and rotated.

Now we have explored the wonders of the photo possibilities, it was time to try out the Video. Thankfully this was video capture complete with sound, the little mic found as a tiny hole on the front of the camera. I pushed the Shutter button and recorded ten seconds of a video. Playing back there was no sound. What? It clearly stated sound capture. I was baffled, and tried to fiddle with the settings but found they were the same as the camera and had no options for volume or such like. It did occur to me that nowhere did it say 'speakers', so I inserted the USB and attempted to play it on the laptop. I added it to my 'Software' and found that it did indeed play on the laptop, complete with sound. Thank goodness for that! It may be a downside that I cannot hear it on the camera, but never mind!

Now that the camera itself was fully explored, it was time to look at the software. Having inserted the CD and installed the software, I found it took around ten minutes for this process to complete. That wasn't too bad I don't think, as I have had previous ones in the past taking hours! I clicked on the icon which was now located on my desktop, to find a new window open which looked like a photo album. I uploaded the pictures I took, having connected the camera via the USB cable, which was very straightforward to do. It was then possible to categorise them into various albums and tag them further. You can also print them from here too.

Clicking on 'Creative Projects, you can mess about with the software and create your own projects, believe it or not! You have options to do Online Photo Projects. This is where you can create an item, such as a Photo Mug or Photo Book, and have it ordered on-line. You can also create Home Print Projects. This is a little more straightforward as you simply tamper with the photos to come up with your own, printable items, such as scrapbook pages or photo calendars. This is not really something that would interest me, but it's nice to know it is there!

Having fully explored the features of this camera, it is safe to say that it is a wonder! The quality is superb and the options to perfect your photos are endless! It is good for an awful lot of things too! I plan to take it down to London with me, and is good for touristy things and sightseeing. I am in the process of setting up a 'photo room' in the spare room, which is basically just a white wall, throwing in smoke machines, bubble machines and endless props. All I need to do is buy a Tripod for this and wah-lah. Because of the self-timer mode and various settings it will come in very handy! It also has a 3 x Optical Zoom. It does blur a little if you zoom in too far, but I doubt I'd ever need to zoom in much anyway! And I can use the 20% off leaflet to buy my Tripod...perhaps!

One low is that I cannot find out how much memory there is left on the camera. I cannot find the information about its memory capacity on-line either, so I do have to be careful I don't go wild! The best option is to insert an SD card, which luckily I had one already. This is done by slotting it into the same place as the battery compartment. My one is actually a Micro SD card with a Micro SD adaptor.

The camera is perhaps not ideal for beginners, as it is quite fiddly, but ideal if you have experience in the world of digital photography. As I said, it isn't too expensive! I think my Dad paid £69.99 for this in Argos, which is phenomenal. Visiting the Kodak website, I discovered they were selling it for £58.72 which was a little cheaper. I think in general you're looking at around £50-£70 for the camera.

This is a fantastic camera, the best birthday present I could have received, and I am sure to have some fun with it!

© Amy 2009

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