Say cheese!!! (Kodak Easyshare CX7430)

Member Name: doublej

Product:	Kodak Easyshare CX7430
Date:	21/11/04 (819 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Clear easy instructions, Good quality pictures

Disadvantages: I'm still not a great picture taker

Okay, just to set the scene, I'm no camera expert. So here is the complete novices opinion on this camera.
I do love this camera. I took it on a day out with the children and apart from a few pictures of backs of heads, they have turned out really well.

There are a number of functions on this camera.

Auto - this is or general photo taking.

Portrait - this takes full frame portraits of people.

Sport - this has a faster shutter speed for taking pictures of things in motion. (Great for sports day)

Night - this is as it says for night scenes or low light. It has a slower shutter speed so if you are taking pictures of people they need to keep still for longer, but I have used this function and it does work really well.

Landscape - for taking piccies of distant subjects.

Close-up - errrr for taking close ups.

Video - This camera will also take video with sound. The length of the video you can take is dependant on the space on the internal memory or card.

The camera has a favourites function where you can store pictures in a sort of "in camera" album.
This is handy for showing off pictures to friends and families.

There is a user guide with the camera. It explains everything such as how to change the picture quality, the shutter speeds, exposure compensation, ISO speed all sorts of things in plain English.

The screen on the camera is quite small but you can zoom in to see the detail better. Also the quality of the picture on the screen doesn't do justice to the final picture.

The software provided with the camera is quite simple and very easy to use. You can crop, rotate, make the picture black and white or sepia, do some fun effects, remove red eye and enhance the photos before printing or emailing.
Anyone wanting to do anything more sofisticated would probably have software like photoshop and fireworks anyway.

This camera is part of the Kodak "Easy share" range and I have a docking station. I have the one that is a charger and connects to the pc to share the pics. I've found this really easy to use and really useful. One click and all the piccies from the camera appear on the pc ready to send or print and edit and because I keep my camera on the docking station it is always charged when I want to use it.

I would suggest that as this is a 4 megapixal camera you should buy a card to increase the memory as the memory in the camera isn't huge.

As a complete beginner the only thing that I'm finding a bit of a strain is that it takes a few moments to take the picture after you have clicked the shutter button. Like I said further up the review, lots of backs of heads. However, as it is a digital camera you can see straight away what you've taken and you just delete the picture.
I've never been good at taking pictures and when I go away I take about three rolls of film and get about 20 pictures that are worth saving. This camera hasn't made me any better at taking pictures but now when I take a rubbish picture I can just delete it.

I think as a beginner digital camera this is a good choice. As a family camera it gives good quality pictures without the need to spend all day learning how to use it but it has enough functions and options that if you were interested in learning more you could.

Summary: