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Kodak EasyShare Sport C123
by RosyB
I wanted my own digital camera so i didnt have to keep on borrowing my familys and worrying about breaking it when i am on holiday or out and about, but i didnt want to spend a fortune but i wasted it to be good still, so i scoured the internet and came across the kodak easyshare sport! not only was it relativley cheap, but the fact is ... was an underwater digital camera really impressed me aswell! I thought it looked really good value for money as i would take pictures and videos in the pool and sea on holiday as well as it being my everyday digital camera, and the 12mp impressed me aswell for the price! I purchased it from MAazon as well as an 8G memory card and i pleased to say that it's the best camera i have ever used, its light eight, robust, and takes an excelent picture! I am not the biggest fan of the colour (yellow/green) but i am not that worried about it! The picture quality in and out of water is excelent and it really is waterproof! not just splash-proof, but full blown underwater! not only that but i have filmed underwater aswell! You do have to use AA batterys in it, and they do drain quite quickly when in H2O mode, but i am only using battery's from poundland, so it could well be that i am not using the best quality batterys and that if you use better ones then it will last longer! there are lots of different modes on the camera, nightmode, fireworks, children so and so forth, so you can take the best picture for your surroundings! The flash is really bright and sometimes a bit dazzling! so just be wary of that! overall i would recomend this camera to anyone looking for a robust, cheap underwater camera that is good value for money but still takes n excelent picture!
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Kodak Easyshare CX4200
by davidbuttery
** Introduction **
I can't say that I felt a great deal of enthusiasm when discovering the Kodak EasyShare CX4200 hiding away at the bottom of a box of mixed old digital cameras some while ago. I've generally found Kodak compacts of this vintage (2002) to be uninspiring at best and outright poor at worst. Still, the whole ... essence of a job lot is that you have to take the rough with the smooth, and it didn't seem fair to damn the thing to eternal, er, damnation without at least giving it a fair trial first. And then damning it. Okay, okay, or not. Let's see.
** The basics **
This is a budget two-megapixel camera with no optical zoom; I haven't been able to find out what it sold for in the UK when it was new, but its launch price in the US was $180 and within a year you could buy it there for under $100, which for the time was considered a notably low price for a digicam from a big-name manufacturer. It was very obviously aimed at first-time digital photographers, of which in those days there were an awful lot, and this is presumably the reason why Kodak provided a really detailed user guide, the contents page for which even includes entries such as "Caution When Using a Tripod".
As with most nine-year-old cameras, the CX4200 looks a little bit bulky and unwieldy today, though at least that extra size allows Kodak to have included a pretty decent grip on the right-hand-side (as you hold the camera) which makes it feel quite secure in the hand. It also allows for a very slightly bigger LCD than most of its contemporaries, at 1.6 inches - though in practice the difference is so small as to be irrelevant, especially as the screen is not rectangular, instead having a convex edge on the right-hand side. (As was common on early models, the live view is usually off, and must be specifically switched on if required.) The optical viewfinder is okay, nothing more, nothing less.
Kodak, as usual, chose to use their infamous "Good, Better, Best" settings for picture quality, denoted on the screen by one to three stars respectively. though on the CX4200 there are no separate resolution options: "Good" gives you a less than mighty 0.5 mp resolution, "Better" provides 1 mp and "Best" allows the full 2 mp. These days, there seems absolutely no reason ever to use anything other than "Best". In a strange quirk of design, if you actually want to see the current quality setting while it's not showing already, you have to press either the flash button or (honestly) the down button. Don't ask me why!
** What you do, and don't, get **
This being such a simple camera, designed mainly for purely automatic point'n'shoot operation, there are very few options and settings at your fingertips: exposure compensation is present and correct, but that's about it: there's not even a basic white balance option, something which could cause plenty of grief in a changeable climate like ours where the light can go from bright to murky and back several times in a few minutes. As for ISO setting, forget it: it's all done automatically, though at least Kodak have allowed the camera to go to either ISO 100 or 200, which gives slightly more range than 100-only models.
There is, at least, a flash. I have come across digital cameras that don't have one (and not just because it's broken!) but they're very rare, and Kodak really would have been shooting themselves in the foot had they taken the stripped-down approach to those extremes! It has the usual normal and red-eye settings (though the latter isn't entirely perfect) but its usable range is terribly short: a subject standing even eight feet or so away from the lens may end up coming out rather darker than you might like. There doesn't seem to be any sort of throttling-down for close-up flash shots, so this camera is not likely to be good for shooting your eBay auctions!
There's not really a lot left to tell about the CX4200's features, especially as there is no movie mode whatsoever, not even the comedy 10 fps silent option that so many old digicams possess. There is, in theory, a macro mode, but when even the official user guide suggests that its usable range is as narrow as 20 to 30 cm you really can't expect very much - and you'd be right not to. Kodak's "share" button (the reason for the EasyShare name) is of course present and correct, but who uses that nowadays? For the record, it is/was used to allow printing, emailing and the like to be done directly from the camera rather than after transferring photos to a computer.
** Running and results **
The camera takes SD cards; for some reason the highest capacity the manual covers is 192 MB, but I've found 256 MB cards to work fine. At top quality a picture tends to take up around 600-700 KB, so there should be plenty of room, but there is a small (16 MB) internal memory too. Power is, almost inevitably for this type of camera, provided by two AA batteries. I know it would have increased the bulk even more, but four might have been a better bet, as if you leave the LCD switched on in the modern fashion you're likely to need to carry most of Duracell's yearly output around with you...
Finally, it might be a good idea to say something about the Kodak's picture quality. My feelings about it are somewhat mixed: in steady and reasonably bright conditions its results are not bad at all; colours are a bit less saturated than you get from most modern compacts, but if you can get used to that you may find it to be rather attractive; it's more reminiscent of traditional film output than usual. However, things go downhill very fast when the light becomes remotely difficult: bright sunshine will dazzle it while dim conditions bring both unpleasant graininess and near-ridiculous shutter lag; a full second isn't unusual.
** Conclusion **
These cameras don't turn up on eBay all that often, but that's not because they're coveted by collectors; quite the reverse, in fact: not so very long ago I saw one in working order sell for 99p plus the postage, just under £4 all-in. At that price the CX4200 might be worth thinking about as a knockabout model to give to the kids, especially as its chunky construction makes it somewhat more robust than a lot of digital cameras. However, it has just too many drawbacks to make it recommendable for general use, even if you're on a really tight budget.
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