Pretty good pictures for the price, robust too. (Kodak DC 215)

Member Name: thomaswp

Product:	Kodak DC 215
Date:	10/05/01 (195 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: cheap, robust, easy to use

Disadvantages: resoution, initial accessories supplied

I bought this as a first digital camera in November 1999 to monitor the work on renovating my house. You can see the results at www.william-powlett.net (but the pictures of Amelia are NOT taken with the DC215). In general I have been very pleased with the camera, although it does have three fundamental shortcomings out of the box. The first is that the 4MB card is woefully inadequate for storing high quality pictures (it fits only three pictures at the highest quality sometimes), the second is that the card is not supplied with rechargeable batteries. The third is that you have to use a serial link to take pictures off the camera, and this can be pretty slow in this era of USB.

Once you have bought rechargeable batteries and a bigger flashcard things look up, although this will add £60+ to the cost of the camera. I bought four NiCad batteries with a charger and they last incredibly well. Four “well known” standard batteries would last around half an hour, but the rechargeable ones last for days. I was lucky enough to get a USB adapter free with my 8MB flash card, and that made taking pictures off the card a doddle.

If you stick with the standard “out of the box” solution for retrieving pictures, the software supplied as standard with the camera is pretty good. It allows you to see the camera as an extra “drive” on your PC and copy files from the camera to the hard disk. This is much better than other cameras where you treat the camera like a scanner and have to take the files off one by one.

The camera has a useful screen on the back which gives a preview of the picture for quick deleting, and can be used to zoom and pan on stored images. There are a lot of settings, including date stamping each picture. I use that because if I want to remove it it is pretty easy to do on the computer. You can use the screen as a view finder if you like, but that saps batteries, and the optical view finder i
s far easier to use (unless you want to go really close up).
So, what about picture quality? I have been pretty impressed given that the resolution is not that high. On the highest resolution and detail, landscapes can be a little disappointing, but for close-ups they can be excellent. The problem is that the results are inconsistent. My feeling is that camera shake comes in to play. The lower resolution (640 x 480) is uniformly pretty good. I am happy with the performance, but when compared with a friends £500+ 3.1 megapixel camera the pictures look like they come from the cheaper version. I print pictures, look at them on screen and publish them to the web. The prints are pretty much indistinguishable from a real photo on the right paper, and on the web where pictures are reduced in size they look very sharp.
The flash is extremely bright, which is generally a good thing, but can wash people out if they are too close to the camera.
Finally, the camera is very robust! I have dropped it twice from waist high on to concrete. Both times I broke the battery compartment. The first time Kodak replaced it very quickly, the second time I actually broke the catch inside the camera so it is now held together with elephant tape. I use the camera every day, it still takes good photos and for the price it has done me proud. I have taken well over 3000 pictures and have no plans to buy a new digital camera.
21 May 2001: Having recently seen the next generation of digital camera - a £450 Kodak with 3.1 megapixels - the DC215 feels rather dated. However, although on screen the pictures from the more modern camera are stunningly good, the prints I make at home are limited by the printer quality. Whilst I drooled over the new camera, and its landscapes were fantastic, I still have no plans to ditch my 215.
21 November: Camera still going strong. I am now completely convinced that camera shake is to blame for the fuzzy pictures. In good light co
nditions, pictures are excellent. In bad light, they look blurred.

Summary: