Kodak DC280 - The right digital camera (Kodak DC 280)

Member Name: bowler

Product:	Kodak DC 280
Date:	07/07/00 (229 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Everything is included.CompactFlash used in many applications

Disadvantages: Slower than a normal camera. Initial cost.

I purchased my Kodak DC280 in mid April this year after months of reading reviews and probably most importantly shopping around on price. What finally did for me was when Kodak dropped the price by £100 to a price of £399.95. That is pretty expensive but worth it in my opinion. There are principally 2 types of memory card available for digital cameras (if you ignore Sony's memorystick which is proprietary) they are Smartmedia and CompactFlash. Kodak have adopted the CompactFlash type which currently has cards from approx 4Mb to 192Mb in density. The DC280 comes with an 8Mb card included. The camera has a) 2 resolutions : High - 1760x1168 pixels and Standard - 640x480 pixels. b) 3 quality settings Best,Better & Good. The size of the picture file will depend on settings chosen above. The largest file size I have seen for High resolution, Best Quality is 834Kb ! This will soon fill up your memory card or indeed your hard disk on your PC if you transfer files for storage. Having said that you can experiment with the settings to get the best results for your particular requirement.
The camera has flash and a 6X zoom (2X optical and 3X digital). You can print out via a colour inkjet printer brilliant pictures up to 8" x 10", which when framed look excellent or if you prefer you can use the pictures from your camera for web pages of email them to friends & relatives.
The camera comes with rechargeable batteries (the good Ni MH type NOT the dated and worse performing Ni Cd) and a battery recharger. Kodak really haven't left anything out.
The DC280 can be connected to your pc via USB or Serial Bus (ALL cables included) and I found it a doddle to install the supplied software and get up and running in next to no time. Kodak bundles both Adobe Photodeluxe and Pagemill with the camera. The camera has a 1.8" colour lcd built in which helps to perform a number of functions. Firstly it allows you to look at the picture you have taken straight
away, if it's ok you can keep it, if not you can immediately delete it & take it again. Secondly it allows you to review al pictures on the CompactFlash card (including a zoom in function) and thirdly it allows you to use the menu system to change the setup of the DC280. The interface is brilliant it's a sort of a cartoon type style and is really easy to use. The other really useful feature is that you can plug the camera directly into your TV and run a slideshow of all pictures on the memory card. I can't honestly fault the DC280 it has given me hours of fun so far and many more to come I'm sure. If you are considering a digital camera be sure to look at this one.

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