I received this camera as a gift from my boyfriend this past Christmas because I had always been complaining that I didn't have a digital camera. The lack of a digital camera was especially frustrating when I started going to college because there are so many things to photograph on college campuses, such as the resident proselytizing nutjob. I knew it wasn't a great camera from the get-go, but I just wanted something I could take to campus on a regular basis and use to annoy the locals when traveling.
Although I wasn't there for the thing's purchase, I know my boyfriend got it at Best Buy for around $75. What is it with guys bragging about the deals they get anyway? Well, I suppose I'm a sucker for a sale when it comes right down to it, too.
=Who says you can't judge a camera by the cover?=
The camera was packaged in one of those blister-packs – the kind you need a kitchen knife or scissors to open. That's clue number one that it isn't exactly top-of-the-line. The packaging was nice, though. It clearly listed the camera's features: 3.2 megapixels, 5x
digital zoom (emphasized for a reason), video capture capabilities, and SD card compatibility. The back of the package has basic operating instructions and expanded information about features such as the camera's 16MB internal memory. Since this review is supposed to be about the product, I will only mention in passing that the packaging was really tough to open and I nearly tore the instruction booklet in half thanks to their heat-sealed blister packaging.
===Initial impressions and basic operation===
The camera itself is incredibly lightweight, almost to the point where it makes you wonder why they didn't make it smaller. In the package there are two alkaline AA batteries (no lithium ion for you!), a polyester lanyard, a few sheets of 4x6 photo paper, a plastic base for use with Kodak's
docking bay, an instruction booklet, a CD with drivers and software, and a USB cable. The USB cable is about three feet in length and is terminated by what appears to be a proprietary male connector on one end. It isn't mini A or B, so unless there's some new form factor I don't know about it's Kodak's own thing.
The lanyard attachment point is a little flimsy (yeah, I'm weird and use the lanyard). It's just a bent metal bar that folds out on one side of the camera. It's a part of the hinge for the door that conceals the camera's SD card slot and USB port. Something about waving the camera about by that hinge makes me a bit uneasy, but after a few months of use nothing has happened yet.
There are a total of 11 buttons and one wheel on the camera. Five of these buttons make up the directional pad with which the user navigates the menu (the center is a circular “OK” button), one is a button clearly marked “Delete” for deleting photos without using the software, a “Menu” and “Review” button for accessing the camera's menu and reviewing photos taken, the shutter button, the flash button, and a mysterious button labeled “Share” with a red rhinestone in it that I have never used. (I kid you not, the button has a freaking rhinestone in it).
The buttons and their corresponding functions are pretty self-explanatory to anyone who has had at least some experience with a digital camera before, so I will not go into detail here. The wheel is what turns the camera on and off. There are four settings: off, video capture, auto, and low-light. I'll explain these more later.
There is also a viewfinder that is basically a hole that goes from the back of the camera to the front. It's almost like the viewfinders on those disposable cameras you pick up while on vacation. It isn't exactly great. What's better than the viewfinder is the 1.5” LCD screen on the back (1.5” is the screen's diagonal measurement). This screen is the main interface used to set the camera's options and view menus and such.
===Just press a button and ZING! You're off===
Now, to be quite honest I have not used all of the features on this camera yet. The red rhinestone button reminds me of the button in the glass elevator at the end of
Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. In reality all it does is “tag” a particular image for printing, email, or as a “favorite.” Enough about the shiny red button already.
I'll start from the top down: the shutter button is very basic. My boyfriend's Canon Powershot whatever has a shutter button that you press once to focus and hold down to take a photo. The Kodak EasyShare C300 has no such thing – just point and shoot and you're off. There is no way to focus the camera at all actually. You just sort of aim and hope for the best.
The flash button is right below the wheel. There are four flash settings: off, fill, red-eye, and auto. The only difference I can tell between auto, fill, and red-eye is that auto is the brightest flash and red-eye is the dimmest. According to the manual red-eye sets of the flash once to allow the subject to get used to the flash and then flashes again when it actually takes the picture. You set the flash by pressing the flash button repeatedly to cycle through the settings to find the one you want and after you stop pressing it, the LCD goes back to viewfinder mode. Flash is not available in video mode, so ample light is required to take decent video.
The delete button is self-explanatory: it baleets, er, deletes stuff.
The D-pad not only serves as a means of navigation for the camera's menus, but the left and right directional buttons zoom out and in respectively. Keep in mind that the
zoom is not optical! You might as well take a full shot and crop it in an image-manipulation program instead of using zoom.
The menu button opens the camera's menu which has the following settings: self-timer, exposure compensation, picture quality, color mode, set album (still), image storage, and setup menu.
The review button opens the picture taken most recently in a slide show format. To access the multiview, you use the up or down buttons on the D-pad.
====Menu overview====
As said earlier the menu has seven settings:
Self-timer allows the user to turn the 10-second delay on or off. There is no way to change the amount of delay time.
Exposure compensation just seems like a rudimentary contrast setting to me. If the pictures are way too dark increase the value and if they're too light decrease it. It's basically a digital replacement for F-stop.
Picture quality has four settings: Best, Best (3:2), Better, and Good. The different between Best and Best (3:2) is that Best uses less compression and results in higher quality images that take up more space.
Color mode lets the user choose between Color, Black and White, or Sepia. Sepia is that slightly yellowed look many old photos have and uses the same filter as those novelty photographers on the boardwalk use. Black and White and Sepia photos turn out really well in natural light without use of the flash, but then again so do color images. The Sepia filter seems to produce better contrast than the Black and White one, but that might just be my preference for fake old pictures.
Set album (still) is one function I can't say much about because I've never used the software Kodak provided with the camera. I'm pretty certain that it just allows you to tag images on your camera (a la Flickr) to make organizing them easier.
Image storage lets you choose between SD card and internal memory. When set to “Auto” it automatically chooses whatever is free. For example if you fill up your internal memory to the point a whole photo can't fit on it then it automatically selects your SD card as the storage device.
The
setup menu is fairly basic. It lets you set the date and time, whether to display the date and time on each photo or video capture, and there is even an option to format the camera. Be careful about this because you don't want to lose your entire vacation to Europe in a few presses of a button.
====Taking pictures====
I am not a photographer. The most experience I have with photography is an Intro to Photography class I took in high school and I got a C because my camera sucked so I just did bookwork to pass. So, I don't exactly take great photos with crummy cameras. Or maybe I simply don't take good photos at all. Anyway...
The Kodak EasyShare C300, as digital cameras go, is pretty much average. There are no manual settings and no optical zoom which makes it easy to use for beginners. I have not found a way to change shutter speed and I don't think there is a way. The shutter speed is pretty low and I have taken many blurry pictures because of it. The camera has a plastic tripod adapter that can be used with just about every tripod out there. I mention that it is plastic because this quickens the rate at which the threading is worn away. Since this is a cheap camera I guess it isn't
that big of a deal, but it's kind of a pain to slowly lose the ability to use a tripod over time.
The camera is average in size and has a textured surface on the front where most people grip the camera. There is also an indentation in the back where the user can place his or her thumb. The grip is pretty ergonomic and I like it. I don't have girly hands, either, so it's tough for me to find a handle – or camera - that's easy to grip. It's so lightweight I do have to wonder why they didn't manufacture the thing with a smaller shell. It weighs less than a pound.
Turning the camera off and on is simple enough and the warm-up time is minimal. There is a bit of a delay between shots that is a tad annoying, but I believe all digital cameras have a delay like that, so it doesn't lose points.
The camera also captures full motion video at 15fps. It's about on par with a decent webcam and isn't much of a selling feature. I only used the video capture once and that was only to try it out. Since there is no microphone, there is no way to capture sound with video. It saves the videos in Quicktime's .MOV format which is really irritating. (“Switch to Quicktime Pro! Buy an iPod!” Blah blah blah) I would use the video capture if you had the option of recording higher quality video in a different format, but since it uses .MOV it's just one more thing I don't use.
I've also found the battery life to be pretty poor. I have not invested in anything other than disposable alkaline batteries (again, the camera takes two AA). I've found that alkaline batteries last about 60 photos which is pretty crummy.
=====Hardware=====
The internal memory fills up quickly, but I didn't expect to even
have internal memory to begin with. The 16MB memory holds about 20 photos at maximum quality. To be quite honest, I have never connected the camera to my computer to remove these images due to the fact that the USB ports on the front of my computer case broke off. Instead I just keep those images on the camera and use the SD card slot and a 512MB card.
Because I have never connected the camera to my computer, I have never used the drivers or software that came with it. I have installed the drivers for it without a problem, but never used them. I tend to avoid installing any superfluous software on my computer (I run Windows 2000 Pro), so I never bothered to even install any software that came with it.
The method I use to transfer photos onto my computer is simply to remove the SD card and put it in my PDA which uses Microsoft ActiveSync to transfer files to the hard drive. This method has worked for me without fail, but doesn't utilize the software packaged with the camera. I will eventually repair the front USB ports on my case or get a hub and will then edit this review with information about the software.
Also, I have not used this camera in conjunction with the compatible
docking bay, so I cannot comment on the ease of use with that.
======Summary======
Pros
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Great for beginners and kids
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Easy to use
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Inexpensive as far as digital cameras go
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Compatible with SD cards
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Decent-sized LCD screen
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Easy to hold
Cons
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No manual controls whatsoever
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Plastic tripod adapter
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Low shutter speed resulting in blurry photos
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Video is only captured in .MOV format
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Low battery life
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Proprietary cable
======Links======
Kodak's website:
http://www.kodak.com/
Kodak's support page for the C300:
http://www.kodak.com/global/en/service/products/ekn030245.jhtml?pq-path=6846
