Hmmmmm a mixed bag....

Ok, I read some reviews on it - being the "pro's" in the Kammera sites and their 2c worth, then I bought it, and then I came across this site.

The complaints about the battery door - well when I put the battery in, I sussed out that you MUST push the battery/s in against the springs, then close the door over them.

If you just drop the batteries in then lever them in using the door, the combination of friction, angular vectors and the resistance of the battery contact springs - well the door is so flimsy - it's easy to see how it would snap in the hinges - so that is a genuine design defect.

So insert your batteries fully by finger, then close the compartment door over it / them.

Ummmmmmmmmmmm the kodak easy share software...

Uhhh I felt it deserved a mild corporate moron award, by designing truly dumb software for dumb people - it kind of takes over the whole process of getting the pics off your camera memory / SD card, and it includes too much of that stupid processing software, that invades your life, mind and privacy.

After a few hours of that, I uninstalled it.

I have a shortcut to my computer, in the start menue in XP, and I now simply access the camera as another Hard Drive.

And I use the XP scanner and camera wizard to resize the bigger pics for emailing.

It's much simpler, faster and easier.

What got right up my nose was the online registration - at the Kodak website.

If there is ever a time you want to grap people by the neck and hit them in the face this is it.

When registering a camera or anything, ummm all I expect to do is give my name and contact details and the camera's serial number.

But for a really bad case of the premium corporate moron award - this goes to Kodak who both impose a mandatory f-ing consumer survey which = no play - no register, and they fill it with really stupid "choice questions", which in my case irritated me no ende.

They were of the magnatude of "Which chocolate do you like best" - a) Milk, b) Hazel Nut or c) Dark.

But what happenes if you only like minted Belgian chocolate?

If you don't participate in their idiot customer survey - they don't register your camera; if you don't answer ALL their idiot customer survey questions, they don't register your camera...

So not only is it an imposition, it's also a stupid imposition.

Ok to the Camera it's self.

Construction - a quite flimsy on the doors / covers. Not the sort of thing that will survive any kind of a drop onto a hard surface.

The photography.

Well I have never owned a really neato camera, and so this is a huge upgrade for me.

It does White and Black pictures, Sepia and Color - I am impressed at that.

It has panoramic, portrait and macro.

Umm it has an excellent night photography - with 4 second exposures - great for still shots in very low light conditions.

The video function.

Well the microphone is tinny and kind of crap, but you can narrate your video and it sounds very clear even in very windy conditions.

It saves the vids as a MOV file, which I tend to hate, not because it's BAD, but the samve file converted into AVI and then saved as WMV - without any compression or real loss of quality, well this a jump from a 30 Meg file to a 4 Meg file..

So ones short one or two minute videos are stored in a native format that makes them impossible to email on a 56K dial up... which is just plain stupid.

The Quick Time MOV format, the sounds are good, the video is good, but the files are bloated to almost infinity - but they do compress well.

If Kodak had of had the brains, it would have been better to make the camera store vieos in a high quality compressed format such as MPG or WMV format instead of Quicktime.

Overall.

I really like this camera.

The photography side is really good and the whole functions and menues are well thought out.

It's the balance of "functions" vs. the capability of the software.

It's complex enough to make for a really good selection of settings, and it's easy enough to use to make it relatively quick and to define most of the settings you want.

The combination of mechanical and digital zoom, combined up to 12 X zoom, is actually very good.

The function is kind of indistinguishable - as it blends both functions.

The view finder matches the whole zoom function fairly closely.

As I live in a very dusty rural area, I'd also be very inclined to keep it in a sealable plastic lunch bag, and then put that in a small well padded camera bag.

After hearing the comments about the lense cover jamming, I'd be going to extra lengths to keep the dust out of it...

So I guess now, it's the longevity test.