Hi. I'm Richard. Love my music, play guitar....and I also write the odd ciao review!
Hi. I'm Richard. Love my music, play guitar....and I also write the odd ciao review!
Member since:15.05.2003
Reviews:71
Members who trust:13
The Kodak DC280 is a 2.0 Megapixel digital zoomcamera. I purchased this camera on behalf of the company I work for and paid £350 for it about 3 years ago.
At the time I purchased this camera I thought that it was pretty good value for money considering the ease of use and features it had. At that time 2.0 Megapixels was a pretty good picture quality, just shows how times move on with 8 Megapixel and better cameras now on the market!
This camera has seen a great deal of service in the hands of the many staff members who have used it over the past 3 years, and has stood up to the abuse thrown at it! The camera is still in daily use here although it is a bit battle scarred now. Some of the rubber grip on the front of the camera has fallen off and the rubber cover for the serial port has broken off through overuse. Aside from this it is still functioning well and won’t need replacing for a little while yet.
I thought doing this review now might prove useful to anyone who comes across this camera
second hand somewhere, as I don’t think it will be still available as a current product in the shops.
Specifications This camera has a picture quality of 2.0 Megapixels, with 24-bit colour. It comes supplied with an 8mb Compactflash memory card, although as this will only hold about 20 decent quality pictures we purchased a 32mb card quite soon after purchasing the camera.
The camera has a 6X zoom function, with 2X optical zoom and 3X digital zoom available. I have found this sufficient for our uses but I expect newer cameras provide a greater zoom range than this.
The Lens on the camera is optical quality glass with maximum aperture ratings of Wide, F/3 and on Telephoto, F/3.8.
There is a standard viewfinder and also a 1.5” LCD screen on the back of the camera which (with a bit of eye straining) is sufficient for reviewing the pictures you have taken.
The camera runs off four AA size batteries and it is advisable to use rechargeable ones as the battery life is not that fantastic, especially if you use the LCD screen a lot.
This camera is a bit bulky compared to more recent digital cameras. The dimensions are 133mm x 52mm x 76mm and it weighs in at 12.1 oz without batteries.
In Use This camera is quite straightforward to use. This is proven by the fact that I have had to train the staff at my company in how to use the camera and no one seems to have had a great deal of problems with picking up its basic operations. The only thing that catches some people out is that you have to hold down the shutter button for longer than you would expect to on a non digital camera.
The top of the camera has five buttons, the shutter and the zoom switch are the most prominent and then there are three smaller buttons that allow you to change flash settings, turn on the timer and set the focus level.
The back of the camera is also quite uncluttered. There is a large toggle switch to change camera modes, and 6 small buttons surrounding the LCD screen which allow you to navigate through its on-screen menus.
The main functions of the camera are set by using the toggle switch. This switch has four settings, the first is Capture which is used for taking photos. The second setting is Review, which turns on the LCD screen so that you can view the pictures you have taken. The third setting is Connect, which allows you to plug the camera into a computer for saving and printing photos. The final setting of the four is Camera Setup, this allows you to alter the settings on the camera, add borders and effects to pictures, and change the date and time.
The on-screen menus viewed through the LCD screen are quite easy to follow, although they may seem a little complex at first until you start exploring them properly. After a short while though you should be able to quickly review and delete pictures and change general camera settings.
The photo quality produced is of a good quality and for producing quick photos the digital format is very convenient. The camera tends to be set on Medium quality at work, which is sufficient for our needs. You can set this camera to either, Low, Medium or High quality, with High being the 2.0 Megapixel setting. It should be remembered that the higher the quality the less photos you can store on the flash card.
The battery life isn’t bad generally but using the LCD screen does tend to cause a greater drain on battery reserves.
Connecting to a computer The DC280 comes bundled with software to allow you to connect it to a PC or Macintosh. I can’t comment on use with a Mac as I have only used this with a PC running Windows 2000.
Connecting the camera is quite easy. Two leads are supplied with the camera, one serial and one USB. Connect one end to the serial or USB on the computer and plug the other into the serial socket on the camera, set the toggle button on the back of the camera to “Connect” and that’s it connected!
The software itself is also quite easy to use, as all it involves is double clicking on the Kodak icon in My Computer (on the Windows desktop), opening up a series of folders and then you should be shown a list of the pictures on the camera. These photos will be recognised as JPEG images on your computer, which means that they will open up with pretty much any photo editing package you happen to have installed.
Conclusion Ease of use and reliability are the two good reasons for considering this camera. On top of this it has also proved to be good value for money for it has continued to take decent quality photos after 3 years of daily use and abuse in a busy office environment.
For somebody who wants a good basic digital camera (that can probably be picked up second hand very cheaply) this Kodak DC280 would probably be just the job!
Advantages: Superb photo quality and very easy to use and setup Disadvantages: Advanced technology which naturally is fragile an for peace of mind you really need to take out an extended warranty
himmelblau 28.03.2001 (29.03.2001)
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Review of Kodak DC 280
Jan 7th, 2004
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