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Kodak EasyShare CX4230 Zoom Digital Camera
September 10, 2002 Kodak has made sharing pictures a step easier with the introduction of their new 2.0 Megapixel Kodak EasyShare CX4230 Zoom Digital Camera. We used this camera recently and think it’s great for anyone who wants an easy start in digital photography. This silver and gray point-and-shoot camera is about the size and shape of a bar of bath soap. Located on the back of the camera is an amazing "Share" button. When the picture you want is displayed on the camera’s LCD screen, just push the "Share" button, and you get a menu with five choices: Print, Print All, E-mail, Favorites and Cancel Prints. Choose Print, enter the number of prints you want for that picture, and the photo is tagged for printing. Or choose E-mail, and a list of previously loaded e-mail addresses is displayed; select one or more people to whom you want to send the photo, and that picture is tagged for e-mailing. When you place the camera in the optional docking station, just push the only button on the Station, and all the pictures are automatically transferred via the USB port to your computer. If you don’t have a docking station, you can manually transfer the pictures to your computer and still enjoy the EasySharing. The pictures appear as thumbnails in the Kodak EasyShare program. For the pictures tagged to print, you’ll automatically be given the "Print Pictures at Home" screen to verify the setup before printing. For the pictures tagged for e-mail, you’ll get the e-mail screen with the tagged photos. Add a subject and message, click "Send," and off they go sent. A convenience feature when transferring pictures from camera to computer, via the docking station or manually, is choosing whether to leave the photos in the camera’s internal memory/memory card or have them automatically erased from the camera (but not the computer). This saves you from manually clearing the camera’s internal memory/memory card. The Kodak EasyShare CX4230 Zoom Digital Camera has a f/2.7 all-glass lens with 3x optical and 2x digital zoom. Although the camera has a memory card slot designed for the newer MMC/SD (multimedia/secure digital) memory cards, there is a fixed 16MB internal memory, so you may never want a card. The internal memory stores 23 pictures at the Best setting (1632 x 1232 pixels, suitable for up to 8 x 10 inch enlargements), 48 pictures at the Better setting (1184 x 888 pixels, good for up to 5 x 7 enlargements), and 95 pictures at the Good setting (816 x 616 pixels, good for use on the Web). Power is provided by two Lithium AA batteries, a CRV3 Lithium battery or two Ni-MH AA rechargeable batteries. A rechargeable battery pack for the camera is included with the docking station and is automatically recharged whenever the camera is docked. Picture taking is point and shoot simple, with a split second delay for focusing and no delay on shutter release. There is a five second review immediately after taking the picture. You can push the review button at any time to check the pictures in the camera’s memory or card. A flash button sets flash mode, and menu selections set close-up mode, exposure compensation and other options. A convenience feature is that the camera is ready to take a picture at any time, even in review or menu mode. Another neat feature is the Orientation Sensor. Take a picture lengthwise, and it’s displayed with the correct side up on the camera’s LCD and in transfer view. A menu item lets you defeat this feature if you want. Using the video out you can see your pictures on a TV, and a built-in slide show feature lets you cycle through the photos on the camera’s LCD screen or on a TV. The included Kodak EasyShare software combines a photo organizer, photo editor, e-mailer and album creator. Although all your photos will be shown as thumbnails in "My Collection," you can label individual photos and group them by subject, location or event. This makes it easy to find and view, for instance, the Florida vacation 2002 pictures and such. Print quality will depend on your printer and the paper you use. The Kodak software is designed to automatically optimize your printer for Kodak brand photo papers. If you don’t want to print your photos at home, you can order prints from an on-line photo service directly from the EasyShare program. Using the Album Creator feature, you can orient and rearrange photos on album pages, add text notations, then print or e-mail the pages if desired. The camera operates easily, and we liked the Docking Station convenience. The pictures displayed on the computer screen were clear, with good color balance, and the camera handles high contrast lighting well. We found that when printing from the Kodak EasyShare program we needed to do some extra tweaking, and we actually had better luck printing from a different photo editing program. But we did get excellent color prints you’d be hard put to distinguish from standard film prints. At $249.95 for the camera and $79.95 for the Docking Station, this is a relatively economical introduction to digital photography and all the fun that goes with it. |
