Nice Price… but buy Z1012’s Better
Whoa! Stop the presses! A digital camera without a viewfinder?
Who knew?!?!?!?
The world must be TOLD of this TRAVESTY!
Kudos for your eagle eye, finding out that deep, dark secret!
Imagine that, a big company like Kodak, loosing upon the unsuspecting masses a digital camera with an LCD-only finder system!
Oh, the HUMANITY!
[Thank you, thank you, I’ll be here all week – please make sure to try the buffet featuring the exclusive fruit-mold jello dessert – as rare a discovery as the LCD-only digital finder!]
Yeah, you can see this in the picture.
It was not THAT long ago that ONE megapixel cameras were very expensive. Kodak sold a rebadged Nikon, fitted out with a Kodak sensor, which cost something in the ten thousand dollar range, IIRC – and, it needed to be tethered to a laptop computer to operate!
That was PRO-grade gear, used for newspaper photograpy and so forth. And for most real-world newsgathering (and web) applications, even ONE megapixel is heavy overkill; the images need to be shrunk down in X/Y dimensions and have heavy JPEG compression applied.
Just a few years ago, 5MP was high-end top of the line cutting edge [insert jargon of choice] gear. And it’s plenty good for 99% of the stuff MOST people use their cameras for.
A decent 5MP camera can deliver poster-sized prints that look stunning.
It’s easy to be jaded, as our eyes roll like slot machine reels, with bigger and bigger MP numbers spinning by. Marketeeeeeering “needs” mandate “bigger=better” salespitchery. The problem is that when you cram more and more pixels onto a finite piece of silicon real estate, they MUST be made smaller and smaller. This means less sensitivity, and, more NOISE – the bane of high quality image-making.
But, them thar giant numbers sure look good! (“Mine’s bigger!” will always sell to a particular market segment. If not, the spamload in our inboxes would not be so overflowing with pitches aimed at that bunch!)
Product face-off:
http://www.digitalversus.com/duels.php?ty=1&ma1=18&mo1=540&p1=3317&ma2=31&mo2=513&p2=3153&ph=5
Fares pretty well for the price, imho.
It is very common for major construction projects (“major” defined as anything bigger than a single family home) to record the progress for the duration of the project. When I had a studio I was contracted on occasion to cover things like apartment building construction and the buiding of a large water tower. I had to go on-site about once per week and shoot the thing from various angles.
There are many reasons a builder would need to have a record of the construction. And a large company would easily find it prudent to have their own historian on staff. The fact that you have not heard of something does not mean that it does not exist in the real world.
For your viewing pleasure – and, strictly for educational purposes (there is no paradox there – take my word for it, I insist) – we present… The Ideal Consumer!
That’s right! Things like “image quality” and “lens range” are meaningless. The ONLY thing that matters is pixel count, and the easy way to make a decision is to remember one simple rule – bigger (number of pixels) equals better.
Who cares if the final result is a piece of work delivering dim, unsaturated images with heat noise so prominent that a clear blue sky looks like a blueberry blizzard? It’s the number of pixels that matters – NOTHING else! (Other than the size of the camera, of course, which should be a small as possible. So what if the phyiscally tiny lens is – of necessity – abysmally slow, with a very restricted zoom range? At least it will fit in your shirt pocket, and be a great show-off. And isn’t showing-off what it’s all about?)
That was a nice reply until it got condescending at the end. Why are some people so on guard in these forums? I’ve actually worked with a few “large” construction companies and never heard of a construction site “historian.” I was just curious… I was being playful… like a puppy.
I’ve certainly seen a lot better deals on stuff from Woot before…
This thing looks like it sould have a “Made by Mettel” sticker on it somewhere…
You can buy a canon I590 IS at new egg any day of the week for $104 with free shipping. Smaller, better camera. It is one of the best point and shoots I have ever used, and I carry it with me on every trip alongside my DSLR.
This kodak is waaay oversized, and ugly. It takes up as much space as a dslr and takes crappy pictures.
Well, sorry, what can I say… the vagaries of online “communications” strike again. We misread each other, I guess (I read your original post as a snippy slam of the “historian” – different companies come up with different titles – it’s been a nuisance ever since the first “expert” declared that it was better to bestow high-sounding titles on people rather than increase their pay. That’s why Walmart doesn’t have “empoyees” anymore, but are loaded to the rafters with “associates” (a term formerly run into the ground by such princes among men as La Cosa Nostra <g>)
In another company, he might be called a “staff photographer” or something along those lines (with a job description covering “enhanced documentation tasks” and so forth).
Somewhat tangential to this (along the lines of “jargon uber alles”) there is – or was, and hopefully still is – a website that features a “BS Generator” (you can figure out the actual name – the filters here would doubtlessly twist it beyond recognition, so I won’t even try). If it’s still around, google ought to be able to find it easily enough.
It’s hilarious – and scary. You hit the “Make BS” button, and it generates authentic-looking corpspeak – gawdawful enough that I see its output and wonder if half the wonks out there aren’t using it in their jobs – either because they LIKE what it coughs up, or, because they get a kick out of the PHB-types looking at genuine BS and nodding in approval.
I’ve owned several Canons and Kodaks, and have enjoyed good performance with most of them. Right now, I’m back to using a Kodak DC280 that’s almost a decade old. It takes beautiful photos and I have no use for any resolution above 2MP. I never print anything, but it will do 8x10 nicely. I’ve dropped it over and over again and it just keeps working.
Canon and Casio take better photos but their point and shoots are somewhat fragile and cost a bit more.
I’m thinking about trying Pentax.
I own an older Kodak camera and I think it works pretty well…takes great pictures for general photography and I’ve used the video recorder feature for my four-wheeling trips. Mounted the camera in a waterproof box to the front rack on my quad…it has handled 2 four-wheeling trips, not to mention my stress tests before the trips (me drop kicking the camera in the waterproof box around the house to make sure it could handle the beating). The only issues I have are sometimes the autofocus can be a real PIA for getting those perfect close up shots, the macro function absolutely blows, and sometimes the autofocus can be a bit noisy (you can hear it focusing when playing back videos). For general photography…I think Kodak cameras are great though.
Edit: Also just to add…for good macros, one of the newer Fuji (Fujifilm?) cameras has a really good macro function…plus also takes great general photography shots…and runs under $200.
The Pentax Optio cameras get pretty decent reviews – I’ve never used one, but ironically enough I have one sitting in the other room, never taken out of the box, going back to Woot tomorrow (they sent it to us by accident, it was a cascading series of fershlugginer snafus in the wake of our Pentax K100D DSLR order, finally resolved when they had Fedex email my wife something with directions on how to get it picked up – tomorrow they all go back – other than the working K100D, and there’s peace in the valley, the birds sing, my wallet fills itself, and…)
I do like the Kodak P&S cameras I’ve used (the 10MP we gave the inlaws, and my own Z1275, which, while NOT a match for the K100D is a really sweet little camera) – but, if you want to get something that will do REALLY fantastic work, for VERY little money, try to find a used Olympus Stylus 300 digital P&S.
It’s a tiny little thing – it’ll nest in your shirt pocket with room to spare – and it’s “only” 3.2MP – but the lens is TACK-sharp, and the camera will produce 8x10 prints of unbelieveable resolution – they have that “there’s more detail here than I can see!” look to them. It’s easily capable of great 11x14 prints, and even 16x20s look very good. I know this for a fact, because I’ve got some of them, and given them away as gifts. People are always wowed by the quality. If I’d told them I used a two thousand dollar DSLR they’d have believed me. The images it produces are THAT good – yes, even with a mere 3.2 MP.
I’d be surprised if you couldn’t find one in decent shape for under fifty bucks (just make sure the seller includes the battery and charger for it).
The only real downside is that they use the xD memory card – which is not as easy to find as the SD/MicroSD family, and, is not compatible with them (in other words, you can’t buy a MicroSD-to-xD adapter, unless you are using the latest Stylus models which do support such a thing – but then you won’t be buying one for under fifty bucks).
That camera (the Stylus 300) originally sold for several hundred bucks, and was considered to be worth the money at the time. That you can get one for peanuts today is one of the benefits of a market awash with newer and newer models.
One side benefit is that the lower megapixel count means that the individual pixels are larger, which means that you’ll have less noise. (In decent lighting, I don’t have visible noise in the work I’ve done with it. In poor light, the noise can be visible, but, it looks pretty much like the kind of “grain” (dye-blobs, not true silver “grain”) you see in prints from film cameras. In other words, the images look “real” rather than pixelated or jpeg-artifact laden.
Dpreview has areview
Bottom of the class but considering most cameras they compared it with cost 3-5x more its not that surprising.
According to Schneider-Kreuznach’s website, Kodak’s website, and Wikipedia, Schneider-Kreuznach is the OEM lens maker for Kodak digital cameras. So I’d like to see some proof of your claim, please.
I’m in the market for a new digital camera, but I’ll never buy an EasyShare again.
Easyshare #1: died after about a year
Easyshare #2: died after about a year
Casio Exilim: died after a little over 3 years
Lots of consumer reviews on the Wal-Mart page for this product: http://www.walmart.com/catalog/product.do?product_id=10710380#ShortReviewTitleBar
Looks like a power hog.
10MP is more than enough to crop and print quality 8 x 10 pictures. The biggest elements that determine image quality and sharpness are lens size/quality and sensor size/quality. The Nikon D2H, known for excellent image quality and color saturation, is a 4.3MP camera. I’ve printed 11 x 14 images from these files with no issues. This isn’t a real schneider lens like the ones offered on old Leica cameras, but neither is sony using traditional zeiss lenses from old Hasselblad camera in its digital cameras. Both are licensing agreements.
This camera is likely to have much better files than a 10MP camera with a smaller sensor, as in a pocket point and shoot of that pixel density. This sensor is more than double the area of that of a typical pocket-sized camera.
This is a lot of camera for the money, but it may be better to go for something smaller. In this way, you’re more likely to have a camera with you when the opportunity to shoot arises. I don’t think this should be bought as one’s only camera.
Yep…I laughed at that too. 8MP for 5x7…must have been what the Best Buy ‘expert’ said.