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Kodak DX7440 Review



 
 
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Old August 19th 04, 10:58 PM
Andrew V. Romero
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Default Kodak DX7440 Review

One more thing I forot to mention. The camera does take much better
indoor pictures than my older dx4330 did. The pictures come out exposed
better. The flash on this camera also seems to do a better job lighting
a larger area.

Andrew V. Romero wrote:

A few weeks ago I purchased the Kodak DX7440 (4.0 MP and 4x zoom) and
wanted to post my review here since I couldn’t find hardly any reviews
on this fairly new camera when I was looking around. So everyone knows
where I am coming from, this is my second digital camera with my first
one being the Kodak DX4330, which someone recently stole.

Price: $300 at CompUSA and it came with a free 128mb SD card. The price
dropped by $50 last month. The original manufacturer’s suggested retail
price was $350, but it is now $300.

Physical Things: Kodak fixed a lot of annoying physical things with
this camera. To name a few things: the mode selector wheel is much
easier to work now. On the DX4330 the wheel was hard to turn,
especially when your hands were dirty from hiking or such. This version
also has a built in lens cover which closes when the camera is off, much
nicer than the DX4330. One thing I am not crazy about is the position
of the zoom lever. It is now on the front of the camera so you use your
index finger to move it instead of using your thumb as it was on the
DX4330. Now the “thumb zoom” position has been replaced with a jog
wheel selector used to select and change things such as aperture,
exposure compensation, shutter speed, ISO, etc. The most annoying
change is related to how you access the USB and AV ports on the camera.
Instead of the nice hinged plastic door on the DX4330, they now are
covered by a stiff piece of non-hinged rubber. So when you plug in the
USB or AV cables, you pry open rubber cover, hold it up, plug the cord
in, then the stiff rubber piece applies a rather strong downward force
to the cables. My issues with this are 2 fold: 1) The rubber cover is
going to break with a decent amount of use. As I mentioned, it isn’t
hinged, you are just bending the rubber piece back and forth each time
you plug something in. I suppose the point here is to make you purchase
the EasyShare dock, but I have problems purchasing something that cost
~$80 that does not give you any additional features or allows you to
take better pictures. 2) My other problem with the design is that it
applies a fair amount of perpendicular force to the cords and ports. I
can see the force of the rubber cover breaking the cables or the ports
they plug into. Perhaps I should look into getting on of those cheap
USB card readers instead of needing to hook the camera up using this
awkward system.

This camera also comes with a rechargeable battery and charger which is
much nicer since this is a must have. I though it was pretty cheap that
the DX4330 didn’t come with a rechargeable battery or charger. The fact
that this camera does saves you about $40. The battery itself is pretty
interesting. It is a lot smaller and lighter than the DX4330 batteries
which looked more like 2 AAs stuck together. The weight of this battery
makes the whole camera a lot lighter than the DX4330 which is important
if you are hiking. The battery life also seems to be pretty good. I
took about 140 pictures (using the screen) and some video while testing
my camera out and the battery did not need charging. According to the
manual, the battery can take 160-210 shots without a charge. You can
purchase a larger battery which allows 275-325 pictures. Since this is
not the typical battery design, I imagine that you will be paying more
to purchase another battery than you may with the more typical battery
designs.

Pictures: Overall picture quality is good, although I wouldn’t say it
is a whole lot better than the DX4330. I definitely found taking macro
shots easier with the DX4330. Part of this could be that the macro
focus range of the DX7440 is 3.9-23.7 inches compared to the macro range
of the DX4330 is 2.8 to 28 inches. So you can’t get as close to the
object as you could with the DX4330, this however is not the case if you
purchase the DX7630. I am guessing that the difference is that the
DX7440 has a 4x zoom and the DX7630 has a 3x zoom, so the DX7630 lens
allows you to get closer. If I would have known about the macro mode
differences, this may have affected my selected because I really enjoy
the macro shots. I also found that both flower scene modes on the
DX7440 are not that great. These modes seem to adjust the shutter speed
a lot in order to make the picture lighter. The problem is, how many
times do you have a tripod when taking picture of flowers? I usually
find flowers on hikes or walks and do not have a tripod. So far I have
had better luck using the automatic setting in close up mode for flowers
than the flower scene modes. The camera does give a warning icon if the
shutter speed is slowed down enough to say that you probably need a tripod.

This camera’s auto-focus seems to be pickier than the DX4330’s was. I
particular notice this when taking macro shots (probably because I am
use to getting closer to the object than this camera allows), or if the
light isn’t great (i.e. in the early evening). Sometimes if you take a
step forward or backward the camera will focus when before it would not.
I wonder if getting Kodak’s accessory lens to take macro shots would be
worth it for me…

So far I have only been using the JPEG compression setting of fine
instead of the standard. I haven’t noticed much difference, I need to
try taking some of the exact same pictures with the compression on
standard and then on fine. I did take one picture at the beach which
has some people partly in the shade and partly in the sun. For some
reason this picture doesn’t look good, the compression of the people in
the shade is quite noticeable. Other than this one picture, I haven’t
had any problems.

I have not played with many of the manual settings yet other than
shutter speed. I did try some night-time shots of city lights that
turned out pretty well proved you have something to set the camera on.

The movie mode on this camera is much better than the DX4330 and I am
surprised I haven’t seen more talk about the movie mode. Of course, it
still isn’t like having a DV camcorder, but it can take 640x480 video at
15fps, which is at least passable enough to play on the TV without
having to give disclaimers like remember this was shot with my digital
camera. I am quite impressed with the quality of the movies. Only a
few other cameras give you the option of taking the 640x480 at 15fps.
Interestingly, the DX7630 doesn’t even allow this according the web
site. You can also take smaller video (320x240) at 24 fps, but I think
the 15fps is good enough especially since it means you can take a much
larger video size. The sound in the movies also seems better than the
DX4330. One interesting thing about plugging the camera directly into
the TV using the supplied cable; the picture sent to the TV seems
slightly too large to display on the TV. I do have the video settings
at NTSC. It doesn’t seem to affect much, it is mainly noticeable when
navigating the menus on the camera.

Softwa Kodak’s EasyShare software bugged me before with the older
version, and it is a little better now, but not much. The one things
that really bothers me is that you can’t rename pictures within the
software itself unless at the time of transfer you transfer each picture
one at a time. I don’t see why you can’t rename a picture at any time.
Of course, if you use windows explorer to rename a picture, then the
easyshare software can’t find the picture and displays and X and you
have to manually point the easyshare software to the newly renamed
software. The software works okay, but is definitely not fancy or
slick. I would really like to at the very least rename the pictures.
The editing features with the EasyShare software work well, but again,
they are all very basic. There is on interesting thing I noticed that
occurs when I am transferring pictures to the computer. Say I take 60
pictures, the first 30 pictures take quite a bit longer to transfer than
the last 30. For some reason the first half of the pictures you are
transferring take 10-15 seconds each, while the last half take only 2
seconds each. That could be something just with my computer.

Conclusions: Overall it is a nice camera. My two main gripes are the
close-up focal length and the access to the ports on the camera. I
almost exchanged the camera to get the DX7630 which has the closer focal
length, however this camera only has the 3x zoom and can not take the
640x480 video. I really feel the access to the ports on the DX7440
should be revised. I feel the design is likely to break either then
cover itself, or damage the cables or ports when cables are plugged in.
Other than the ports access design, I like the physical layout of the
camera, it is much easier to use than the DX4330. Picture quality is
slightly better than the DX4330, however this camera can be picky when
auto focusing. Software is very basic, it should at least allow you to
rename pictures without jumping thru hoops. Hopefully this review
doesn’t sound to negative, I can be rather picky with electronics, but
there are some things that Kodak should fix. By no means is it the
perfect camera, however it is pretty nice and if stolen, I would
probably get it again (although getting one with a shorter focal length
would be nice).


Andrew V. Romero

X=pharmacy


 




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