Kodak Z740 Camera

Hello All;

I was all set to buy the Kodak Z740 (10x Optical Zoom) for my daughter
for Christmas -- the main attraction of course was the 10x optical zoom
lens. I have a rather old DC280 with a 2x optical zoom lens which I
love, and use all the time -- can't imagine what a 10x zoom would be
like.

However, one comment I saw does give me a bit of a concern. It was
mentioned, that too reduce the cost of the Z740, it does not come with
an image stabilizer, which can impact on the sharpness of the picture.

Firstly, I assume that this statement is correct, in as far as the Z740
does not include an image stabilizer, which most longer zoom (5x or
greater) normally do include?

Secondly, on a practical level, how much does this impact on the
quality of the photo? For example, can you *only* get a perfect
picture if you use a tripod, no matter how still you hold the camera?
Is the difficulty directly related the length of the zoom (ie: you
must hold the camera more still at 10x zoom than you would at say 5x
zoom to get the same sharpness)?

As mentioned, the camera is for my daughter, who is not a professional
photographer, or a even a prosumer. However, she would like to take
nice photos that don't look blurry, obviously.

I really like the 10x optical zoom lens, but I am begining to wonder
whether I should drop down to a lower zoom camera that either has an
image stabilizer, or one that doesn't need one?

My price limit is really set at the Z740, so the obvious option of
getting a 10x zoom with an image stabilizer isn't an option at this
time.

Secondly, on Kodak's web-site they recommend using a 512MB SD flash
card. Does this mean that the Z740 will not accept a 1GB SD flash
card, as that is what I was planning on getting. If it does accept a
1GB card, why would I opt to use a 512MB instead of a 1GB?

Also, would the Z740 take advantage of hi-speed SD flash memory or not?
I checked the specs on Kodak's web-site but could not find any mention
of memory speed or access times. If so, what speed memory would I get
to get the best performance from the camera? (ie: 60x, 100x, 133x, 10
MB/s, 15 MB/s, etc....)

For example, I looked on the Kingston memory web-site, and it states
that generally camera's up to and including 5.0 MPs (which the Z740 is)
work fine with the standard SD flash memory.

Camera's higher than 5.0 MPs, SLR cameras, or those that have burst
mode (or continuous) shooting would either benefit, or require the
faster flash memory. The Z740 does have the burst mode option -- would
the burst mode only work if you had faster flash memory or not?

Thanks so much!!

Hugh,