Kodak EasyShare DX6490

Company Name:
Eastman Kodak Co., www.kodak.com
Price:
$499 list

Spec Data:
4.0 megapixels; 10X optical, 3X digital zoom

Pros:
Straight-forward operation. Precise controls. Sharp, well-exposed images. Large LCD. Simple image transfer and printing.
Cons:
Mediocre recycle time. Limited QuickTime video capabilities.
Bottom Line:
For those who want the power of a superzoom and the ease of a point-and-shoot camera, the Kodak EasyShare DX6490 is worth considering.

Review
For those who want the power of a superzoom and the ease of use of a basic point-and-shoot camera, the Kodak EasyShare DX6490 is worth consideration... Click here to read the .

Kodak EasyShare DX6490

For those who want the power of a superzoom and the ease of use of a basic point-and-shoot camera, the Kodak EasyShare DX6490 is worth consideration. This camera is a pleasure to shoot and straightforward to operate in automatic mode, while still offering more precise controls to those so inclined. Yet for all its simplicity, the DX6490 takes well-exposed pictures (including the best flash shots in this roundup) that are reasonably sharp.

Along with auto and scene settings (Sport, Portrait, Night, and Landscape) the DX6490 has priority modes for aperture and shutter speed, as well as a full manual mode. In manual mode, it has five ISO speeds ranging from 80 to 800.

The compact black body and silver controls are plastic but feel extremely solid. The squat shape of the DX6490 makes the already generous 2.2-inch 180,000-pixel LCD look even larger. The electronic viewfinder (with adjustable diopter) is bright, and info icons are informative and intuitive—the best in this roundup.

The camera's clever EVF shuts off if it's idle for 15 seconds but senses when your eye moves back into position and turns on again. The right-hand grip allows easy access to controls and one-handed shooting, although those with beefier fingers might find the grip too close to the lens for comfortable handling. The 10X zoom (f/2.8 to f/3.7; 35-mm equivalent: 38 to 380 mm) operates smoothly, with reasonable speed.

Image transfer and printing are easy, with a dedicated One Touch button and the included cradle.

Kodak uses fairly high JPEG compression, which keeps file sizes down; even at 2,304-by-1,728, images were under a megabyte, and we didn't note any adverse effects on quality. On the contrary: On our tests, the DX6490 produced sharp, well-exposed images with good color saturation and just a hint of posterization at times. Our daylight test shot tended toward the warm end of the spectrum, but the flash shot had the best illumination in this roundup, without a hint of noise.

Lines of resolution and pixel transition results were average for this roundup, as was boot time (4.6 seconds). Recycle time was mediocre, at 2.6 seconds. The camera's burst mode maxes out at six images. Its QuickTime video capabilities are limited to 320-by-240 at 20 fps, though movie length is limited only by memory card capacity.