silverorange stuff

I was really impressed by the compact design and attention to detail for such a low end camera.

This might sound surprising, but I was very happy with the quality of my Kodak DC3400. It was bulky and somewhat slow, but I had taken hundreds of photos with it with some degree of success (that whole first page was taken with the DC3400). I was happy with the way the Kodak camera functioned and so I decided to buy from them again. Through eBay I found the (at the time) newly released DC3800 that had most of the features that my original camera had and was much smaller. The real selling points of this camera are its size, industrial design (which is truly quite beautiful for such a cheap product), and price. For only $200 CAD including shipping and taxes, my camera arrived.

I had already learned with my DC3400 that these Kodak cameras that use AA batteries require the purchase of NiMH rechargeable batteries, so I bought those right away (about $20) and a larger CompactFlash card was also a necessity (about $50-$100). With these in hand, I went to try it out. First of all, this is a cheap camera, and I knew it. I didn't expect stellar results, but I was hoping the image quality would be as good as my first relatively cheap DC3400. It wasn't. I'm not saying I was upset by the image quality, but without luck or a lot of setting up the shot, the images will mostly look like what you would expect from a cheap analog camera.

Photograph Quality: All of the following sample photographs were taken at the Monterey Aquarium. Good photos on the left, not so good on the right.

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  Action Shots - The time between pressing the trigger and the camera actually taking the shot on the camera is very slow. This makes taking action shots especially tricky as you have to try to guess when the photo might be taken and hope the action lines up. It's hit-and-miss at best and involves a ton of shots to get the one that might be okay.
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  Shooting Indoors - Using the flash on this camera (or actually most cameras, even more expensive ones) tends to really wash out all the colour and make for a bland shot. I try to shoot without, but with this camera the subject has to be almost motionless, and the camera held firmly, to keep the shot from appearing totally blurry.
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  With Good Lighting - When the lighting is right, and the action is perfect, this camera can still pull off some stunning shots. Again, things have to be just right, but it does go to show that some nice photographs can be taken no matter how cheap the technology.
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  Outdoors Shots - Shooting outdoors can be one of the most frustrating things with this camera. By some kind of voodoo, the light meter will decide to either take a photo with good contrast and decent color or else it will wash out the entire frame giving the not always desirable moonscape-type effect.

I guess the real theme with this camera is you really do get what you pay for. I've taken literally thousands of photographs with this camera and was relatively pleased with it. If you're looking for a simple point-and-shoot, have the time to wait for the camera (in fact browsing photos on the camera is virtually impossible), and don't mind taking a million shots to get the one you love, then this camera does the job just fine. That may sound derogatory, but it really is quite decent as a low end camera. With that said, I've just ordered a Minolta d'Image Xt and am looking forward to trying it out. Keep posted for an upcoming review.

¹ The details of this theft are highly entertaining and if you're interested, I may one day write the short story of what went down.