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CNET editors' rating:
3.0 stars
Good
Detailed editors' rating - Average user rating: 3.5 stars out of 139 reviews
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Product summary
The good: 10X optical zoom; manual exposure controls; easy to use; large LCD.
The bad: No separate resolution and compression settings; only three scene modes; battery dies without sufficient warning; image artifacts in red hues.
The bottom line: If you're willing to sacrifice image quality, this dSLR-style cam's good price, 10X zoom, and manual controls will probably appeal to you.
Specifications: Digital camera type: Full body; Resolution: 4 megapixels; Optical zoom: 10 x; See full specs
CNET editors' review
- Reviewed on: 03/03/2004
- Released on: 10/01/2003
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| The DX6490 has a few more buttons than most EasyShare cameras. The mode dial's icons are small, but they light up when selected--really helpful in dim conditions. | |
The DX6490 sports more buttons, dials, and switches than you typically see on Kodak's consumer models, but it still retains the EasyShare line's hallmark simplicity. Convenient external controls provide quick and easy access to frequently used functions, such as the self-timer and the continuous-shooting mode. When you enter a mode, the camera briefly explains it on the LCD. The feature is nice for less-experienced photographers, and you have the option of turning it off for faster operation. You'll also find EasyShare staples, such as a button dedicated to tagging images for e-mail and printing. The DX6490's U.S. and Canadian versions come with a dock for no-brainer file transfers from the camera to your computer. Large text and icons make the bright, clear menus effortless to use.
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| The zoom switch feels a bit mushy. | The DX6490 ships with Kodak's EasyShare Camera Dock 6000. |
You operate the camera manually via the handgrip's front-mounted jog dial; pressing it selects a setting, and turning it scrolls through the relevant values. The design is clever, and once you're familiar with it, manual shooting is quite simple, but we found the process slightly counterintuitive, and it made our hand cramp a little.Manually controllable EasyShare seems like an oxymoron to us, so we weren't quite sure what to expect from the DX6490. Generally, its feature set is useful, but it has some annoying gaps.
Exposure options include fully manual control, as well as aperture- and shutter-priority modes. The apertures range from f/2.8 to f/8.0, and the shutter speeds run from 1/1,000 of a second to a long 16 seconds, so you have plenty of flexibility. Your other alternatives are automatic operation and a Program mode with exposure compensation.
During automatic shooting, the camera is limited to sensitivities from ISO 80 to ISO 160, but all of the other modes offer manual selection and extend the range upward to ISO 800. At that maximum, image quality automatically drops to the lowest setting, so unless you absolutely can't capture your shot in any other way, we recommend forgetting that ISO 800 even exists. Other useful features include a few white-balance presets and options for metering, focus, sharpness, and color saturation.
Unfortunately, the DX6490's feature set leaves you hanging. To begin with, it lacks manual white balance. Picture-quality choices are limited to three resolutions and a 3:2 ratio option; you can't control compression separately. This camera doesn't necessarily need an uncompressed setting, but we would like the ability to determine resolution and compression independently. Furthermore, Kodak neglected those more interested in the long zoom than in manual operation. The DX6490 offers only three scene modes: Sport, Portrait, and Night. These are fine shortcuts, but manual shooting gave us better results.
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 The proprietary 1,700mAh lithium-ion battery lasted for almost 430 photos. |
The camera's proprietary 1,700mAh lithium-ion battery lasted for nearly 430 photos, which is more than most people shoot in a day. Sadly, when you've drained the cell, it just dies; it won't even have enough juice to let you retract the lens. We were up and running again after a 10-minute charge, but that speed won't do you much good if you're away from your charger.
Obviously, one of the DX6490's chief attractions is its Schneider-Kreuznach Variogon 10X zoom lens. It travels relatively smoothly and swiftly, but as with all telephoto lenses, you'll need a steady hand or a tripod to capture long shots without any blur.
The pop-up flash provides generally even coverage out to about 16 feet and conveniently decreases output for macro shots. However, when you angle the camera downward, the lens blocks the flash, so the light can't reach the image's lowest portion.
The DX6490 pairs a large 2.2-inch LCD with an electronic viewfinder (EVF); either will give you all the information you need. Both are clear and bright; even in low light, the camera can boost the gain without introducing the usual visual noise. The EVF provides almost 100 percent coverage, and its dioptric adjustment compensates for variations in eyesight.Overall, our test exposures were nicely balanced, especially in the midtones. The DX6490 tended to blow out highlights, as most digital cameras do, so shadows came out a bit clipped and dense, but manual tinkering helped. Colors were generally accurate, even though the default color setting is Saturated. White balance performed well, but shots leaned slightly toward either warm or cool, and in the absence of manual white balance, you can't tweak your way around the problem.
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| Of the camera's color settings, we prefer the more accurate Neutral (left) to the default Saturated (right). | |
Detail capture was good, but there were two notable exceptions. First, the color-filter array generated horizontal stripes in very saturated parts of the red channel; the artifacts severely blurred the detail in large red portions and edged the small ones with odd jaggies. On the plus side, that blur kept noise to a minimum; we didn't see too much until we hit ISO 400. Second, the image area covered by the lens's right-hand side, especially the lower-right corner, turned out noticeably blurrier than the rest of the frame. The problem made purple fringing much more visible in the affected location.
 We saw odd smearing at the center of red objects and bizarre jaggies along their edges. |
What does all this mean? The DX6490's pictures look acceptable at smaller sizes, but sharp-eyed photographers might not like what they see in 8x10 or larger reproductions.
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User reviews
- Average user rating: 3.5 stars out of 139 reviews
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3 out of 3 people found this review helpful
"The kodak EasyShare was made to be 'easy' (hence the name) to use, and it is."
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2 out of 3 people found this review helpful
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