Usage
This is a very easy to use camera. Once you power it on you can start taking pictures. The LCD preview screen is certainly high quality and is pretty fast in terms of response time. However the camera tends to drastically slow down whenever you move the camera into darker light situations. On the other side, the zoom seems to react very fast and isn’t very slow, unless in dark conditions again. The 8x optical zoom takes great pictures from a long distance. I was pleasantly surprised of the quality of zoomed in pictures.

Using the buttons on the top is a little different than most cameras that I’ve seen. A lot of the previous Kodak cameras had a turn-wheel, but this once has a turn-wheel built into the camera itself. To select your camera mode you have to click on the camera mode selection button and a menu will pop up on the screen allowing you to select from Smart Capture, Video, Program, and scenes. Other than those selection screens there isn’t a whole lot more into the camera. The menu is pretty simple and only includes a handful of items, even under the program settings.

I really had no qualms with this camera, other than the fact that I often covered the flash with one of my fingers while attempting to hold the camera. After a while I got adjusted to holding it the proper way. I also noticed, like on many other cameras, that the photo transfer rate was very slow, compared to just transferring the photos straight from the SD card.

Pictures
Taking pictures was very easy. Here’s a picture of a TV remote with the flash off.

I took some pictures of the energy drink Bawls Guarana with the flash on.

Here are some various pictures taken in the woods at a local park.

These next two photos were taken from the same distance away of a rusty watch tower.

The next two photos were images of a lake that’s being dug up while driving in a car.

And finally a picture taken of a veteran’s memorial outside of the park, while stopped at a traffic light.