Kodak has a reputation for building easy-to-use cameras that take great pictures. The LS433, part of the EasyShare range, is no exception. In attractive brushed metal, the LS433 is about the same size as your average point-and-click film camera.
What is different is the lens: Kodak has employed the services of German optical company Schnieder-Kreuznach to build the 3x optical zoom lens which, combined with the four megapixel resolution of the camera, this gives impressive results.
The camera's interface makes taking pictures easy. A dial on the back of the camera has a set of icons for choosing the camera mode. The LCD screen displays what each mode means and when it should be used, such as Sports mode for fast-moving objects. For most users, the Auto mode should be good enough.
The camera menu is just as easy to use. A joystick at the rear of the camera is used for navigating through the menus. Each menu option comes with a clear text description of what it does.
There are three image quality settings on the camera. The lowest setting is fine for 6 x 4in photographs, while the top setting will happily produce a 20 x 30in poster. The final choice is likely to depend on how much memory you put in the camera and therefore the number of pictures you can take.
Kodak ships the camera with a paltry 16MB of internal memory but there's an SD card slot so that you can add your own.
As this is an EasyShare camera, Kodak has placed an emphasis on the simple transfer and management of pictures on a PC. The product comes with a cradle that includes a one-touch button for downloading pictures to the Kodak software.
Links are built into external services so you can, for example, select a group of pictures and then connect to Kodak to order professional prints. It also has an email service, although this had intermittent faults when we tried it.
At £400 the LS443's not cheap. But the great hardware and simple software means that you get all you need in one box, although a little more memory in the camera would finish things off nicely.DETAILS
Contact: Kodak 0870 243 0270
www.kodak.com
Good points:
Professional lens.
Easy menus.
Good software.
Bad points:
Low memory on the camera.
Overall:
With its great interface, utility-packed software and tough metal design, this is another good offering from Kodak.
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