Kodak DX4530

Opinion: This was my very first digital camera. I had it for 2 1/2 years and took thousands of pictures before it was replaced by a Canon Powershot S3 IS. I still keep the Kodak but I find that it does not appear to be functioning as well.

The first two years were great. It took magnificant closeups and wonderful outdoor shots. Inside shots turned out well only if subjects were closer to the camera or enough light.

I was very disappointed with the slow shutter speed. If I was taking a picture of people, I would start counting to three after I hit the shutter button! This made it really hard to capture action shoots. Even in sport mode it was not any faster.

Turning on and switching modes were even slow. This was frustrating when time was an issue. I missed some really great shots b/c of this.

I read in some reviews that the 5.0MP was not very good. However, I took some great close ups of flowers and they look clear and just fine!

Towards the last couple of months before I got my Canon, my camera seemed to have trouble in close up mode. It seemed to want to switch to landscape mode or just not take the picture. I'm not sure if it was damaged in some way or just wearing down.

I love the docking system. It made it very handy to recharge and transfer pictures to the computer.

The internal memory is not too bad either. It gives a little more as many pictures as a roll of film would. But for the person who likes to take many pictures, obtaining an external card would be very beneficial. I found that a 128mb was suffice even at the highest quality.

I find the zoom to be nearly useless and digital zoom completely useless. When trying to focus on people that are far away, the pictures nearly almost always came out blurry (even in optical) so graduation pictures, for instance, did not come out. W/o flash they were blurry and w/flash, it was completely dark (except for the heads in front of me).

This camera is overall a very easy camera to operate. It took very little adapting to even as a first digital camera.

I think this camera is perfect for the person who wants to just take shots here and there (especially of still life, or close ups of friends and family). But even so, you can probably get a better camera for cheaper or just a little more.

Opinion: We had this camera as a simple snapsht camera and seemed to always find ourselves having to tweak it to get enough light for any of the settings to give us clear pictures. We were always indoors with good light for most cameras around us, but we did not seem to be able to get it to focus worth a darn.

After finally giving up on it and selling it on eBay, we found some other reviews that indicated some of the same frustrations.

Opinion: READ THIS. ITS IMPORTANT!

I got the Kodak DX4530 about 2 and a half yrs ago as my first camera. It was wonderful. I took 10,000 photos with it in 2 years. Then I went on a graduation trip to DC. On the way home someone on the plane spilled pepsi on it. I had gotten water on the camera before so I thought nothing of it. I wiped it off after I shook the ice and coke off of me. But the camera had dried so quickly, probably due to the air pressure of the plane, but i wiped it off anyway. But the camera had broken.

Its a great camera for bigginers. It does have plent of features to be creative. It has great stabilization.

another great things is that you can get about 120 photos on the internal memory of the camera on the good setting which i find better than the best setting. most cameras now a days dont have that.

Opinion: This is the third digital camera that I've owned. I recently used it to take photos at a local air show. I was delightfully suprised at the quality of pics that was gotten using the 3.3x digital zoom during the performance of the Blue Angels. I could even see the pilot in the cockpit in the pic taken as the A/C passed my field of vision. Great camera for the price especially since I bought it in an auction on Ebay. I got a GREAT Camera at a GREAT Price.

Opinion: Great for outdoor and natural light. Excellent detail and color outdoors. Easy to use, nice docking system.

Opinion: This is my first digital camera, I read a few reviews of this one and other 4MP - 5MP cameras and this one had the best over all review.

So far I have not been disapointed, the images have so far been crystal clear and the zoom has been top quality.

Opinion: Very good camera for the price you can get it NEW on Ebay for around 200-225$...5mp is great pictures come out super, i take them on a disk to Costco and they come out perfect and super clear...Very easy to use and understand, downloading is a snap!! one of the best cameras for the 5mp and in the price range...perfect for any beginner to serious photographer...battery life is great if you use the CRV3...Very happy with the camera and software ...highly recommend A+++

Opinion: I just replaced my old 3.1 mp polaroid digital camera, which was stolen, with the DX4590. purchased the camera with the 4000 printer dock and travel bag as a combination @Sears for $399. Found this website much helpful for researching my purchase.

Comparing it to my old polaroid I have noticed an immediate difference not only in details and clarity, but also a huge difference in colors. The colors produced by the Kodak camera are brighter and more vivid. I wanted a camera that would be simple to operate and thus far it has proven to be so. The software is straight to the point and while not a lot of editing options are available, the interaction between the printer dock and the computer is outstanding.

The heat transfer prints from the dock, while somewhat pricey (about 60 cents per print), are unbelievably sharp.

I can see where an advanced photographer would not be happy with this product, but for an outstanding family camera at a reasonable price i would thus far highly reccomend it.

Opinion: Extremely easy to use but:

The kodak "5.0MP" 4530 does indeed have a true 5MP sensor, but it is actually only able to achieve a level of detail seen on a cheap 2-3MP camera. Why? you may ask.

With an expensive £500+ camera - it is usual practice to replace the tiny memory card with a large 256mb+ or micro drive soon after purchase.

In the lower price range the real challenge is to produce a camera that is "stand alone" i.e. it will take an acceptable number of photos, without having to buy an extra memory card. The 4530 has 32mb internal memory - which while useful as a backup, is far too small for a 5MP camera. Kodak have solved this problem by employing a very agressive jpeg system which produces relatively small files. Scaled on the to fit the pc screen they look great. When viewed at 1:1 you can see that the detail does not correspond to a 5MP camera, having severe artifacts. My 3MP nikon produces images with very few artifacts at the jpeg "fine" setting and the detail is higher than the 4530.

My advice: go to imaging-resource.com and compare the photos from a 3.2MP camera to the 5MP 4530. You can actually get a higher quality camera and save a third on the price!

One feature which is half good, is the composite out. If you can put up with the icons on the screen (as far as I can tell they cannot be switched off), then the cam can be combined with a VIVO video card - or PCTV card to record high quality video at half dvd resolution. Far better than a webcam.

The cam itself does record qucktime *.mov files with audio (at 15 fps). These can be converted to a format of your choice for pc editing using RADTools http://www.radgametools.com/