• Overall good image quality (well white balanced, vivid colours)
• Good optics (sharp, most shutter speeds are HIGH, better low-light performance)
• Little need for post-processing (good levels, good colours, sharp)
• Great menu system
• Good controls layout, intuitive
• No barrel distortion
• Fairly good LCD
• Auto ISO sensitivity adjustment
• Solid build quality
• Good ergonomics (CF card ejector etc.)
• USB
• Value for money (compared to similarly priced digital cameras)

• Fairly slow operation (compared to most recent)
• Unusual zoom range (60mm just isn't quite enough)
• Image noise in low-light
• JPEG noise in flat / shadow areas
• Badly fitting lens cap
• Zoom mechanism noisy
• All settings should be stored after power-off
• LCD should be optionally on/off at power-on
• No uncompressed mode

Overall conclusion

Here's my rating of the DC280:

Overall I liked the DC280, it took decent, vivid, sharp and well white balanced (something close to my heart) images. I would like to have seen a more reasonable zoom and the few control quirks ironed out but overall it's a good camera, if slightly difficult to fit against its competitors.

Average

In a new addition to my reviews (after the amount of feedback I normally get) I've added a link to a specific forum in which you can discuss the review or ask me specific questions which I've not answered in these pages.

Enter the Kodak Talk discussion forum