Kodak EasyShare C643: Fun -- not serious -- easy, & well-priced
Written: Jul 05 '06 (Updated Jul 06 '06)
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Pros: Great point-n-shoot "fun" camera; good features, excellent value
Cons: Image stabilisation, battery casing/life, and close-ups can irritate
The Bottom Line: Not for professionals, but a great point-and-shoot; a sweet toy at a good price.
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| kmennie's Full Review: Kodak EasyShare C643 Digital Camera |
"6.1 megapixels for under $200!" is an excellent way to sum this up. It's stand-out value. It's also very easy to use, though with a respectable complement of features. It has better software (more on that in a moment) and more features than my old Kodak EasyShare -- which was not too too old; kudos to Kodak for making this a painless upgrade.
6.1 might even be too much for my purposes, though given what's on the market, the price, design, features, and reliable brand made the C643 a fairly easy choice. We dealt with an extremely pleasant salesperson -- the geeky, bright fifteen-year-old every electronics store harbours -- who had nice things to say about it, but who usefully warned us about one of its few readily noticeable flaws: the plastic what-not that one slides out to put in new batteries is quite fiddly and feels rather fragile. While far from fatal, it is a pity; the cover for the USB port is similarly flimsy.
Apart from the battery hatch, the design is a plus; it's smaller than my old one, small enough (3.6×2.6×1.3") to have put me off the pricier but prettier Canons. Again, the EasyShare shines for being so simple; it is something of a design triumph. The manual is barely needed, which is quite impressive. A small wheel (perhaps, just perhaps, a bit fiddly for the large of finger) on the top throws it into one of six modes: general, close-up, portrait, landscape, video and "review" (which includes a undelete for the recently deleted, though it's so idiot-proof that accidents aren't much of a problem).
Video is impressive, and between that and the simplicity of getting the pictures off the camera and on to a computer or even television, it makes for a very fun little toy. I'm inclined to think of it more as a fun camera than a serious one, if that follows...
It loses much of the one star I've docked it over issues of picture quality. (Most of the rest left with the battery life and battery door.) The zoom -- 3x optical zoom lens & 5x digital zoom -- is, again, fun; a great failing of my old one was the lack of a lens whirring out in pleasant mechanical fashion every time it was turned on, or fiddled with (the -/+ buttons for it are easy to use). Still, it's not that useful: I have yet to get a good close-up. A tripod might be of some limited help -- apart from mediocre performance on extreme close-ups, it also demands an extremely steady hand. Some image stabilisation is wanting -- while I can usually get the shot I want, it sometimes takes a few snaps, and I'd sacrifice at least a megapixel for some built-in stabilising.
That said, it does get decent, recognisable shots of people from half a block away; while not reminding anybody of a telephoto lens, I've been surprised by some exceptionally nice outdoor shots. Interiors are also coming out well -- the flash apparently knows what to do. Colour is exceptional, and despite the above-mentioned stabilisation and close-up problems, things are reasonably impressive; I was surprised at how it gives eyes and mirrors competition in some portrait shots. Overall, this is excellent for a budget (relatively speaking) point-and-shoot.
The software is also easy to use. I am enamoured of the "colouring book" and "cartoon" options, which do exactly what they sound like they might do to photographs. Frivolous, perhaps, but it works well enough -- especially when you figure out what kind of picture works best with it -- to make D-I-Y comics and colouring books look like a fun and feasible idea.
I bought nothing else at the camera store, figuring the C643 would make what I needed obvious. I now want a camera case; the 2.4" screen is begging for scratches, and the entire casing somehow seems less sturdy than that of the older model.
Rechargeable batteries, and perhaps an adaptor as well, are now on the list. While writing this, I went to replace the batteries. It rejected all four of the four Panasonic (cheap, yes) AA batteries (it only eats two at a time, mind). Panic! Broken? It threatened as much -- when it was turned on, an indicator light flashed green, then red, then went off altogether. (The manual was less than helpful on this.) I went out -- for you, the Epinions review reader! -- and paid too much for Duracells at a convenience store. Relief, more or less: the camera's working fine, now, though it did somehow lose the date and time while being fussy about the cheap batteries. It consumes them at an alarming rate, at least relative to the older model.
The built-in memory is fine for around-the-house use and adequate for brief trips out, but a memory card, which I thought I'd put off until I travelled, but 32MB can mean deleting stuff even over just an evening. And, given the timer -- a nice feature, especially if integrated with "burst" (snap off several in rapid succession), or the surprisingly good video recording -- possibly a small tripod.
Which still makes for a good price. And a good camera -- not best-in-show, but above average, "fun," and reliable (so long as you've got expensive batteries, it seems). Well recommended for the amateur.
Something of an update: I'm now extremely down on the battery performance. The (relatively) cheap AAs I bought wouldn't even turn it on, and it chewed through the two sets of standard Duracells I mentioned buying above in a matter of hours. I am now looking at $50 for two sets of rechargeables that need overnight charges, and also thinking of an adapter. This makes the value somewhat less than impressive. While I am aware that this problem is not unique to C643 -- and, judging by other reviews, the C643 might even be doing comparatively well -- it's still a nonsensical pain. My CX4200 EasyShare does not even compare; I never once fretted over its battery consumption, which makes this all the more of a rude surprise. I'm also irritated by the abruptness of the battery failure -- the lens is left in whatever position it was when the power ran down; turning it off and back on, it has enough power to blink a light, but not to retract the lens -- and I'm not enormously confident about the memory given that it once lost the date and time during that sort of battery death. Further bulletins as events warrant &c.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 175.00
This Camera is a Good Choice if You Want Something... Easy Enough for Anyone to Use
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Epinions.com ID:
kmennie
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Member: K.M. Mennie
Location: Five cities in one year! Ha!
Reviews written: 380
Trusted by: 405 members
About Me:
Hopeless case: thorough knowledge of Victorian Domestic Science, Comparative Literature, Lego...and even worse stuff.
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