This is a killer camera. If you are a photo journalist, this is the camera to get. For personal use, I use it whenever weight / size / convenience are not a problem, e.g., at home, but not on a short trip. I've taken over 10,000 pictures with this camera in less than a year, so it was a real bargain, even though it cost $15,000. I saved on film and
processing costs, and the images will last forever without degradation.

--------------------
What I like about the Kodak DCS-520
--------------------


* Fixes all my dislikes about the Olympus C-2000Z, e.g.: Olympus needs flash indoors, has poor autofocus accuracy, can't get autofocus indoors sometimes, has a long cycle time, has only 24 shots per card, has no manual focus if autofocus doesn't work.

* The Kodak, on the other hand fixes these problems: you can change ISO from 200 to 1600 from shot to shot. At 400 there is no grain. At 800 it is a bit grainy. At 1600 it is noticeably grainy. That means you can shoot indoors without a flash.

* You can use regular Canon lenses and flashes! I use the 340EZ with E-TTL and pics are phenomenal. For lenses, I have the new 28-135mm IS USM zoom lens, and a fixed 1.4 50mm lens.

* Auto focus is fast and accurate. You can pick auto focus point, or let the system pick from best of 5. Most people I know leave it on the center point.

* You can shoot even in complete darkness since the flash will send out light to allow it to focus.

* Cycle time between pics is near zero. You can shoot 3.5 frames a sec... awesome. I've captured some terrific images this way that I would have lost if I were using my Olympus.

* It is really fast to review pics...like viewing a movie almost. Virtually no delay between pics.

* Very cool histogram and it will flash and color overexposed areas on the image. So if it's in a key part of the image, you can immediately adjust the exposure and take another shot. That is too cool.

* You can annotate images with sound (very high background noise though; fine for dictation).

* You can adjust the white balance that the camera uses to capture the image. You can adjust this after the fact, of course, but the ability to select or set a custom white balance is very cool.

* I love the TWAIN acquire module: 3 sizes of thumbnails, a preview mode, lots of control over what is selected, rotate images, delete images, copy to a new name, and adjust white balance using presets, or using a point on one of the images (this is really important). So when I shoot indoors with some natural light and some incandescent light, I can then adjust all of those pics all at one by selecting the images, and picking a white point on an image. Very cool. Save lots of time.

* I use the multiple acquire in ThumbsPlus and save as a JPG file in 85 quality mode. That allows me to save all my pictures to jpg in one button push. Pictures are only 256K in size when saved this way! I haven't needed Photoshop at all.

* Super high resolution (1728 x 1152), but surprisingly not 8x10 ratio, requiring you to crop. However, for 4 x 6 snapshot paper, it's a perfect fit!

* EOS 1 is an awesome camera with features up the wazoo, like the incredible Auto exposure bracket feature, and the Depth of Field (DEP) focusing mode

* There is a cool Pong game built in so if your photos don't impress your friends, this is sure to!

* I never get red-eye using this camera (because the flash is mounted away from the lens unlike D-600L)

* The latest release of the Twain acquire module is now reliable. It never crashes, and you can acquire zillions of images unattended (using ThumbsPlus to save them all as JPGs)



--------------------
What I dislike about the Kodak DCS-520
--------------------

* The camera itself is heavy (but not much heavier than an EOS1 with a motor drive).

* With all the lenses, flash, etc. my camera bag is heavy.

* UI is clunky to learn...e.g., you have to hold down a button while rotating the wheel.

* A bit clunky to delete the last shot you made (you have to press 2 buttons simultaneously, release one button, then rotate a wheel, then release the second button), but you get used to it and most times, I'll delete on the computer anyway.

* If you want to delete a few pics, it is a bit clunky UI wise to do this. I'd like to be able to tag images and say delete. They have tagging, but you can only delete untagged images.

* Sound quality on recorded annotations is VERY noisy.

* There is no way to see if your image is in focus since you can't view a 1:1 zoom of the image and pan around; I'd love to be able to zoom to 1:1 and pan.

* Camera is a bit pricy ($15K), but since they've only sold 1,000 or so, it is amazingly cheap considering the tens of millions they've probably spent on R&D. They probably lose money on this camera (relative to the development cost). I'm not complaining. This is one of my best investments.

* The imager gets dirty easily. I don't know why. It can happen after a day of shooting, or after months. But you'll need to clean it with a Sensor Swab. They really should tell you this in the manual. Just blowing air onto the imager is not enough to clean it.

--------------------
Bugs with the Kodak DCS-520
--------------------

* When using Quick Dial, I've sometimes seen the aperture "jump" to F22. Anyone else seen this?

* After an erase/format of the disk, you can take pictures but all images are blank. Power cycling the camera fixes this.

* DCS acquire module doesn't release memory so acquiring multiple images causes windows swp file to grow huge (logout to fix).

* Resolution sharpness seems less than I'd expect, but could be because I save all images as jpg, but I'll check on this...If you shoot a newspaper from 6 feet away, I'd like to read the type...

* Auto focus isn't as exact as you'd think. Even on a tripod with a good image, hitting the button many times can cause the autofocus point to "shift" to a different spot. In practice, this is rarely a problem.
Unit I got from the factory had two "spots" on the imager which I cleaned.

* Sound files get associated with the wrong image in the acquire module.
Deleting images in the acquire module causes the image order to change in strange ways.

* Firewire interface inside the camera is dog slow (supposedly, haven't tried this myself).

* The border around the view screen is a bit tight (esp. when viewing the histogram).



Recommended: Yes