TravelASSIST Magazine - Kodak DC40 Review

On the River with the KODAK DC40 Digital Camera

By Bruce Murray

As the publisher of TravelASSIST and its popular online Bed & Breakfast directory, THE REGISTER, I am often invited to speak at travel industry conferences. Most recently it was at the Professional Association of Innkeepers International (PAII) convention in San Antonio Texas.

Since I had a KODAK DC40 evaluation unit in the office I decided to take it with me and check it out. A few months back I did the same with an Apple QuickTake 150, taking it to Palm Springs California. That review is available here, and the story that I illustrated with the images is available here.

I had never used the DC40 before San Antonio. I hadn't even tested it to see if it was working correctly out of the box. This is a no-no I preach to every photography novice. NEVER take a brand new camera on a vacation or to an event without first running some film through it. This confirms that it is working properly, and helps the new owner become more comfortable with their new camera.

So, not heeding my own sage advice, I tossed the unit in my brief case and left for San Antonio. The photos below were taken along the River Walk area in the heart of the Convention/Tourism district of San Antonio. They were taken very early in the morning and as a result contrast levels are high. You will see that shadow details are somewhat crushed.

The KODAK DC40 is a great consumer level camera. Priced at approx. $699 on the street, it offers not only a well built camera that delivers quality images, but a terrific image processing software. The PhotoEnhancer software not only downloads the images from the camera but offers many sophisticated options for adjusting the digital image in you computer.

So far the two cameras I've tried out have had the same limitations. They can store a limited number of images, and they have a viewfinder rather than a screen. This means that you are unable to view your images in the camera. This becomes even more important due to the limited number of images that can be stored in the camera. You are unable to view and remove unwanted images while in the field. You must connect to a pc to view the images.

The CASIO unit offers a view screen, but it's digital image quality is poor. The Kodak DC50, a viewfinder model, has removable storage cards that allow for unlimited storage.

I would say so far that the Kodak DC40 has an edge on the QuickTake 150. The images appear to be of a slightly better resolution, and required no color or density correction.

Additional Information is available about the DC40 from the Kodak web site.

The software that came with the DC40, PhotoEnhancer, was used to save the images below to .tif file format. I then took them into Paint Shop Pro, a great shareware image utility, and finished processing the images.

Image (1) of each is a 125x250 pixel section cut from the original full sized 756x504 high resolution image. Image (2) of each is a reduction of the original image from 756x504 to 375x250.

NO color, or contrast adjustments were made to these images.

NOTE: These images are presented here in .jpg format. This file format compresses images and reduces their quality. The same low compression setting was used for all these images. Reduction in image quality was kept to a minimum.

(1) (2)