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  • Physical Tour

  • Components

  • Design / Layout

  • Modes

  • Control Options

  • Image Parameters

  • Connectivity / Extras

  • Overall Impressions

  • Conclusion

  • Physical Tour
  • Components
  • Design / Layout
  • Modes
  • Control Options
  • Image Parameters
  • Connectivity / Extras
  • Overall Impressions
  • Conclusion

Physical Tour

The front of the C530 holds the front element of the optical viewfinder, the flash and the lens. As the lens cannot zoom, the lens does not protrude from the camera body at all. Towards the left, you see a raised ridge on the case that acts as a finger grip, ensuring a tight hold. That’s all—there’s no microphone, AF assist light, or self-timer LED on this model.

Back
On the back of the camera, we have the 1.5-inch LCD screen. Along the top from the left we have the optical viewfinder, the ready light (which glows green when the camera is ready to take a picture) and the flash mode button. Six raised dots work as a thumb grip in the upper right corner. To the right of the LCD screen are buttons for deleting images, accessing the menu and reviewing recently taken pictures. Further right of these buttons is the 4-way navigational control, the OK button (for selecting options within menus) and the infamous Kodak share button. While this may be a very stripped-down camera, Kodak is not about to leave off their hallmark. The much-touted Kodak share button brings up a menu in which you can flag images for emailing or printing via the Kodak EasyShare software.

**Left Side
**The only significant feature on the left side of the camera is the USB 2.0 port for connecting the camera to a PC. There’s no A/V port or DC In option.

Right Side

The camera’s right side holds the wrist strap eyelet and a couple of screws. The lack of features on the C530 might drive a more fidgety individual to poke at these screws, but it’s probably best not to play with them. The entire camera might fall apart if you unscrew them, and that wouldn’t be covered by the 1-year warranty.

Top

The top of the camera holds the mode dial (with settings for playback, off, auto mode and movie mode) and the shutter button forward and to its right.

Bottom

On the bottom is the cover for the SD card and battery slot, plus the dock connector. This can be used to dock the camera to a number of Kodak printers for computer-less image printing. As of this publication, the C530 does not come bundled with a printer, however.

Components

Viewfinder

Many compact cameras are foregoing the viewfinder, instead relying on the LCD screen for image preview. The C530 goes against this trend, which is probably a good thing seeing as the LCD screen is fairly small. It’s as if Kodak felt bad about including such a tiny screen, but not bad enough to make it large: the viewfinder is a compromise, although the viewfinder coverage area **

**is less than that of the LCD screen.


LCD Screen

The LCD is a 1.5-inch display with 130,000 pixels. The size means that it’s not really suitable for showing off pictures, but it is reasonably sharp. We have seen models with 2.5" LCDs at 110,000 pixels, or even 85,000. It’s your call as to whether you’d rather a large LCD with poor resolution or a small LCD with a decent resolution—unless you resign yourself to spending more for both.

Flash

The flash on the EasyShare C530 is a fairly large rectangular model (at least in comparison to

the lens) with a claimed range of up to 7.9 feet. It’s pretty close to the lens, which should avoid shadows, but might lead to problems with red-eye. A pre-flash red-eye reduction mode is included, though, along with other settings of auto, fill and off. These settings are basic and fairly standard for a camera of this type.

Zoom Lens

Kodak generally offers Schneider-Kreuznach lenses on their higher-end point-and-shoots, but this is another corner that had to be cut to keep the price low. There is no optical zoom lens on the C530: the lens is a fixed Kodak lens equivalent to a 36mm focal length on a 35mm film camera. (One Kodak rep at CES candidly described it as a sneaker zoom: you stand up and walk closer.) There is a 5x digital zoom, but the quality does suffer as you zoom in. The lens is also a fixed focus: there are no focusing mechanism or autofocus modes. Kodak claims a focus range of 3.3 feet to infinity; there’s no macro setting either.

Design / Layout

Model Design / Appearance

The case of the EasyShare C530 is light gray plastic, but feels fairly well built. The C530 has a typical rectangular shape and there is nothing that protrudes from the camera too far, so it’s unlikely that the plastic shell will be damaged by a short drop. The lens is recessed, so it’s unlikely to get damaged in normal use. The lack of features leaves the camera barren in places, making it visually unbalanced. Then again, at this price, aesthetics are not a priority.

**Size / Portability
**At 3.3 x 2.6 x 1.2 inches, the C530 is a portable camera, and pretty lightweight at 5.2 oz. It’s perhaps a bit thick to fit into a shirt pocket comfortably, but still small enough for a jacket pocket or handbag. The slightly rounded corners also means that it shouldn’t get caught on anything if you try to quickly take it out of a pocket to snap a passing celebrity. Its start-up time, however…might let you down and ultimately, still cause you to miss the shot. 

Handling Ability

The grip on the front makes for a firm hold on the camera: between this and the wrist strap, you are unlikely to loose your grip on the camera unless you fall off a cliff (in which case, the camera will be the least of your problems). Although the case is made of plastic, it didn’t seem to be especially slippery. The thumb grip on the back also helps.

Navigation is easy by default. There are so few features or adjustable options that it’s impossible to get lost or overwhelmed.

**Control Button / Dial Positioning / Size
**The shutter is extremely light: because there is no autofocus; there is no halfway-depressed position and I often found myself inadvertently taking pictures when testing the button. The other buttons are well placed. It’s possible to reach both the buttons by the LCD and the 4-way control dial with the thumb of the right hand (although you do really need the left to brace the camera while doing so). The only exception to this is the Share button, which is a little awkward to reach in the bottom right corner. You are only likely to use this button, however, when viewing stored images, and since users typically do this with both hands, it’s not a big problem. There are no dedicated zoom controls; pressing the OK button enables the digital zoom at 2x, and pressing it once more steps it up to 4x. This is not intuitive, but it’s the only main quirk of the camera other than its omission of essential shooting features.

**Menu
**Given the limited features of the Kodak EasyShare C530, it’s not surprising that the menus are pretty simple. In auto mode, you have options for the self-timer, exposure compensation, picture size, color mode (color, black and white or sepia), the album the photos will be stored in, the video length, the image storage location (internal memory or SD Card) and finally a separate setup menu. The share menu (entered by pressing the Kodak share button) allows you to set images to print, email or add to your list of favorites for viewing via the EasyShare software.

Ease of Use

Again, given the limited number of features, it’s not surprising that the EasyShare C530 is very simple to use. To take pictures, you just switch the dial to auto mode, then press the shutter. To review pictures, you just press the review button and scroll through the list of pictures. It really is that simple: there are no complex menus or bewildering combinations of buttons to press to get to your photos. This camera basically offers the interface of a disposable camera.  

Modes

Auto Mode

The auto mode is the only still image shooting mode on the camera, and it’s completely automatic. There is no access to shutter speed, aperture or exposure modes, and users cannot tweak anything in this mode as they can on other cameras.

Movie Mode

The movie mode takes movies at a resolution of 320 x 240 at 20 frames per second. They are stored as MPEG-4 QuickTime files, so most programs should be able to import and edit them. But be aware: there is no microphone or speaker on this camera, so you cannot capture sound with your video clips.

Drive / Burst Mode

The C530 can capture one frame every one and a half seconds, and in our (limited) testing it seemed to be capable of keeping this up for as long as there was space on the memory card. The stamina, if not the speed, is admirable at least.

**Playback Mode
**Images can be played back in sequence as previews of up to 9 images, or as a slide show. You may also crop images (although this is a little awkward to do since the controls are not easy to use), and copy images from memory card to internal memory and vice versa. The C530 also allows you to create a list of favorite photos in the EasyShare software and store these on the internal memory—useful if you want to carry around cute pictures of the kids to show people on a business trip. These can be accessed by setting the mode dial on the top of the camera to the "favorites" setting. It’s a simple playback mode that shouldn’t be too much for anyone to handle.

Custom Image Presets

There are no custom image presets; everything is done automatically. This is surprising. Most low-end point-and-shoots will offer four or five, or at least two, scene presets. Then again, the most common three—Macro, Landscape, and Portrait—involve different focal settings, which this camera cannot achieve anyway because of its non-zooming lens. 

Control Options

 

Manual Control Options

There are no manual control options, except for exposure compensation and the flash mode control—if you could call that manual control.

Focus

No focus options are provided, since this lens is not capable of zoom and the internal components are lacking. Kodak claims that the fixed focus lens has a range of 3.3 feet to infinity, and this seemed accurate from our limited testing.

Metering

No metering mode options are provided. The camera uses center-weighted TTL metering while taking pictures.

Exposure

Users can adjust exposure compensation of 2 stops either way in 0.5 stop intervals. This is accessed through the menu, but is only a couple of button presses away, so it doesn’t take long to find. Many cameras have this option in 0.3 stop intervals, but the 0.5 interval is normal for Kodak.

White Balance

Auto white balance is the only setting. No user presets, custom settings, or other controls are present. This may be a budget camera, but this lack is a disappointment. We regard manual white balance as one of the most important options. We do recognize that it need not be present on extremely basic cameras like this one, but to not even offer presets? Ouch.

ISO

Although it’s not user accessible, Kodak claims that the EasyShare C530 has an auto ISO range of 100 to 400. ISO is something else that’s usually manually controllable on inexpensive cameras, so this is a disappointment, too.

Shutter Speed

Again, the user can’t control this, but Kodak claims a range of half a second to 1/1618th of a second. This range is a bit truncated on either end for what we’d like to see.

**Aperture
**The aperture is fixed at f/4.5; again, this camera has no focusing mechanism.

Image Parameters

Picture Quality / Size Options

Five options are present for picture size: 5, 4.4, 3.1, 2.1 and 1.1 megapixels. There are no options for image quality or compression. Not surprisingly, there’s no option for saving RAW or TIFF images.

Picture Effects Mode

Images can be shot in color, black and white, or sepia, but this has to be chosen before image capture. There’s no way to change it in-camera afterwards.

Connectivity / Extras

**Connectivity
***Software*

Kodak bundles its own EasyShare image editing and cataloging software with the camera. The software is easy to use and dependable, offering options to: organize photos into albums, print, email, upload and share them in a range of ways. It's available for Windows and Mac OSX. We’ve seen the EasyShare software before; it’s well suited to the point-and-shoot market.

Jacks, Ports, Plugs

A USB cable is included with the camera, but no A/V cable. There is also no support for viewing photos or images on a TV. This is another disappointment, but then again, the movies you can record with the C530 can’t capture sound, so maybe there’s no point anyway.

Direct Print Options

DPOF and PictBridge are both supported, and the camera can be plugged into Kodak’s range of EasyShare printers for printing without a PC. At least they didn’t skimp out on this. If they had, it would have defeated the entire purpose of a simple-to-use camera.
*

  • Battery

No rechargeable batteries are included with the Kodak EasyShare C530. However, CR3 lithium, AA disposable or Nickel Metal Hydride batteries can be used. These can’t be charged in the camera, though. Kodak did not supply a figure for battery life.

Memory

An average 16MB of internal memory is included, which is enough for only a handful of shots at the highest image size. Images can be copied from internal memory to an optional SD card, though.

Other Features

The C530 doesn’t really have any other features. It’s a paragon of stripped-down simplicity.

Overall Impressions

**Who It’s For
***Point-and-Shooters* - A great choice for the first time digital photographer, the Kodak EasyShare C530 is a simple to use, low cost camera.

Budget Consumers - Budget minded users will like the price: at $139.99, it’s almost a disposable camera. But is the omission of autofocus and optical zoom worth saving $20-30?  Probably not! 

Gadget Freaks - No self-respecting gadget freak would be seen dead with this: it doesn’t have enough buttons, isn’t shiny and doesn’t look conspicuously expensive.

*Manual Control Freaks *- Don’t bother. Manual control freaks would freak out at the lack of any manual controls on this camera.

Pros / Serious Hobbyists - They might want to use it as a way to hold down large piles of paper, but again the lack of manual controls, metering modes and the like will make it not welcome in the camera bag of a pro.

Conclusion

**
**

**Conclusion **

The Kodak EasyShare C530 reminds me of the compact, point-and-shoot 35mm film cameras that used to be popular before digital. They, too, had fixed focus, aperture and similar limitations. Also like the C530, they were cheap, and that’s the defining characteristic of the EasyShare C530, although still not quite cheap enough to justify its purchase. Perhaps those few consumers who have been resisting going digital, claiming that it’s too expensive, complicated or awkward might appreciate its suffocating simplicity. For them, the C530 could be the perfect birthday present, plus, it’s so cheap you won’t be too offended if they don’t use it much. However, for those just looking for a decent, affordable digital alternative, there are many, many superior cameras out there right now that offer far more practical options without much additional cost or confusion.

The Kodak EasyShare C530 definitely has a market, albeit a very specific one. For the extremely budget-minded and technophobic first-time photographer, the camera will certainly not pose any intimidation, but by today’s standards, it seems to be a poor bargain. Even the most frugal consumer would be better served holding out a bit until they are comfortable spending an additional $20-30 for optical zoom and autofocus. Now, for an extra $60, consumers can have effective optical image stabilization in the Panasonic LS2.

Know what you want before you buy. Because if you don’t…$139 is practically pocket change in digital camera terms, but that’s a mighty expensive paperweight.

Meet the tester

Richard Baguley

Richard Baguley

Contributor

@@rbaguley

Richard Baguley is a veteran writer who has written about technology ranging from Alphabet to Zip file utilities. He has contributed to pretty much every major tech publication, including Amiga Format Magazine, PC World, Wired, CNET, Toms Guide, Forbes, and many others. He lives in the Boston metro area with his wife, dog, and an indeterminate number of cats.

See all of Richard Baguley's reviews

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