Kodak DC215

Opinion: It had better picture quality than my 5mp sony p-10.
It was a capable camera especially for a 1mp camera.

Opinion: This was my first digital camera bought back in 1999. I have taken over 3,000 pictures with it and for a 1 megapixel it does very good. For a point and shoot and simple operation it is great. In a nutshell, it.s a good simple practical camera but not for serious work in the least.

Opinion: If you're just looking for a camera for pics of family and such, it's fine. But if you're a serious photographer....this isn't for you. Easy to use, simple point and shoot camera. Nicely constructed metal camera.

Opinion: I have been using this camera for about 4 years now. I have used it for everything, I carry it with me everywhere I go. I have made some beautiful photos and have never found any difference in quality in the photos when enlarged. I have not done any thing above an 8x10.
I have take pictures from as far as 350 yards and my zoom is wonderful. The one thing I have read with others on these reviews is that they don't have a usb for this, nime came with usb, and the tranfer is very fast. I bought a usb reader and can not tell any difference in transfers. I will admit that my battery tray broke, I was reaching for somthing and it was on my wrist and I snagged the tray on something. I called, they sent me a postage paid mailer box with packing peanuts and a week later my camera was back. I have not had any problem with loading my tray either. I do no that if you don't use your camera every day or so and you leave the bateries in they will discharge. when I am not going to use mine I connect it to ac and that keeps my batteries from discharging. I am sorry they have discontinued this camera as I have recommented it to several people. One other thing to mention is that it does not like being left in the cold. but you should not leave any camera in the cold. It takes awhile for it to warm up when it have been in the car alnight in cold weather. I have done some beautiful photos and printed them on canvas and they look like oil panitings.

Opinion: 3 Years I have owned this model and it really got me interested in digital photograpy. I found it very easy to use and have taken some good pictures. I use it for my family and have printed - copied - and e-mailed pictures regularly. I take it with me everywhere we go as a family and even my son who is 13 years old can operate it with confidence. I have lost count of the number of photos I have taken.

Opinion: I wanted to add a review to comment on a problem with the camera.

My father and a friend of mine has this same camera. On both cameras the battery tray has broken so it will not stay in unless you either tape it or rubber band it together. I contacted Kodak on behalf of my father, and they want to charge us for a replacement battery tray. I wouldn't object, but since BOTH cameras broke in the exact same spot in two separate households, it seems like there is a defect here. I discussed this with Kodak, and they could care less.

Opinion: I bought this camera as a simple point and shoot replacement for a 35mm Compact. I have not been disappointed..

I have taken hundreds, if not thousands of photos with this camera - from holiday snaps, to items for ebay auction listings.

The holiday snaps are great - the camera handles Mediterranian colours well and produces decent images suitable for printing up to 5x7 (I've even done a few at 8x10 - and are fine except for the closest examination).. The image size is relatively small so archiving to CD is no problem..

The ebay photos are mainly of antiques and collectables, requiring close-up or macro mode. I have had some cracking photos, that I m sure have added ££'s to the final price of my ebay auctions - the camera has really paid for itself!.. You soon learn how the camera handles light and I find diffused natural daylight best for fine detail - or flash for really sharp images.

I wouldn't use this camera for a subject that I wanted to print at 20x16 - but that's not the point of this simple device.. It is a point and shoot camera - that I find meets my everyday needs brilliantly.. Kodak did a good job on this one..

Opinion: This is a simple, point and shoot camera, but the imaging quality is inconsistent. Sometimes the fixed focus lens gives great results, other times it is very sloppy. This camera has an enormous appetite for batteries. The serial transfer rates are slow, so make sure to get a CompactFlash reader.

Opinion: I bought this camera about 18 months ago while on holiday, and have since taken over 2000 photos with it.

Overall construction quality is pretty solid, but let down by the flimsy battery compartment. If the camera is dropped and lands on the corner of the battery tray, there is a good chance that it will break the retaining clips. Other than that, it handles knocks and bumps remarkably well.

Curiously, while most of the reviewers liked the slide-out battery tray, I though it was one of the camera's most annoying features: It's not a problem if you have somewhere to put the camera, but if you're trying to change the batteries while out and about, it just gives you one more thing to juggle. For some bizarre reason, the tray is designed so that if it is tipped upside down, two of the batteries will drop out but the other two will be retained. If they all stayed put, then it might make sense to carry a second pre-loaded battery tray (as long as it was cheap enough) and if they all dropped out, at least it would make the juggling act a bit simpler. As it is, you get the worst of both worlds, and I'd much sooner be able to load the batteries straight into the camera body.

The location of the battery compartment also means that the tripod mounting point is in a corner of the camera, rather than in the centre. This is not a problem on a full-sized tripod, but can make the camera difficult to balance on a mini tripod.

To my mind, picture quality is spoiled by excessive JPEG compression. Even at top quality and resolution, pictures are only 200-300K. JPEG artefacts pretty much prohibit zooming and cropping of pictures, even on the highest quality setting.

I invested in a 128Mb CF card, and found that power-on time is considerably longer than with the smaller (I also have 32 and 16Mb) cards. 128Mb is a ridiculous amount of memory to have in this camera though - even on maximum resolution and quality, it'll hold over 400 pictures.

There is an annoyingly long delay (around 10 seconds) after taking each photo, during which the camera is 'locked out' - you can't take another photo or switch off until it is finished. This means that, when taking pictures of something that's likely to move suddenly (animals, vehicles etc.) you'll often only get 'one shot' at your picture.

The camera's wide angle lens makes it good for taking landscape shots, but the trade-off is that the zoom is not up to much. The 1.0-2.0x zoom claimed by Kodak is misleading. Realistically, the camera has a zoom range of about 0.8-1.5x, leading to pretty restricted zooming. This is compounded by the low CCD resolution (by today's standards), lack of digital zoom and the inability to zoom in with image editing software, thanks to the excessive JPEG compression.

Unlike most digital cameras, the 'review' option does not allow you to zoom into the picture on the LCD panel sufficiently to check the focus. This is particularly annoying when taking macro shots, as the distance between the lens and the subject is fairly critical. Often the images appear perfectly sharp on the LCD, but are out of focus when downloaded to the computer. The review option also behaves rather oddly: It immediately shows a low-resolution (very blocky) version of your image, and then improves the resolution after a few seconds. This behaviour is replicated on the 'TV out' slideshow, which is annoying if you wish to transcribe your photos onto videotape.

The lack of USB port is annoying. The supplied serial cable is painfully slow, and the download software stupidly fails to preserve the date and time of the images when writing them to the PC. Both of these problems are resolved by investing in a CF card reader for your computer. A handy tip for owners: Fighting with the fiddly card eject button can be avoided by sticking a tab of tape to the edge of the card - just pull on the tape to remove the card!

Anyway, enough of the negative stuff.

By far the camera's best feature is its ease of use. The interface and option settings are very straightforward, making the camera ideal for the first-time 'non-techie' user. The most commonly used options (flash modes, macro, self-timer etc.) have their own buttons on the top of the camera, making them much easier and quicker to set up than on cameras that provide these functions via menus.

As a simple 'point and shoot' camera, it does its job admirably, and only really lets itself down when you can't get close enough to your subject to fill the frame at maximum zoom. Otherwise, the results are perfectly acceptable for holiday snaps and everyday use. I have blown some images up to full A4 size and framed them, and they bear up to all but the closest scrutiny.

You'll only see these cameras on the second-hand market now, but if you see one at the right price and all you want to do is take snaps without the expense of developing and printing, you'll probably be more than happy. If you want to get clever and start manipulating your images, go for something with more pixels and less aggressive JPEG compression.