Review: Kodak EasyShare C613

Got it to replace a 5 year old Fuji FinePix, which I had mislaid somewhere and the Missus had used as a bludgeon.. "Where's MY Camera!!!" {Though I dont think she'd ever used it}.
Of course the Fuji was way outdated and would be good for nothing but the odd snapshot.

Go to Walmart site and read the user reviews of the various Kodak's .. I read them and decided NOT to go with the 8MB offering as users seemed to think it sucked for various reasons, primarily image quality not comparable to other 8MP cameras they'd used.

So I looked for reviews on LESSER models and reviews were great on the C613. Which is a 6MP camera and sells for under $100 I also picked up a 2GB SanDisk memory chip for $20.

First..It's a SNAPSHOT camera. It has a lot of good features like the ability to shoot the odd video. It has enough resolution to produce images comparable {actually far superior,, but hey..} to old 35mm fixed lens cameras.
I'll let you guys look up the features and reviews...
FIRST, though I'm sorta techie, I fumble around a LOT with tech gadgets. My idea of 'intuitive' isnt always the same as those who use the products all the time.
But I found the camera easy to use and the mode selector explained the function on the display.

The real aggravation, though, begins with getting the pix OFF the camera.

It comes, of course, with the ubiquitous proprietary software on CD which, once loaded, takes over ALL the images on your computer - ALL my jpegs now have a big red 'K' icon- and assumes that you OBVIOUSLY want to link with Kodak to have prints made.

The oldest Os supported on the CD seems to be Xp.. I use 2000, TYVM!.

But it was easy to find a link to older software on the web. What I DIDNT find, at first blush was a way to just make the camera look like a 'drive' so I can just go in and dredge out the images I want.

But it takes a while to find that, even with Google. Here's the way to do it

{all mispells are SIC}

So if any of you are chafing at over-reaching image software, do a google search on your camera and use 'drive' or 'drive image', and you'll probably find something like that.
I've yet to do it but I'll add more info as I do.

If you read that forum you'll see a complaint about Picasa - which features easy image corrections- being linked to 'printing services'. May seem to be the same complaint but I think not.

I dont have to use those services, I can print to anywhere or move images to a thumbdrive. Picasa features outweigh its drawbacks or commercial tie-ins.

Screw the purists... as usual, I dont see them pointing to free 'open-source' offerings... and that's been the case since forever.

 

I've struggled with many photo packages over the years, and have settled in on Picasa. It is easy to use, and has almost literally one click upload access to storing photos on the web for all or some to see with 1GB free. The picture quality on the web photos is good too with large photos to see.

As for backing up my 10 GB and 6500 photos and camera movies I use Carbonite: http://www.carbonite.com/raf/signup.asp ... UID=117039 (thoughtless plug to get a referral and free months!!!) which is an online backup and is unlimited. I currently have over 52 GB stored online!