Also easily accessed atop the camera are the Shutter Button, the Self-Timer Button, and the Flash Button to change flash settings for different exposures. The left-hand side of the camera contains easily accessible ports for the AC Adapter, Video Out, and Serial connections.
Control Enumeration. You can use the self-timer in conjunction with any of the camera settings you've enabled. Depressing the self-timer button provides a 10 second delay between when you press the shutter button and when the camera fires.
Every -1 adjustment cuts the amount of light in half. Use this control if your images appear too light or too dark. Exposure Lock: Lets you lock the exposure setting currently in effect when you are capturing a series of images consecutively, where each requires the same exposure setting.
This feature is useful for taking a sequence of shots that will be stitched-together into a panorama later. In the bottom left corner, a trash can icon appears. Pressing the left arrow button displays the Delete Picture screen where you can choose to delete the picture prior to it being stored to the picture card. Review Mode Use Review Mode after you capture images to review them. When the LCD first turns on, the "Index" screen our term appears.
At the bottom of the LCD you'll see smaller versions of the images that you have captured if there's more than 1, of course. Once you find it and center it, that image appears larger in the LCD. In this "Index" mode, very rapid browsing of the stored images is facilitated by the camera's initial display of only a very low-resolution image. While very low res, it's generally enough to tell what the content of the image is, and decide whether that's the one you're looking for. If you linger on a given picture, it fills-in to a high-resolution version in about two seconds.
This approach makes it very easy to scroll through a large number of pictures to find the one you want. To the left of the LCD is a set of three icons. Each of these icons represents an operation that you can perform on the selected image, as described below:. Connect Mode When you want to connect the camera to a PC for downloading of images, you first need to put the camera into Connect Mode.
Connect Mode enables the different ports on the side of the camera for image transfer. The ports include a standard RS connection for downloading images to Windows-based computers with an available serial COM port. Preferences Mode Preferences Mode offers a number of options you can use to customize the camera for your own picture-taking needs. Most of the camera's operating parameters are set via the Preferences mode.
The picture card compartment is easily accessible on the left-side of the camera. Open the compartment door, insert the picture card into the slot, push it all the way in, and you're all set to capture images. All images are captured and stored in standard JPEG format, unless you've set a different file type in Preferences mode.
When you first turn on the camera, the status display shows the number of pictures for which space remains on the picture card. This "Pictures Remaining" number is displayed in the upper-right hand corner of the status display. Of course, this number will vary depending on the Quality setting Best, Better, Good , and the Resolution level setting High, Standard. At the high-resolution level, images are stored at x pixels.
At the standard level, images are stored at x pixels. The following table shows the approximate number of images stored for each available camera setting, on the included 4 MB card:. Of course, as with all cameras, the number of images stored on each card may vary depending on the density of the image being captured.
At the high resolution, best quality setting, the average file size is about K. At the high resolution, good quality setting, the file size is about 94K, and at the standard resolution, good quality setting, the average file size is about 48K. Using the "TWAIN" driver supplied with the camera and Photoshop, the transfer time for the same file dropped to 36 seconds, for a transfer rate of about 8.
Serial transfers are fine if you have the patience, but anyone dealing with large quantities of pictures will probably find a parallel-port card reader a useful addition.
Video Out The DC Plus supports playback of images to a television set through a video out cable supplied with the camera. The video out port is easily located on the left-hand side of the camera, hidden under a plastic flap.
A menu option in Preferences mode is available to switch between these signal formats if needed. Four AA 1. While we don't conduct explicit tests for battery life, we found the DC Plus to be fairly efficient in its use of battery power. Despite this, we strongly recommend purchasing a set or two of rechargeable NiMH batteries and a charger as standard equipment for any digital camera.
When the camera is placed in Capture, Review, or Camera Set-Up Mode, the Battery Status Symbol is displayed on the Control Panel on the top of the camera to tell you how much battery power is remaining. The battery compartments on the right side of the camera are easily accessible for battery changing. Simply plug the AC adapter into the AC adapter connector under the connector cover on the left-side of the camera and you're ready for extended operation.
Use the Power Save feature on the camera to shorten the amount of time that the camera stays on when not in use to save battery power. Kodak also recommends that when you use the LCD on the camera, you should limit usage to less than 10 continuous minutes. Longer continuous usage places a severe strain on the batteries, and will drastically shorten their useful life. If more than 10 minutes is required, purchase the optional AC Adapter. Bundled software includes the following: Mounter Software: Lets you view pictures on the picture card and copy selected pictures to your computer.
Picture Easy Software: Lets you copy, edit and enhance, organize and print pictures from your picture card. To keep the overall camera cost down, Kodak doesn't include any third-party image-manipulation software with the DC This is a "true" brightness adjustment, varying the brightness of the LCD backlight, rather than just adjusting the contrast of the LCD screen itself.
The "live" images on the LCD are fairly sharp, although the panel clearly has a lower pixel-count than you'll find on higher-end digital cameras. In "viewfinder mode", the display's refresh rate is reasonably high, about typical for most cameras we've reviewed. Like all LCDs, the one on the DC is quite prone to wash-out in direct sun, meaning you'll doubtless want to use the optical viewfinder on sunny days.
When in Review mode, three icons appear on the left of the LCD. You can select these icons to view the current image full-size, delete images, or to turn the icon menu itself on and off. The Index screen our term for it includes the three icons mentioned above, and smaller, thumbnail versions of the stored images at the bottom.
The image in the center of the scroll area is the image that is displayed in larger view on the LCD when you stop scrolling. The different icons displayed on the LCD are easily viewable and easy to navigate.
If you turn on the Template feature in Preferences mode, the LCD itself is framed with the template you selected. This is helpful when you want to add a template to an image, but you want to make sure that the image looks good in the template before you capture it, or need to make sure that no important subject matter is hidden by the template.
When in Capture mode, menu options on the LCD allow you to adjust the camera's exposure value, or lock the exposure to capture a consistent exposure for a sequence of shots. Like most other cameras, using the LCD for preview and review of images uses up battery power fairly quickly. You should limit continuous use of the LCD during your picture-taking sessions for this reason.
For continuous preview and review, power the camera with the optional AC adapter. The focus-free design provides good sharpness from 27 inches 0. Although it lacks a "macro" mode for shooting close-ups, the DC does sport 37mm filter threads, which can be used to attach close-up lenses or other accessories. This agreed fairly well with our own test results, although we found that we could extend the lower end of the exposure range somewhat by using the exposure-compensation adjustment see below to boost the camera's sensitivity a bit.
Using this method, we obtained a very good exposure at EV 9, and a passable one at EV 8. This would correspond to a fairly dim residential interior, although our indoor portrait test results suggest that attempts to boost the exposure too far will have only limited success under typical household incandescent lighting, due to the strong color cast of that light source. The DC has a fairly good automatic white-balance capability, allowing it to function well under a wide variety of lighting conditions.
In our tough "indoor portrait" test shot, it did a good job of removing enough of the yellowish cast of the lighting to produce natural-looking colors. The exposure compensation adjustment essentially tells the camera to give the shot a little more or a little less exposure than the automatic metering system calls for.
This is very handy if you have a backlit subject, or a small bright subject against a dark background. Another feature accessible via an LCD menu option in Capture mode is the exposure lock function. This "locks" the exposure on the first shot taken after the setting is made, and then keeps the same exposure setting until the "lock" is reset.
This is very useful for capturing sequences of images to be used for stitching together into a wide or tall panorama. After an image is captured, the QuickView feature optionally displays the image on the LCD for a few seconds. At that point, you can choose to delete the image immediately and re-shoot, or do nothing, and let the image be stored on the camera's picture card.
Flash The built-in flash of the DC Plus has an effective range from 2. The flash settings are fairly flexible in that you can choose a different setting for each shot using the small Flash button on the top of the camera when in Capture mode. The camera automatically returns to the default Auto flash setting when you turn it off.
This time is to allow the autofocus and autoexposure mechanisms time to do their work, and can amount to a fairly long delay in some situations. Since this number is almost never reported on, and can significantly affect the picture-taking experience, we now routinely measure it, using a little Windows utility developed by Digital Eyes.
We measured the DC's shutter lag time at a rather speedy 0. Most cameras we've tested come out at around 0. The speedy shutter response of the DC is undoubtedly because there's no need to wait for an autofocus mechanism to work. Half-pressing the shutter button to preset the exposure further reduces the lag time to 0.
On the DC Plus, the shot-to-shot cycle time averages about 9. Camera startup time is fairly fast at about 5 seconds and shutdown is just about a second.
Switching from Capture to Review mode takes just under 2 seconds while switching back to Capture mode is instantaneous. You won't even know that time has gone by. The DC Plus literature boasts much faster response and cycle times for the camera than its predecessor, the DC, and we found operation to be quite fast, for such a low-cost camera.
Operation and User Interface For a low-cost, introductory digital camera, the DC Plus is easy-to-use and should be quickly mastered by even novice digital photographers. If you are at all familiar with digital cameras, it takes just a few short minutes to work through the operation of the camera, and check out the available features and options.
If you've never used a digital camera before, you may find yourself using the manual at first. Once you start experimenting, however, you'll see how easy it is to teach yourself how to capture high-quality digital images. The camera operates in one of four different modes: Capture, Review, Connect, and Preferences.
You select which mode you want with the Mode Dial on the rear of the camera. The LCD doesn't automatically turn on when in Capture mode. You need to turn it on manually using the DO-IT button. In contrast, the LCD is always on in Review mode and you don't need to enable it. The LCD shuts itself down after 60 seconds of inactivity to save battery power. Review mode provides you with a series of functions that you can perform using images already captured and stored to the camera's picture card.
By switching from what we call Full-View mode to Index mode, you can view and scroll through thumbnails of all the images stored to the camera card. Once in Index mode, you can delete images, or expand them to full-screen for closer examination. The Index-mode screen was shown earlier. Connect mode lets you connect the camera to a PC using the serial cable packaged in the camera box. You can connect to Windows '95 or '98 computers fairly quickly and easily.
Before you can download images, however, you first need to install the DC Plus software on your computer. The DC ships with software only for the Windows platforms: An accessory kit is sold with cable and software for connecting to Macintosh computers, as Kodak product number Other control buttons are placed very similarly to other cameras we've tested: On the top of the camera, you'll find the Status Display which shows icons for various camera settings.
It's an easy reminder of which menu options you have enabled, the battery power status, and pictures remaining on the picture card, among other things.
There is a colour 1. It can also be used a live view display. Connectivity is with a serial port which can be adapted to 9 pin windows.
It is powered by four AA batteries. The DC is based on the same body, but instead of a fixed lens it uses a 29 to 48mm equivalent 2x zoom lens. It has a focus distance in wide mode of 0. It is also compatible with Infrared data transmission of photos.
The DC Plus and DC Plus are identical to the previous versions in specifications, but operation usability has improved with better more responsive camera software, as well as less battery consumption. From Camera-wiki.
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