The Kodak EasyShare V350: A Great Compact Camera for Less Money

Until very recently I thought digital cameras were only for taking quick family pictures to send to Grandma and Grandpa. My simple-to-operate Kodak EasyShare V530 changed my mind.

When I realized the benefit of being able to share my photography online to supplement articles I wrote I saw that my fully manual Canon AE-l wouldn’t let me do that. Taking a deep breath, I decided to go digital. After three weeks of reading reviews, learning terminology, and asking people who owned digital cameras I discovered that the Kodak EasyShare V530 would serve my purposes very well.

I knew from the reviews that I would be spending between $100 to $300, but wanted to keep it as inexpensive as possible without sacrificing quality. I purchased my camera on Ebay for a respectable $192.50 including shipping and handling. In the package was the computer software, a camera dock for recharging the batteries and transferring photos, and a 128 MB SD card for extra memory. Since getting the V530 at the end of April, I have taken over a hundred photos of scenery, family, and wildlife. I have been very happy with the photos I have taken, and those that I’m not pleased with, I delete on the spot.

The V530 is a pocket-size digital camera that measures 3 5/8 by 2 inches and 7/8 of an inch thick. At less than 5 ounces in weight, it is slim and light. The LCD display measures 1 1/4 by 1 5/8 inches, a decent size to see your subject. Mine came with a plastic peel-away LCD cover, which I have since determined may serve the dual purpose of dulling the sun’s rays so that the subject may be seen and protecting the display from damage. Unfortunately, my plastic cover is long gone. In bright sunlight, the display window darkens to the point of not being able to see the subject very well, if at all. My advice: keep the plastic on that LCD as long as you can!

The 5-megapixel V530 has a Schneider-Kreuznach lens which I read was superior to the standard Kodak lens. The optical zoom capabilities for this camera is 3X, and the digital zoom allows 4X beyond that.