Kodak EasyShare DX3215

Two weeks ago, I purchased the Kodak DX3215 digital camera, for £189 from John Lewis.com. I assume the DX3215 has just come onto the market of late. I have never owned a digital camera before now and felt I should experience first-hand, this new form of photography.

The camera arrived in an attractive box and when I opened it, the contents were nicely presented and well designed.

Apart from the camera itself, the Kodak package included software in order to upload your pictures to and then manipulate them and set up for printing and to build them into photo albums. This was easily installed and worked well and simply. Also in the box was USB lead, mains adaptor, docking cradle (covered later), rechargeable batteries, strap and lens cover.

The camera itself was chunky looking and substantial feeling. It looked the part, at least. A key companion to it is the docking cradle, where you are told to keep the camera placed other than when you are not using it. The docking cradle charges up the batteries and is the uploading link to your PC. Just press a button on the cradle and your pictures are automatically sent en masse to the Kodak software. Simple!

Picture quality? Well, you can choose either e-mail quality level, which allows you to take a lot more pictures using the in-built memory, about 80, I think? Alternatively, choose high quality, which will only allow 20 shots, unless you purchase an additional memory card.

At the rear of the camera is a small colour screen that enables you to see the image you are taking without having to look through the viewfinder. The screen also allows you to see the picture after you've taken it and delete it if you wish. This is one area digital camera are at a huge advantage over their rivals.

I'm no expert in digital photography or terminology, but I was satisfied with the picture quality on higher quality level. The pictures were somewhat inferior to a conventional APS camera, for example, but not as much as I had feared. That said, at this price level, digital photography is a long, long way behind the more established type, in my view.

The Kodak DX3215 is a 1.3 Mega pixel camera. With the benefit of hindsight, I should have gone for a camera with a higher pixel depth, 2.0, perhaps?. I should have also chosen one with a more powerful zoom than 4X, and not just relied on the 8MB internal memory. Still, you only get what you pay for.

Sadly, my Kodak DX3215 developed a docking cradle fault after two weeks. A flashing red light (potential serious trouble, according to the virtual manual) came on and wouldn't go off. That set off alarm bells in my head, and I contacted John Lewis and asked them to exchange it, they agreed and are sending me a Fuji Finepix 2600 instead. Maybe that is for the best?

Due to my troubles with the Kodak, I could not recommend it strongly to anybody else, as I simply did not have it long enough. That said, assuming the fault was a one-off, it is certainly worth a try.