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SCMP Reporter

It is a rare item that comes in for review and leaves me stumbling for an opinion - but the Kodak DC 120 is one of those rarities.

 Kodak has come up with a utilitarian workhorse that does what they designed it to do, and does it quite well. But its rather uninspired ergonomics and only adequate lens left me longing for a bit more.

 The DC 120 is Kodak's first attempt at a consumer-price camera with a million-plus pixel resolution.

 The camera produces a 3.5 megabyte RGB file, nearly four times the file size produced by most consumer cameras just a couple of years ago. The resolution is equal to some of the professional cameras made by Kodak and marketed by Kodak, Canon and the Associated Press.

 With its hand strap at the right side, the DC 120 looks more like a small video camera than a digital still camera. It has a zoom lens with a focal lengths equivalent to 38-114mm on a 35mm camera. At the back there is a small colour LCD screen which is used for viewing images already taken, while a traditional viewfinder is used for shooting.

 The controls are quite comprehensive and at least what would be expected from a good compact 35mm camera.

 Among the user-selectable functions, there was multi-point autofocus and manual shutter speed settings going from 1/500 to 16 seconds.

 One of the most important settings on this panel is the image quality setting. The two megabytes of on-board memory is enough to store only two images at the highest setting. You get as many as 21 images on the lowest quality setting.

 The images on lower quality settings retain the same resolution, but are compressed to make them smaller. The capacity can be expanded through the use of flash memory cards. A 10 megabyte card, costing about $2200, gives enough space for eight more high-resolution pictures.

 Downloading the images from the camera can be done through Kodak's own application, or through a PhotoShop plug-in.

 Kodak also provides a small application for making basic colour corrections, cropping and sharpening.

 The output quality from the DC 120 is much better than most cameras on the market in resolution and colour quality, when used at the highest quality setting, and at least equal to most other units at the lowest setting.

 Compared with film, the 120 colours were a bit unrealistically vibrant and shots in low light tended to be a bit dark. That aside, a good 3R or 4R print from the 120 would be hard to distinguish from a print from a 35mm negative.

 An ergonomic problem came in the zoom controls, which are on the left side, while the shutter release is on the right side next to the hand strap - meaning using two hands to operate the camera.

 Where Kodak has made great efforts to bring down the cost of high-res digital still cameras through the DC120, it has gone a bit cheap on the glass, the mediocre lens design and construction detracting from image quality.

 Wide-angle shots were sharp and detailed, but showed noticeable distortion, with straight lines running parallel to the edge of the frame appearing to be bowed.

 Photos shot at the telephoto were less sharp and detailed than those shot at wide angle. Images taken in bright sunlight, where the aperture could stop down a bit, were noticeably sharper than those taken in subdued light or with flash.

 All in all, the lens falls a bit short of making full use of the CCD's potential.

 Having said that, the DC120 is still a good camera. The quality of the image is about the same as you would get from a 3R print from a point-and-shoot 35mm, scanned into your computer on a desktop bed scanner.

  If you are scanning 3R prints to make reports or Web pages, this camera could save a lot of time and materials while producing the same quality.



Kodak workhorse leaves a little to be desired