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Zoom with a wide view

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I admit to having a soft spot for wide angle lenses.

They allow you to get more of the scene into the photo, giving you more flexibility in composition and producing photos that seem grandeur and distinct from the run-of-the-mill 35mm lens of most compact cameras.

Even today, only a handful of digital cameras come with a built-in wide angle lens. Most are made by Ricoh, which has made the lens its signature feature, but other companies are starting to catch up.

Kodak's new Easyshare V570 model - unveiled last week at Consumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas - doesn't have a stand-alone wide angle lens but instead adds one to the standard configuration of a 3X optical zoom lens.

So instead of having a single lens with a range of 23mm to 117mm, the Kodak V570 incorporates two separate lenses - a 23mm wide angle lens and a 39mm-117mm zoom lens).

Kodak claims to have developed a system that allows you to zoom seamlessly between the two lenses, although the 23mm-39mm zoom works by using digital zooming, rather than optical zoom.

Thus, you can shoot at 23mm or zoom into the scene digitally (which reduces the resolution) and when the angle reaches the equivalent of 39mm, the second optical zoom lens takes over.

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