Kodak's new digital camera to focus on business customers

Kodak has announced details of the latest addition to a long line of digital still cameras.

The DC120 will surpass the features of the DC50, making it the flagship of Kodak's amateur line.

The 120 is Kodak's first million-plus pixel amateur camera.

The company's chief marketing officer and vice-president for digital and applied imaging, Cliff Trott, said the 120's image sensor's resolution equalled that of some of Kodak's professional cameras.

Its top-of-the-market units are widely used by newspaper and wire service photographers.

The 120 has a list price of $7,990.

The unit should have a street price of considerably less than that.

At 1280 X 960 pixels Kodak's new unit produces an image of about 3.5 megabytes.

That is easily enough for a 5 X 7 inch print that rivals film quality.

In a short trial last week, images from the 120 proved to be somewhat over-saturated and lacked the sharpness that would be expected from one of Kodak's professional models.

Still, the resolution was equal to Kodak's less-expensive professional units which sell for about US$6,000 or more.

All that resolution comes at a cost, though.

The DC120 has four image quality settings and at the highest setting the camera can hold just two images.

Add a two megabyte RAM card and the capacity is doubled to a whopping four pictures.

The camera's capacity can be increased to a very usable 12 images with the addition of a 10 megabyte card, but expect to pay more for the card than you did for the camera.

Other quality settings give a maximum of seven, 13 or 21 images.

At the lowest quality setting, the images are close to those from a Apple QuickTake 150 or an Epson PhotoPC.

On the second highest setting, the reduction in image quality is not particularly noticeable.

While the price of the unit is quite high, it is targeted at the business user rather than the casual digital photographer.

The cost savings in time and materials makes sense for most business users.

The quality is good enough for reports and other in-house publications and the high cost can be recouped quickly through savings in time and materials.

In the United States, digital stills have become commonplace in the real estate and insurance worlds.

Kodak intends to maintain its position in the digital camera market by bringing out new models twice a year.

Mr Trott said one of the barriers facing digital still-camera makers like Kodak was who should sell them.

Digital cameras bridge the computer and photographic industries.

Computer shops don't have the photographic expertise and camera shops don't have the equipment they need to demonstrate the units.