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ABOVE: Workers prepare rails for the new tram
system in Bordeaux, France.
View unedited 1656 x 1242
image (619 Kb)
Taking pictures
The Kodak EasyShare DX6440 has a Mode dial with eight choices:
Auto (the camera does everything), Movie (videos with sound),
Sports (optimized for moving subjects), Portrait (blurs out the
background), Night (adjusts exposure for after-dark shots with or without
flash), Landscape (locks focus at infinity), Macro (for extreme
close-ups), and PAS (a mode that lets you choose shutter or aperture
priority, program, spot metering, manual adjustment of white balance, and other
advanced settings).
To turn the camera on, just turn the Mode dial to the desired
setting. (I'd have preferred a dedicated on-off button to save flipping through
modes, but this is a minor complaint.)
When you're ready to take a picture, hold the camera in front of
you (if you're using the LCD) or against your cheek (if you're using the optical
viewfinder, which is a typical bare-bones window that zooms with the lens and
shows only about 85% of the image to minimize "chopped-off heads" and other
parallax errors. Focus by depressing the shutter button on top of the camera,
then press harder to take the photo. (The DX6440's button has a fairly heavy
touch, which prevents accidental exposure but may result in fuzziness from
camera shake at slow shutter speeds.)
To see the pictures that you've taken, press the "Review" button
with your right thumb. The most recent photo will show on the LCD panel, and you
can move forward or backward through the recorded images with the tiny
Multi-function Controller joystick in the center of the Mode dial.
Comments:
Kodak designers gave a lot of thought to making the camera
useful for photographers at different skill levels.
In Automatic mode, for example, you can set exposure
compensation while taking pictures, but the camera automatically reverts to its
default Automatic settings when you turn it off or switch modes.
In PAS mode, which is designed for advanced amateurs, the
camera saves the user's exposure preferences from session to session--presumably
on the theory that advanced photographers know what they want, while casual
snapshooters want to be protected against careless mistakes.
During my cruise, I found it handy to keep PAS mode set up for
high-contrast light conditions that required spot or center-weighted metering. I
could then use Automatic for most pictures (since it defaulted to multi-pattern
metering), with a quick flip of the dial to PAS whenever I was shooting against
the sky or in intense sunlight.
Also:
The Kodak EasyShare DX6440 has a unique Share button that
integrates with a Camera Dock or Printer Dock (see
page 4). Once you've snapped
the DX6440 into the dock, you can e-mail images, order prints online, make
prints at home, etc. by pressing the Share button and using the camera's menu.
For more information on the DX6440's modes,
screens, specifications, and performance, see the detailed technical reviews and
Kodak Web links that I've listed on
page 7 of this article.
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