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This is not a digital camera review site, and I actually only buy digital cameras once every 5 years or so, but I still consider myself a picky consumer, and it’s my blog.

I needed (wanted) to replace my classic Canon Powershot 110, the quintissential urban guppie digital camera. If you didn’t have one of these in 2001-2002, you couldn’t eat lunch anywhere the gay part of town. Here it is, 2005, and it’s a very dignified brick. Heavy, small screen. 2 megapixels. Although the pictures turn out great, Canon really makes a “photographer’s” camera. Sort of like what Windows XP is to Mac OS X. Bloated in terms of UI, but infinitely adjustable.

After much shopping (sort of), I decided to go with the
Kodak Easyshare V530 5MP Digital Camera. It was basically a “good deal” and it got pretty respectable reviews.

I am impressed.

I had used Kodak digital cameras in the past in the early days, and you could just never fault their UI. It was really simple and did what you wanted to do. In contrast, I have never really ever figured out all of the switches on my Canon. And I don’t really care. I like photography like the rest of the world, but I don’t have patience to endlessly tweak pictures. I am more about what you do with the information than producing information.

So where was I - it has a ton of cool features that I would not have expected, like image stabilization, and auto-red-eye reduction. The auto-red-eye is not accomplished just by the strobe light flash - there’s some internal circuitry that does this regardless of flash. It’s really easy to figure out how to get stuff done, and the form factor is perfect. Did I mention the camera was cheap?

In terms of software, I am an iPhoto guy so as far as I’m concerned the install CD that comes with the camera is a coaster and I am not installing it. A little SD card reader is all that I need, especially since iPhoto now imports movies.

The other cool things about the camera are that it saves movies in Quicktime format rather than AVI, and it does NOT require a dock for charging. You just take the little power adapter with you when you travel. Very important.

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