Kodak CX7430

Reviewed July 2004

Image Quality

The CX7430 is a typical point and shoot: ready to use quite quickly and very simple to use.

This simple camera produces good exposures that rarely demand more from the user than framing the subject and pressing the shutter release. And, should the default multi-zone metering be in error, the CX7430 offers both exposure compensation or alternate metering patterns that can be used make the correction.

The CX7430 is equipped with a sensitivity range that starts at 80 ISO and extends to 400 ISO. It is interesting to note that 400 ISO shots can be captured in daylight without noise becoming overwhelming by allowing relatively fast shutter speeds that make it possible to freeze fast movement.

Moreover, the Auto ISO setting limits the range of the camera to between 80 and 140 ISO, thereby avoiding any noise in the image.

In general the colours produced by the CX7430 are vibrant, even in the light of a cloudy day. But, with photos captured in sunny weather, blues and greens are so intense that they can almost appear to be a bit over saturated.

Photos taken with the CX7430 also reveal that the lens has no chromatic aberration, and no noticeable distortion at either end of its focal length range.

The CX7430 is equipped with an orientation sensor that notes when photos are captured vertically so they can be presented the right way up during Playback. Most of the time the system works well but it does have limitations. Photos captured with the camera pointing up, or down, but in landscape format (horizontal) are easily incorrectly played back as vertical shots.

Still, it must be said that the compression, even at the best image quality, is sufficiently strong to soften the sharpness of the photos.

While this compression does not usually cause the appearance of artefacts, it does lessen the overall amount of detail in the photos, details which would normally be imaged by a 4-megapixel CCD.