Unless
you have had Kodak's DC260 in hand, you could easily assume from
just seeing photos that it's a fairly bulky camera. In fact, the camera
is a very reasonable size, and falls into the "compact" category
quite nicely. The impression stems from its squarish shape more than anything
else.
A top mounted power switch turns on the camera. The vast majority of digital
cameras take a couple of seconds to boot up, but the DC260 is surprisingly
slow, requiring nearly a full ten seconds to be ready to take pictures.
(New firmware is available from the Kodak site that reduces this to
8 secs). To the new user, this phenomenon can be rather disarming
since when you press the power button, the only thing that happens is
that a little LED next to the viewfinder flashes green. An easily missed
activity.
Designed by Chinon for Kodak, the DC260 may not be "pretty" but
it is, however, designed with the user in mind. Here the function decides
the form and the result is the unusual shape, bulging on all sides.
Attention to detail
can be found throughout the camera. The protruding viewfinder is housed
in a semi-flexible rubber casing and, although small, is nevertheless
very usable. All the various buttons aside, from the power switch and
shutter release, are made of a soft grey plastic, even a tethered lens
cap is provided. Everything is placed so as to be easily accessible and
usable.
The
LCD display on top of the camera serves to do quick setting changes. The
"scroll" button cycles though each basic photographic option
displayed on the screen: flash modes (auto, fill-in, red-eye reduction
and off); exposure
compensation (+ or - 2EV in half EV increments); picture type (still,
burst or time-lapse); and last, the picture quality mode (best, good and
better), which represent levels of compression.
All changes are done by pressing the "select" button, and once
a choice is made the camera is ready.
