Digital Trends

Kodak EasyShare Z740 Bundle

August 24th, 2005 | by David Elrich

Features and Design

The Z740 5MP camera is very compact and lightweight with a body that's primarily plastic. It has a right-side grip to keep the camera steady and your fingers rest neatly on the shutter button and wide/tele key. Since this is a mega-zoom, its 10x optical zoom has a range of 38mm-380mm in 35mm terms. This makes it a real plus for vacationing families since you can take everything from wide angle to extreme telephoto shots. There is also a 5x digital zoom but we suggest you don't use because image quality drops precipitously. An onscreen display warns when you've entered the digital zoom zone. Note there are a number of even more powerful mega-zooms available such as the <Canon S2 IS>. With its 12x optical zoom, optical image stabilization and Canon quality, it's an entirely different option since it costs $499 without a dock.

The top of the Z740 has the shutter button, power key, speaker, three keys to adjust flash, macro, and burst settings as well as key to pop open the flash. The rear has decent 1.8-inch LCD screen rated a hefty 134K pixels and a smaller Electronic Viewfinder (EVF).  The EVF is rather poor and inaccurate indoors and doesn't have a diopter adjustment, something Kodak should remedy with the next generation of cameras. There's a seven-setting mode dial to adjust the basic photographic operation such as Auto, Scene modes, video and so on. There are also individual delete, menu and review keys.  The Share key with a red dot is there is to mark photos for printing (on the dock) or to email if you connect the camera to a PC.

Also very cool is the joystick in the center of the mode dial. Instead of four individual arrow and set keys, all adjustments are made with the one switch. It's very intuitive and easy to use. A door on the side offers access to the SD card slot and USB input. Batteries are loaded on the bottom of the camera and you'll find a tripod mount and connection for the printer dock.

The supplied dock is rather nondescript but it does the job. Made of silver and dark plastic, its most distinctive feature is a paper tray that holds about 25 sheets of 4x6 photo paper. But don't let the plain-Jane looks turn you off since it's the rare printer design that gets anyone excited.

The camera comes with quick start guide, strap, lens cap with cord, two rechargeable NiMH batteries, USB and A/V cables, lens adapter, a very nicely done owner's manual and Kodak EasyShare software V.4.04 (V5.0 is available for free as a download). It also has a plastic insert for properly mounting it to the dock. There is 32MB of internal memory so you can shoot right out of the box but definitely budget for a high-speed 512MB SD card. The dock comes with a power cord, tray and a starter pack with 10 sheets of 4x6 paper and matching color ink cartridge. 

Image Courtesy of Kodak