Kodak DX7440 Review

The autofocus range is 19.7 in. to infinity in wide angle and 29.5 in. to infinity in telephoto. The macro close-up mode covers from 3.9 to 23.6 inches in wide angle and from 9.8 to 33.5 inches in telephoto. The camera's sports a high speed, low light auto focus system with selectable multi-zone or center-zone modes.

The built-in flash has modes for auto, fill, red-eye and forced off. The working flash range in wide is 0.6 - 4.0m (2 - 13.1 ft.) and in telephoto from 0.6 - 2.3m (2 - 7.6 ft.) at ISO 140.

You can frame your pictures with the color LCD or to save precious battery power you can use the optical eyelevel viewfinder. This is a coupled viewfinder, with dioptric adjustment. The LED next to the viewfinder indicates the focus and image processing status.

Controls on the rear: Upper right corner is the jog dial control. A dedicated Delete button to erase images during review. The Review button puts the camera into playback mode. The Menu button calls up and dismisses the menus. The Share button lets you select images for printing, e-mailing, or to mark as a favorite. The "i" button controls the amount of information that is overlayed on the LCD image and turns the LCD On or Off.

Navigating the menus is simple, just use the 4-way joystick in the center of the Mode Dial to move up and down through the selections and accept a setting by pressing it inward. The record and play menus are detailed on the next two pages of this review.

The illuminated Mode Dial has positions for: Movie, My Favorites, Off, Auto, SCN (16 pre-programmed scene modes) Program AE, Aperture priority, Shutter speed priority, Manual and Custom exposure modes.

On the top is the shutter release with the zoom control mounted around it. The Drive mode button is used to select AE bracketing, Burst or Normal exposure mode. The Focus mode button selects macro, landscape (infinity) or normal focus mode. The Flash mode button cycles through the Auto, Red-Eye, Fill or Off flash modes.

I/O ports are on the side: 5V DC IN jack for an optional AC power adapter, the USB port works with the Kodak EasyShare Software to make image downloading easy (with or without the use of the optional Easy Share Dock), and the Audio-Video Out port with selectable NTSC or PAL format.

The DX7440 comes with 32MB of internal memory and is equipped with a SD/MMC card slot that accepts any capacity SD or MMC flash card.

Shown here with the spacious and speedy SanDisk Ultra II 512MB SD card.

Power is supplied by a proprietary Kodak EasyShare KLIC-5000 3.7V 1050mAh Li-ion pack. Kodak claims that the KLIC-5000 yields up to 325 pictures per full charge. A compact 110-240V AC rapid charger is included. The higher capacity Kodak KLIC-5001 (1500mAh) Li-ion battery may also be used.

The optional EasyShare Camera Dock charges the camera's battery pack and lets you quickly download images and movies to the host computer.

The optional Kodak EasyShare Printer Dock lets you easily transfer your pictures and movies to the host computer via USB 2.0 connection. It charges the DX7440's battery whenever the camera is placed on the dock.

The Printer Dock is a high-quality 4x6-inch dye sublimation photo printer. Users place their CX/DX 6000/7000 or LS 600/700 series EasyShare camera on top of the dock using the camera-specific adapter plate that comes with each EasyShare camera.

For a detailed EasyShare Printer Dock mini-review just click here!