Steve reviews PDR-M65, Kodak mc3 and more!
By
Mike Tomkins
(Monday, April 16, 2001 - 15:45 EDT)
Steve's Digicams website looks at Toshiba's entry-level 3mpix digicam, Kodak's 'portable multimedia device' and a Coolpix-oriented flash bracket, as well as posting their first ever film camera review...
Our good friend Steve Sanders over at Steve's Digicams has posted a number of new reviews on his site, his news page mentions. First up is a review of Toshiba's 3.3 megapixel, 3x optical zoom PDR-M65, an entry-level digicam with a street price around $550 that it seems Steve didn't fall in love with: "Overall [the PDR-M65] is a fairly robust camera, it saves and retrieves 3-megapixel images in about 3 seconds. The shutter lag time is approximately 1.3 seconds or down to 0.3 secs if pre-focused. If the flash is used there is a rather annoying delay of about one second even after the shutter is half-pressed and held. The LCD is not what I would call great, it's rather dim compared to the LCD displays on most all the other 3-megapixel cameras. If you increase the backlight's output it just tends to make the image 'washed out' looking. The optical viewfinder is useable but terrible. In wideangle the lens itself blocks a good portion of the lower half of the field of view and there is both a horizontal and vertical offset which makes the captured picture different from what you saw in the viewfinder.
I can't get excited by the M65's image quality, or lack thereof. The sample pictures tell the whole story. The pictures look 'flat', they lack saturation and dynamic range and the camera often overexposes by a full stop to a stop and a half. With all the choices out there in the 3-megapixel arena I can't help but thinking that your money could be better spent on another camera." Next up, Steve has posted a first-look of Kodak's mc3 'portable multimedia device'. No conclusions yet, of course, but there are plenty of sample images along with a look at the camera body and controls. There's also a review of Bracket Boy's Rollbar flash bracket: "If you've used the Nikon bracket then I'm sure you're ready to move up to something better and this is it. You'd spend $20-30 on generic flash brackets that aren't nearly as versatile as this one or made specifically for the Coolpix cameras." Finally, there's the first ever film camera review from Steve's Digicams, written by Gregg at Lake Shore Camera Exchange. Gregg looks at Nikon's N80 35mm SLR, concluding: "If you can push the shutter release button without shaking the camera you can get a great picture almost every time with the N80. The N80's Ten-segment 3D matrix meter is more than adequate for most pros and will keep most amateurs out of the frustration of the lousy picture zone. Once again, Nikon has a keeper here and the N80 is worth the investment to most anyone."
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