Kodak C513 Review

The first Kodak digicam to incorporate the company's new KAC-05011 five megapixel CMOS imager, the Kodak EasyShare C513 couples the new sensor to a Kodak-branded 3x optical zoom lens with a fairly standard 36 - 108mm equivalent focal range. For framing images, there's a 2.4-inch 115,000 pixel LCD display but like many current models, the C513 has no optical viewfinder. Images are stored on Secure Digital / MultiMediaCards, or in 10MB of internal memory.

The Kodak C513 offers capture modes consisting of Auto, SCN, Video, Digital IS, Close-up and Favorites, and includes 13 scene modes to help beginners achieve the results they're looking for. Scene modes provided are: portrait, night portrait, landscape, sports, snow, beach, text/document, backlight, museum/manner, children, flower, self-portrait, and sunset. The C513 determines exposures with a multi-pattern, center weighted or center spot TTL metering system, and offers 2.0EV of exposure compensation in 1/2EV increments. Five white balance settings are available including auto, daylight, tungsten, fluorescent and open shade. ISO sensitivity is quite limited though, ranging from 80 to 160 in Auto mode, and up to only ISO 200 in Digital IS mode.

The EasyShare C513 also offers a movie mode, capturing VGA (640x480) clips at 15 fps, or QVGA (320x240) clips at 24 fps, both with audio. Movies are encoded in Motion-JPEG format, with lengths up to 80 minutes based on available memory capacity.

Images and movies captured on the Kodak C513 are transferred to your computer over a USB 2.0 Full Speed connection, rather slower than the USB 2.0 High Speed connections offered on many cameras these days. Power for the C513 comes from two standard AA batteries - either alkaline or lithium disposables, or NiMH rechargeables, with two disposable AA batteries included in the bundle.

The Kodak EasyShare C513 will be available from August 2007 and is priced at only US$79.95.