Sample Pictures for the Kodak DX3500 digital camera

	Outdoor Portrait: (511 k) Overall excellent color, accurate saturation. Surprisingly good exposure - Very good job! This outdoor shot is often difficult for many cameras to get right, because the light color of the wall tricks them into underexposing the image. While more advanced cameras provide exposure adjustments to correct this problem, the DX3500 lacks an "exposure compensation" feature. Regardless, the DX3500 did pretty well, with good color and an accurate white value. A (very) little fixing in the software afterward, and you'd have a fine shot.
	Closer Portrait (424 k) OK exposure, but the wide angle lens distorts faces this close. The DX3500's wide angle lens produces some distortion on the model's face in this shot, causing it to appear more round than it actually is. (Longer focal length lenses are a necessity for close-up shots like this one.) As with the Outdoor Portrait above, the bright sunlight and light-colored wall cause the camera to underexpose the image a little. Despite a slightly dark exposure, the shadow areas show good detail and overall color.
	Indoor Portrait, Flash: (379 k) Normal Flash Forced Flash A little dim, but "forced flash" gives a very nice balance with the room lighting. The DX3500's flash illuminates the subject nicely, particularly in the Forced Flash (379 k) mode. Color and exposure both look very good (the orange tint in the background is a result of the household incandescent lighting). The longer shutter speed used in this mode allows more of the ambient light into the image, which brightens the exposure and preserves color. We also shot with the flash in the Auto (416 k) mode, which produced a much darker image. (Actually, we're not sure why the Forced Flash mode would use a slower shutter speed, but it produced a nice image overall.)
	Indoor Portrait, No Flash (473 k) Auto White Balance Surprisingly good color balance for this shot! This shot is always a tough one for digicams because the household incandescent lighting often creates a yellowish color cast in the image. The DX3500 handles this challenge well, producing nearly accurate color and white values. The overall image is slightly pink, but a little color correction in an image editing software application would fix it nicely, and in any event the color isn't at all bad right out of the camera. A better job than many much more expensive cameras.
	House shot (850 k) Auto White Balance Good detail although a little soft, beautiful color. The DX3500 also produces very nice color in this test shot, with an accurate white value in the house trim. The camera picks up a lot of detail in this shot, with a good sharpness level as well. Image noise is moderate in the roof shingles and shadow areas, but doesn't detract from the overall image. We shot sample images at the 1,800 x 1,200 (850 k) and 900 x 600 (308 k) pixel image sizes, noticing a slightly brighter exposure at the smaller resolution size.
	Far-Field Test (793 k) Rather soft at this distance, but beautiful color. This shot is a strong test of detail, given the practically infinite range of fine detail in a natural scene like this, viewed from a distance (not to be confused with the House poster, which is shot in the studio). The DX3500 produces very natural-looking color, and reasonable detail throughout the image (we always examine the tree limbs and house details), but the overall image is rather soft. (We suspect that the fixed-focus lens has a hard time with shots at infinity like this one.) We also look at highlight and shadow detail in this image, and the DX3500 does a good job with both, judging by the shadow area of the porch and the very bright bay window trim.
	Lens Zoom Range Digital zoom is handy for email and the web, but doesn't measure up for prints... We like to show the available zoom range of those cameras with optical and digital zoom. Though the DX3500 doesn't feature a true optical zoom lens, we can show you the field of view at wide angle, as well as at the 2x and 4x digital zoom settings. Because digital zoom only enlarges the center portion of the CCD image, image quality is lost as a result. The DX3500's 2x and 4x digital zoom settings both decrease overall image sharpness and resolution, with the 4x digital zoom producing a very blurry, almost unusable, image.   Wide Angle 1/ 180 F/ 4.5 (270 k) 2x Digital Zoom 1/ 350 F/ 4.5 (228 k) 4x Digital Zoom 1/ 350 F/ 4.5 (270 k)
	Musicians Poster (671 k) Auto White Balance More beautiful color... The large amount of blue in this image (the background has a bluish cast) often tricks cameras into producing either a warm or cool color cast. However, the DX3500 does a great job of maintaining good color throughout the image, without a significant color cast. Skin tones on the models are a little warm, but the blue robe (often a difficult shade of blue to capture) and remaining colors look nearly accurate. The DX3500 also picks up a lot of detail throughout the image. We shot samples of this image at the 1,800 x 1,200 (671 k) and 900 x 600 (235 k) pixel resolution settings.
	Macro Shot (543 k) Standard Macro Shot Macro with Flash No zoom and a fixed-focus lens means lackluster macro shots. The DX3500 doesn't do too well at macro shooting, when compared to more advanced digicams, with a huge minimum area of 8.6 x 5.7 inches (218 x 145 millimeters). Color and detail both look great, though some details appear slightly soft. The DX3500's flash (494 k) does fairly well in macro mode, though coverage is a little uneven. (Many digicam flash units are tricked by the shiny coin and have trouble illuminating the area, so the DX3500's flash performs well.)
	"Davebox" Test Target (475 k) Auto White Balance Very nice color This test target is a good measure of a camera's color performance, and the DX3500 does very well indeed here. The large amount of black in the image often causes cameras to overexpose the target, a trap which the DX3500 has fallen victim to somewhat. The large color blocks of the target look pretty accurate, with excellent saturation overall. A moderately high amount of image noise is visible in the black background, but the image still looks good. Again, we shot at the 1,800 x 1,200 (475 k) and 900 x 600 (163 k) pixel resolutions.
	Low-Light Tests Definitely not a camera for after-dark shots, unless you're in flash range. Due to its rather short maximum shutter time, and its lack of exposure adjustments, the DX3500 does not perform very well at all when shooting at low light levels without a flash. We were able to obtain a fairly bright, slightly usable image at the eight foot-candle (88 lux) light level, which is a fair bit brighter than average city street lighting. Anything darker than that resulted in photos much too dim to be usable. Thus, night exposures with the DX3500 will require the flash. The table below shows the best exposure we were able to obtain for each of a range of illumination levels. Images in this table (like all of our sample photos) are untouched, exactly as they came from the camera. 8fc 88lux 4fc 44lux 2fc 22lux 1fc 11lux 1/2fc 5.5lux 1/4fc 2.7lux 490.3 KB 1/8 secs F4.5 419.3 KB 1/8 secs F4.5 351.7 KB 1/8 secs F4.5 266.2 KB 1/8 secs F4.5 153.5 KB 1/8 secs F4.5 122.6 KB 1/8 secs F4.5
	Flash Range Test Pretty good flash range, easily 12 feet. The DX3500's flash power extends a fairly good distance from the test target, as we got decent exposures as far as 12-13 feet away from the target. The flash was brightest at the eight and nine foot distances, decreasing in intensity with each additional foot of distance. (As the flash power decreases, a bluish cast increases in the images.) 124.9 KB 1/10 secs F4.5 118.5 KB 1/10 secs F4.5 111.7 KB 1/10 secs F4.5 106.7 KB 1/10 secs F4.5 102.9 KB 1/10 secs F4.5 101.2 KB 1/10 secs F4.5 100.3 KB 1/10 secs F4.5
	ISO-12233 (WG-18) Resolution Test (444 k) Resolution is below average for a two megapixel camera. Not horrible, but far from the best. The DX3500's resolution target performance was in line with the rest of the shots we took with the camera: Resolution-wise, it's a little substandard for a two megapixel camera. Not horrible, but far from the best we've seen. We found "strong detail" out to only 700 lines, and "extinction" occurred at about 850 lines. Optical distortion is about average on the DX3500, as we measured a 0.6 percent barrel distortion from the wide angle lens. (This distortion causes the target lines to "bow" outward near the center.) However, chromatic aberration is very low (a slight colored fringe around objects at the edges of the field of view on the resolution target). We didn't even notice a half-pixel of coloration.
	Viewfinder Accuracy/Flash Uniformity A pretty good optical viewfinder, and a very accurate LCD. The DX3500's optical viewfinder is just a little tight, meaning that the viewfinder display shows slightly less than the final image area. We measured approximately 93 percent frame accuracy with the optical viewfinder (365 k), which is an excellent result (many digicam optical viewfinders are significantly less accurate). The LCD monitor (363 k) was very accurate, just the tiniest bit tight, showing approximately 98 percent frame accuracy. The DX3500's flash distribution across the target is fairly even in the center, but with quite a bit of falloff around the edges and corners.   Wide Angle (Optical) 1/ 30 F/ 4.5 (365 k) Telephoto (Optical) 1/ 30 F/ 4.5 (363 k)

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