cameras

["Bill Urmenyi" <bill@zzzzzzzzzzzzz>]

Dear Clive

I've just looked up the Kodak camera you are considering and have a few
warnings for you.

Firstly the DX 6490 does not have a standard battery so you would need to
buy a spare and it would be prudent to check on the price. I personally
would prefer a camera that used readily available NiMH cells which can be
charged, independently of the camera, in about 15 minutes.

Secondly it does not appear to have a manual focus and this is a serious
disadvantage for photographing sculpture.

Thirdly the maximum f stop is 8 whereas, if you want the whole sculpture to
be in focus, you would want to set the camera to at least f 22. For
documentation you would want to have as great a depth of field as possible.
To make your work look more dramatic of course the reverse is true and you
would want f 2.8 which the camera will do.

Fourthly and in common with most digital cameras, it only has 16MByte memory
as standard. This will only give you a single image of high quality. You
will need to establish whether the camera can be fitted with a 128MByte
memory card and do a deal on the price of the memory at the time of purchase
of the camera.

Fithly you can only alter the exposure by +/- 2 stops which in most cases
would be fine but on some occasions may not be enough.

Bill Urmenyi