Kodak’s EasyShare DX7590 is a great choice for the X Games: It’s a point-and-shoot camera that also has a powerful zoom lens, so you can get action shots of the half pipe even if you’re stuck in the middle of the audience.
With a 10x optical zoom lens and a wide range of automated shooting modes, the DX7590 is just right for holding over your head for those from-the-crowd long shots. It’s a bulky enthusiast camera, to be sure, so it’s not going to fit in a pocket. But it’s lightweight for its class, and with its lens cap securely fitted, you can drop the camera into a backpack with no problem. A rounded grip on the right side makes for comfortable and relatively stable one-handed shooting, and the controls are easily accessible.
A dial on the back lets you select shooting modes. The “SCN” setting leads to an on-screen menu of 14 scene modes, including action, snow, and even a “children” mode, useful for shooting hyperactive teenagers at the skate park. If you trust the camera’s automated circuitry, just switch the dial to the auto mode and let it do its thing. In most cases, the shots will turn out great.
Image quality with the DX7590 is excellent — particularly for outdoor shots and for indoor shots that are lit by the camera’s pop-up flash — with good detail and lots of rich, well-saturated blues and greens. The lack of image stabilization — surprising for a camera with such a powerful zoom lens — is its only serious drawback.
The DX7590 is plenty fast, with a 0.2-second shutter lag and a 2.9-second recovery time between shots. That speed, combined with its powerful and compact zoom lens, will help you get great shots, no matter how fast or far away your subjects are. –Dylan Tweney
Best Feature: Powerful yet compact 10x zoom lens
Worst Feature: Perplexing lack of image stabilization
SPECS
Kodak EasyShare DX7590
$449
Weight: 13.6 ounces
Size: 3.9 x 3.2 x 3.2 inches
Specs: 5 megapixels; 10x optical zoom; 640 x 480-pixel, 12-fps QuickTime video recording; 2.2-inch LCD; SD card slot; 32MB of internal memory
www.kodak.com
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Link: Kodak EasyShare DX7590
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