Digital-Camera Reviews

As the previous reviewer pointed out, this is NOT the KLIC-5001 1700 mAh battery as described in the Product Details, it is the lower capacity (1050 mAh) KLIC-5000.

At least it is the Kodak battery, if that matters to you. (I have a new Kodak camera and want to protect the warranty.) If not, plenty of places sell the generic KLIC-5001 for less than Amazon sells the Kodak KLIC-5000.

the battery is half the side of the battery came with the camera an last half the time, an number or not the same ,an it,s not the same battery. do not buy any thing from them because lying about what they are selling.

Purchased 5 of these batteries after I saw the low price. Excellent value. You can't go wrong with Kodak batteries. They perform much better than the Generic so-called "high capacity" batteries. I can now take thousands of shots at a time, without worrying about charging them.

Bought a HP R707 for my daughter along with a Kodak digital camera for my other daughter Christmas 2004. Both took great pictures but the Kodak buttons were difficult to use. HP R707 was very easy to use in comparision. The R707 was stolen, oops,(aboard the USS Kennedy CV-67)and we replaced it with a R717. Still a great camera. I used it until my daughter took it back to her ship. I liked it so much I bought another one for myself. Using a tripod this took excellent night photos. As noted by the other reviewer, flash takes a couple seconds to charge, and processing photos takes a few seconds however the Burst feature worked fast. The viewfinder feature was essential to me buying this camera instead of the R817 that did not have that feature.

to buy the hp r717 is one of the best decision,s i,ve ever made for takeing familly photo,s.first of all the software is a snap to follow. second the lcd is a good size and third of all and most important to me is how easy it is to download my pic,s to my computer. this is a really nice camara. way to go hp.

Pros: everything

Cons: Nothing

Comments: I don't see what these random 4 stars are talking about, i.e. bad indoor pics and slow charging. This camera is great, small, fast, high quality, and easy to use. I bought mine for 150$ and it even came with a partially charged li-ion battery. It's nice not having to take the batteries out all the time also, just plug the AC adapter in it and let it sit for a while. I'm VERY glad I got this camera.

Does not work for the Mac! Can you believe that, neither could I until I contacted Epson and received the reply that it is indeed not compatible. Is it really that hard for dual platform use production. Im guessing this was designed in the early 90's and usb technology was just coming out. Mac users beware.

...BUT, that is about it!! If you want to print ENVELOPES, FERGEDDIT!! this thing DOES NOT have a paper thickness adjustment lever and simply will NOT FEED an envelope without jamming!!

I only got it cause my CX5200 started having MAGenta (RED) printhead clogging problems for the SECOND time AFTER having been serviced by EPSON. I loved the CX5200 cause it never flinched even when I forgot to flip the "heavy stock" lever before putting an envelope in to print.

From what I have been reading on here, the entire 'CX' line has problems and does not meet the usual "EXCELLENCE" that I have come to expect from EPSON printers.

you pretty much get what you pay for with this cx3810. software is great because you can choose to only install the printer's drivers, and not all the bloated propietary software that comes on the disc. easy to set up, easy to use. but it does print SLOW. so if speed if a necessity, dont buy this printer. and the copy function is only 1 copy a time, meaning u have to press the button each time you want to make 1 copy. so its fine if you want 1 copy, but would probably get annoying if you wanted 10 copies of something. print quality is good, scanning is fine. and the size is nearly ginormous. i had an hp 1210 that was like 5 years old and it was smaller than this behemoth.

After looking into a camcorder with DVD capability and the flexibility of good still photos, I decided to go with the Canon DC40. It has everything I wanted and is easy to use, at least up until this point (I haven't transferred photos or movies to my computer). The only drawbacks that I have noticed is that battery must be charged by plugging in the camera so you're unable to use the camera while charging your second battery and the battery life if you take stills does not last very long. You can purchase a separate charger (approx $20). Photo quality is great and DVD quality is great. Indoor settings you have to remember to check lighting or use the flash. I don't have much of basis to compare it to, but I do love the camera. It beats carrying a camcorder and still camera and the picture quality is no comparison from older generation cameras. Definitely something to have with small children.

Excellent.
Easy to use. Easy to use instruction manual too. I tried out a SONY camcorder, and found the CANON much easier.

Switching between camcorder, and still photos is as easy as flipping a switch.

Photos are excellent! I have printed out 5X7s and 8X10s. I take a lot of photos, and they come out great. The flash is small and only reaches so far. Photos may be blurry or dark if the flash can not recharge in time, or you are too far away. Turning on a light helps this.

No firewire. However, you dont' really need one. It's dvd. After you finalize your dvd, you just slip it into your computer dvd drive, or put it into your dvd player. . .and there you go. You are ready to play your home movies.

Applause for the remote control! This remote works fast. I used to have a high-end digital camera, and the remote was always slow to respond. This remote takes photos great. Get a tripod, and let everyone be in the photo! It's away. It works with both video, and still photos.

Drawbacks: Price. (Ouch) It is the top of line, right now, however. I think it blows the SONY away.
You do have to pay for the upgrade on MYDVD, if you plan on editing a lot. However, you can use any DVD editing program that you like
Otherwise, I can see no drawbacks.. I love my CANON D40

Most of the DVD Camcorders can not film well in low light. This product does an excellent job in low light conditions. Not everything happens in good lighting.

eforcity sent me a cheaper substitute item, so now I'm emailing trying to get what I ordered. This is the first item ordered from eforcity and last now.

The SterlingTEK AC-LS5 is a great product for a good price. There is no difference in this product in comparison to Sony except for price.

Much like a previous reviewer, I am trying to put a lifetime of photos onto a DVD for an 80th birthday party (my grandmother). I have a Canon MP730 All In One, and thought that I could do the project with that. After about 30 photos taking me 3-4 hours, I gave up. I started looking for a professional place to do these, and they wanted between $1.50 and $4.00 a photo. I looked around and found the Epson 3490 scanner and Epson Photo Feeder. I bought both and have scanned in almost 700 pictures in the last 5 days with it- all while doing other things! I haven't even really needed to try all that hard.

With the feeder, I can stack about 25 like-sized photos in, and let it rip while I go do whatever. The photos that won't go through the feeder get put on the glass, 4 at a time, and it does the rest. I don't need to rotate pictures, crop, nothing. I just recognizes where the pictures are, lines it up, scans it, and you're done. It's an amazing little scanner. With the photo feeder, it's a LIFESAVER!

Anyway, when I bought this I was thinking a scanner for less than $150 was bottom-end. It may be, I don't know- since I'm not a professional photographer or anything, but I'm impressed. The resolution on this is so clear that the scanner even picked up textures in the paper that the photo was printed on, like dots in the background, that you can't see with your eyes. Not a problem though- it made all of the photos look great! Unless the photo was damaged beyond repair, it made quick and perfect work of everything. If this is bottom line though, I hate to see what mid-range or top-line is. I think this is a STEAL for the money.

If you need to scan in a ton of photos, or want decent quality and speed, buy this now!

This may be one of the best scanner bargains you will find. My 5 year old Canon scanner was getting a little flaky on me, so, based on other reviews I have read, I ordered up this Epson.

My mother-in-law was about to clebrate her 80th birthday and wanted "one of those fancy photo DVD's" of her life to show on a TV during her celebration party (what a cool lady). So, I needed a good scanner capable of scanning in 80 year old black and white prints as well as modern color prints. This scanner was more than up to the task! I was dazzled not only by the quality of the scanner, but the scanning software manager is something else! You can put in four prints, one in each corner of the scan bed and the software recognizes four different pictures, numbers them and drops them into your designated folder as four seperate pictures. Now that's way things should work! It will do the same for two or three photos. You can put several pictures in together, let them touch, and it will recognize it as a collage and scan it in as a single picture. This is a very awesome piece of equipment.

The film stip feature works very well although a bit slow, I think - but it's still great to have a scanner in this price range to be able to scan in film!! I haven't tried the slide feature as of yet, but I have no doubt it will work well. I still can't believe the software works so well as I am used to the really buggy useless stuff that came with my past scanners.

I am really glad I purchased this scanner and plan to use it a lot to archive old photos, slides and film. Oh, yeah - using Microsoft Photo Story 3, the DVD turned out great!

The film scanner on this thing is fantastic. You just feed in your strip of negs and within seconds it gives thumbnails of the entire strip. I do both black and white and color and it gives perfect renditions each time. My experience has been poor with film scanners until now.
The software is very user friendly plus it comes bundled with Epson's photo imaging software instead of that crappy adobe photoshop most vendors throw in.
Dan Wilson

I recently purchased the ScanMaker i800 to scan about 1,000 family slides from the 60s and 70s. I thought I could tackle the task at hand easily by scanning 12 slides at a time. Well, just about every slide I scanned comes out extremely soft and way out of focus.

I'm not sure if it's a driver thing or what but the scans came out a little better on a PC than they do on my Mac G4 running OS X 10.4. Each slide required extensive sharpening--to the point where they all look over sharpened. Prescans looked acceptable, but final scans looked horrible. I also tried to scan a few prints, but they look pretty rough as well.

I've spent countless hours adjusting the settings in hopes to find a combination that worked well for me, but I just couldn't seem to get it right. This is my first scanner and I'm very disappointed. The product looks well built and all the software seems to function well, just not on my Mac :-(

I recieve a newsletter from "Imaging Resources" a digital photography site at this address:
http://www.imaging-resource.com/
I don't own the scanner but I am shopping for one. My rating is based on thier review. Just wanted to share what I came across:
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Feature: Microtek ScanMaker i800 -- A Scanner for Everyone
Microtek (http://www.microtek.com) announced its ScanMaker i800 at Photoshop World in Sept. 2005 and is just shipping a Pro version with upgraded software to read the included IT8 targets. We received an early review unit which sat by our side for a couple of months handling our routine scanning tasks.
It handled everything we threw at it -- line art, 35mm negatives, slides, prints -- rather effortlessly, regardless of which scanning application we favored at the moment. Not only is the i800 versatile, but it's also affordable at just $399.99 list.

What's affordable about $400 list? How about a Dmax of 4.0, 48-bit color and 9600x4800 dpi optical resolution on a legal-sized scanning bed with your choice of High-Speed USB 2.0 or FireWire ports?

Inexpensive flatbeds strain to get their Dmax (the maximum recordable density with 4.0 being very black) into the high threes, fine for the 2.0 dynamic range (Dmax minus the rarely stated Dmin) you need to scan reflective material. But slides can be up around 3.2 to no more than 4.0 (and negs a little less). Given a Dmin of around 0.3, let's say, anything less than a Dmax of 4.0 is going to have trouble capturing shadow detail in slides. For more about Dmax, see our April 15, 2005 issue (http://www.imaging-resource.com/IRNEWS/index-arch.html).

An inexpensive flatbed may have an optical resolution as low as 1200-dpi (although the trend is upward). If you scan a 35mm film frame at that resolution, your maximum enlargement for a 300-dpi dye sub printer is 4x6. To get an 8x10, you have to be able to scan 2400 dpi. So the low number of the scanner's optical resolution should be a least 2400 for film. Which happens to be the current limit for 8.5-inch wide flatbeds. Manufacturers achieve resolutions greater than that by stacking CCDs at a half-pixel offset.

So the i800 brings the price of some heavy duty scanning features within range of those of us who don't scan images for a living. You can, we found, get very good results from it. See the full review at http://www.imaging-resource.com/SCAN/MI8/MI8.HTM.


DESIGN
The solidly-built i800 is a conventional flatbed design. All scannable material sits on (and faces) a glass plate under which the CCD array tracks along the length of the scanner to make the image. Reflective material like a print is illuminated by a lamp in the scanner body. Transmissive material like a film negative or slide is illuminated by a lamp in the lid. The lid, by the way, stays up all by itself when you lift it up -- a feature that impressed everyone who saw it.

Power is supplied by an AC adapter brick. And both High-Speed USB and FireWire 400 ports are provided at the back of the unit, where a rather large cable connects the lid to the scanner body.

The front panel sports a number of buttons (a light touch does it) enabled by the Microtek Scanner Configuration utility software installed with ScanMaker 5.


INSTALLATION
A nice, clear, easy-to-follow poster accompanies the i800. Finding a spot for the long narrow scanner may be your biggest problem. The power brick and AC cord need a three-prong plug. Both USB and FireWire cables are provided to connect to your computer. High-speed USB, which is what we used, connected to a Belkin High-speed USB hub.

Three CDs are included, an Elements install and two ScanMaker installs (Standard and Pro) with a feature comparison checklist so you can decide which you want to use. We rather think the Pro version should have all the features of the Standard version, but that's not how it works. Only the Standard version pays any attention to the scanner's buttons.

Microtek's Jerry Jusek told us "the Pro version is a major upgrade of our existing ScanWizard and is available via free download as an upgrade for existing Microtek ScanWizard Pro users." Units shipped after our review unit also include LaserSofts's Silverfast SE scanning application.

The installation CDs also contain Ulead Photo Explorer and ABBYY FineReader OCR software for Mac OS 9 or Windows only. But the support site has a 35-MB download of FineReader that installs as a plug-in for ScanMaker 5 on OS X.

As with any flatbed, you have to unlock the imaging unit before you can use it. In this case, the lock is a red slide in the back corner.

And because the i800 has a transparent media adapter (the scanner lid) with a moving rather than fixed light source (to provide even, consistent illumination), you have to unlock that as well with the small slide switch near the hinge.

Part of any scanner install here is calibrating and profiling the device. But, unlike the i900 or the i800 Pro, the i800 does not include either IT8 targets for calibration or calibration options in software. Instead, the unit uses a default profile. That's better than nothing and if, like us, you want to roll your own, you can just order the i800 Pro.


SMART-TOUCH BUTTONS
We're not great fans of scanner buttons. While they are intended to make access to the scanner's features simple, they rely on specific software (a printer driver, an email application, etc.) that's once removed from the hardware itself.

In addition to the Power button, there are seven Smart-Touch buttons:


Digital ICE: Interestingly enough, the button-activated version addresses physical defects (like scratches, rips and tears) of prints. To handle defects in film and transparencies, you enable ICE in software.

Scan: Captures an image to a file or an application for further processing.

Copy: Behaves much like a photocopier, scanning whatever is on the scanner bed and sending it immediately to your printer through your computer. Unlike an all-in-once device, however, this depends on installing a printer driver.

Email: Opens the scanned image in your email editor.

OCR: Converts a scanned image of text into ASCII text, saving retyping.

PDF: Saves the scanned image as an Adobe Portable Document that can be viewed with Adobe Reader software.

Custom: You can assign one of four common functions to this button: Power Saving (which turns the lamp off to prolong its life), Scan (a second Scan button with alternate settings), Fax (to launch a Fax driver on your computer) and Launch Application (to select an application to open the scanned image).

EZ-LOCK FILM HOLDERS
The film holders that ship with the i800 precisely align 35mm filmstrips, 4x5 film and 120 film on the flatbed where software can find each frame during batch scanning. Since you can load four strips of 35mm film, each with six frames, that's more than a small convenience. Film is loaded emulsion up.

The film holders for 120 and 4x5 film feature spring-actuated tension grips which hold the film perfectly flat during scanning for edge-to-edge sharpness. Curled film is a common scan problem for film this size, so it's big news to see it so deftly handled (and at this price, too).

You can also scan film up to 8x12 on the flatbed using a small Film Alignment Ruler that includes a clear calibration strip to help crop the image.

Using the film holders is simple enough, but spend a minute with the manual to see how to align the images (facing the glass) and lock them into the various holders.

To scan, you first have to remove the black mat that usually provides a background to reflective scanning. Simply slide the mat to the side away from the lid lock and lift it out. It's a little confusing until you realize there are plastic "springs" that hold it in place. The film holders then slip into the frame vacated by the mat.

Each of the film holders has a calibration strip at the front end of the holder (where the scanning starts, that is). Even without a holder, the Film Alignment Ruler includes a calibration strip.

We asked Jerry what the strip does. "The basic process of the calibration is to adjust for lack of uniformity in the light source and CCD elements. Of course, the lamp intensity is not uniform from edge to edge and all CCD elements are not identical, particularly in regards to noise."

We also asked about the 35mm strip holder. We had a little trouble with ours, which is a different design from the one used in the i900. The i800 holder carries twice as many strips but they are held in place by a long flexible flap on the top side of the strip. You should just be able to slip a film strip into the slot formed by the plastic holder and the flexible flap, but we found it took some effort. And when we tried to remove our film strip, it was stuck.

After removing the film, we were able to loosen the grip by running a thick sheet of paper into the slot and leaving it for an hour or two, but we recommend testing your holder for this before using it with your precious film.


OPERATION
We used SilverFast to do our dirty work since VueScan could not find the scanner on the USB bus.

Our first task was to scan a 30 year old negative in ScanMaker Pro (which knew about the film holder). We had no problem with that at all. The software did have the Kodak emulsion in its database to our delight and the resulting print looked like we'd taken the image yesterday when compared to the original, slightly faded print, which we'd kept out of the light all these years.

Our second task was to scan a road map for our lucky Cousin on his way to Italy. Our ancestral home is not on many maps, but we happened to have one that showed the road to the place, anyway. This is simply colored line art. Again, the scanner delivered excellent reproduction, this time in SilverFast.

Our third task was a nasty little problem we've never been able to solve: a print made on linen textured paper. This was pretty popular 20 years ago before the glossy print became the standard. Our test print is pretty bad: bad exposure from the small automatic camera, poor printing and that linen paper. It's also pretty old. But it's an image with a lot of sentimental value to us. So we're always looking for some way to retrieve it from the indignities it has suffered. SilverFast again did very well with it, minimizing the linen texture (if not eliminating it).

Task Four was, like the map, a scan of colored line art, this time Flat Stanley (http://www.flatstanley.com). The black mat made it impossible to see Stanley's cartoon outline, so we laid a piece of white paper over him before scanning. He'd been colored in markers, which translated into a bit more intense colors.

Our final task was scanning a few slides. This is where you can see the Dmax in action. All three of our samples have lots of detail in the shadows and the i800 managed to hang on to most of it. Again, we saw the oversaturation (particularly in the park shot) but that's easily corrected. Any of these scans would make an exceptional print.


CONCLUSION
The i800 has the resolution, bit-depth and Dmax to handle 35mm negatives and slides, prints and a variety of other scanning jobs without breaking a sweat. We applaud the inclusion of both High-Speed USB and FireWire ports. And we're happy to see a variety of EZ-Lock film holders, too (although we hope the 35mm filmstrip holder is not as troublesome as ours).

We're less impressed with front panel buttons than we might be, we suppose. But what really worries us is the inability to calibrate and profile this device. Fortunately, Microtek answers that quibble with the Pro version. But in that case, we'd quibble a bit more about the transparency adapter, a standard configuration certainly, but it does require you to scan film through glass. Again, Microtek has an answer (but it's about $100 for every answer, if you're counting): the i900.

So where does that put the i800? As one of the best scanners we've seen for someone who does not want to be bothered with calibration and profiling, who just wants the durned thing to work. And who happens to have a lot of things to scan, too -- film, slides, prints. And wouldn't at all mind if they could just press a button to do it! In that sense, the limitation we've noted are actually features. Fortunately, the box itself has the horsepower to deliver

Don't buy it. In the 6 months I had the phone, the screen burnt out so I can see the numbers, the answering machine is horrible, and I get better reception from my baby monitor. I had a cheap Panasonic beforehand which was much better. This was a complete waste of $$. Hooking it up to your PC to get those "cool" features is just a pain. I'm having a tough time returning this. Be careful.

Certainly not into the Uniden CLX485, thats for sure. I have owned plenty of cordless phones in my day and to be honest, I wish I could go back in time to buy up all the older phones.

I am just one person and I dont know about everybody else, but what would be the very FIRST requirement for a "good" phone to have? Sound quality. Second? Battery life. Anything after that is icing.

The sound completely sucks on this phone. There is a constant hum and the voices sound slightly distorted and low. Whle changing the volume does increase the decibel level, it also increases all the annoying sound coming from this phone.

If youre looking for the same quality phone that your old 900/2.8 had, good luck. If you find yourself reading reviews about how good this phone sounds, think skeptically about who's writing it.

I did not invest any money in this phone. It was a gift and I am embarassed that I will have to return the gift..

I researched this system vs others before purchasing and after 7 months of usage I am very happy with it. When I tried to purchase an additional handset for my 4 year old Panasonic system, Panasonic had outdated the system and no longer made compatible handsets, forcing one to replace the system. In my pre-buy research I discovered that with Uniden, the additional handsets will match up with several Uniden systems, including older models no longer made, so one can continue to upkeep the system down the road. That impressed me as good customer service.
The 5.8 ghz does not interfere with our high speed wireless internet. The "you have a message" notification is very good, the transfer of information to other stations and the intercom features are all good. The system looks good, the battery life is good, and as to range, I can use the phone out in my yard without static or problems.
The system does have capability to be enhanced by hooking up to a PC, but we only have Macs so I cannot comment on how well that feature works, other than to say it should be Mac capable. Coming standard with the set, you can add up to 10 handsets and give each a name so as to make intercom or information transfer easy.
Phone for the price with ability to upgrade and to replace or add on in the future, a really good buy.

I am very happy of having gotten this flash.. it works pretty well, and I like its performance.

I just bought a digital rebel about a month ago. Love the camera, my old 380EX speedlight integrates with the camera but just doesn't offer enough cycle speed to keep up with continuous mode on the Rebel. This flash does the job for the Rebel and the plug for the external battery pack promises even better performance once I grab that item. Another big selling point that really makes this unit worth the cash, is that it has its own infrared focus assist lamp which the digital Rebel lacks. When this flash is mounted on your digital rebel, you don't get that annoying set of quick flashes that the camera has to set off to focus in low light when using the built-in flash. The Rebel body uses the infrared focus assist on the 550EX to focus the lens; this feature alone is worth the big bucks this baby costs. The flash has tons of features that most of us might never use, but as a advanced amateur I'm glad they're there so I can play with that if I should choose to try out some fancy stuff. The wireless slave capability is handy but you've got to have at least one more 420EX, 550EX or 580EX to use that. I like the digital readout on the back of the flash and also the two way bounce head, it's important to note that you have to press a button to make the head turn either side to side or up/down---this should make the head sturdier than I've seen on some units that get loose after awhile and drive you nuts. This unit is a HONKER--really big, and, no lightweight either. Get yourself a big deep camera bag if you want to lug this thing around with you. What's the difference between this and the 580EX? The 580 has very slightly faster cycle times and offers some fancy new automatic flash exposure bracketing modes, for me anyway it wasn't worth almost two hundred dollars more for the 580. All of the newer EOS camera bodies are fully supported by this unit, it also works on older EOS bodies but there are functions available on the newer ones that aren't there on older stuff. I like this flash it covers well, cycles fast and the controls are fairly intuitive and easy to use. When you get yours don't lose that book, Canon doesn't seem to have them online anywhere I can find and I've seen places that want to charge you 18 bucks for a new one.

The best feature of this flash is the wireless E-TTL feature. With two 550ex's one will work as a master and one as a slave and with the ST-E2 both flashes can be off camera and fired E-TTL. The draw backs are: price, no manual control in slave mode for greater light control, and size (this thing is big). The plus side weighs out the negatives. It is a great flash.