Kodak EasyShare C653 Silver Digital Camera (6.1MP, 2848x2144, 3x Opt, 32MB Internal Memory, SD/MMC Card Slot)

Kodak EasyShare C653

EasyShare C653 Silver Digital Camera (6.1MP, 2848x2144, 3x Opt, 32MB Internal Memory, SD/MMC Card Slot) Review, by Tracey Capen June 14, 2007

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• Latest User Reviews 1 review
• Reviewed by: Personalcheeseit

  Duration of ownership: 2 Years

  Strengths: Tough, solid feel, quick to turn on, 6.1 megapixels battery life

  Weaknesses: none

  Overall: Bought the camera as a replacement for an older Kodak. I took 1510 pictures and videos before the tripod I was using with it fell over while filming. The trim around the lens came off and the lens itself popped off of it's track, making it read an error message. About a month later as I was moving it from the drawer I kept it in, I dropped it, The lens had straightened. I popped in some batteries and started taking pictures again. It is a very tough camera. The LCD did break some time in storage, but there's still the viewfinder. The battery life on my particular camera doesn't match PCW's, I get around 225 6.1 MP, flash pictures on a pair of plain Duracells. It will also fill 2 1 gig memory cars of 640x480 video with audio with just one pair of batteries. Over time the selector knob does get tough to turn, but is still acceptable. The software is only necessary for pictures on the internal memory, If you are quick, turn the camera off, take out the SD card and close the door. You do need an SD card reader to do that, but those are relatively cheap. I would recommend the camera to any one except professional photographers with huge budgets, there are better cameras, but not as tough or cheap as this.

• Reviewed by: boli2007

  Strengths: easy to operate and photo and video are great

  Weaknesses: 6.1 MP is bit low

  Overall: This camera is very easy to operate - you don't need user manual to learn how to use. All buttons are self-descriptive. The quality of photo and video is great and it takes only 2 AA alkaline battery. LCD is big but somehow I feel it isn't super clear. 6.1MP is bit now nowday. Other than that, everything is great.

• Reviewed by: azureworld

  Strengths: Good price, size and features as a beginner camera

  Weaknesses: Non Yet

  Overall: Bought this camera for our son. He is 15 and this is a great beginner camera. Has audio, video and excellent pictures. Easy to download pictures and videos to reply. This camera also has a viewfinder.

• Reviewed by: Anonymous567

  Strengths: Small size, good photos

  Weaknesses: Slow. Irritating software.

  Overall: I like this little camera. And it is little. Its thickness is comparable to a thick wallet, but it is a bit shorter and narrower than a wallet would be. Its manual says it came with 256MB of internal RAM, which I didn?t see on the specifications pages I reviewed. I thought it had only 32MB. So I may not have needed to spend the extra $20 for an optional 1GB SD Memory card. The LCD is large but exposed; there is no way to protect it except to buy a case (and make sure there is no sand or anything inside it. If space is not an issue, the ideal might be a soft case or sleeve inside a harder protective case. Pictures seem to be averaging around 850KB on the 3.1 megapixel setting, and 1.5MB on the 6.1mp setting. It takes more than 12 seconds, from the time I push the button to take a picture, until the digital viewfinder comes back to life and is ready to show me another scene. (It?s much faster if you use the flash.) But you can take other pictures in the meantime, while the LCD is frozen or black; and if you need to see roughly what you're shooting during that time, they do include a tiny optical viewfinder. To test that, I pressed the button about 30 times in a 10-second period. From those 30 presses, I got seven 6.1mp photos. The video is really choppy. They should have allowed for more frames per second. Like any video ? actually, more so in this case ? if you wheel it around and point at lots of different things, it will make you seasick on playback. It saves video in .MOV format. The accompanying software is irritating. It lacks options, and it does things I don?t want it to do. Example: so far, I haven?t figured out how to tell it to erase photos from the camera, other than to reformat the memory card. The manual describes a View switch that doesn?t seem to exist on my model. (This may be the explanation for the memory misunderstanding too; Kodak?s webpage does say the C653 has only 32MB RAM, so maybe the more expensive cameras get the greater amount of internal memory.) They seem to have defeated the option of viewing the contents of the device?s memory using Windows Explorer, when the camera is cabled to the computer using the convenient (apparently proprietary) supplied sub-mini-USB cable ? so I can?t just go into Windows Explorer and empty out the camera?s contents that way. Their irritating EasyShare software pops up every time I connect the camera to the computer; there doesn?t seem to be a way to stop that; and I can?t even use that software to delete photos. I strongly recommend they build in an Advanced mode so that people can actually use their software. Battery drain means more expense. Regular alkaline batteries will power the camera, but it looks like you can expect to waste a lot of them. A pair of freshly charged, previously used NiMH Ray-O-Vac AAs (1600 mAh) gave me only seven flash photos before dying. Ultimately, I broke down and spent another $10 on a pair of 2500 mAh batteries on sale; but that meant I would be dependent on that pair. So far, I have recharged them weekly and that has been good enough.I used the camera to shoot some video. It acted like it was continuing to record for more than 15 minutes before the camera shut off due to dead batteries. It ultimately turned out that the camera would use up the batteries in just a few minutes; the video indicator was incorrectly conveying the impression that recording was continuing when it wasn't.Unfortunately, the camera didn?t save my video file in usable format. I couldn?t view it in QuickTime, Windows Media Player, or IrfanView. The best I got was that WMP played the audio. So don?t let your batteries die, I guess. Kodak?s own EasyShare software played it, but it would not save it in any format other than .MOV. So I saved it to another MOV file; but to do that, EasyShare played the whole thing again. In other words, it took 15 minutes to make a copy of the downloaded MOV. When it was done, I did find that the copy was playable in QuickTime and IrfanView. I was still getting nothing but the audio portion in WMP. Anyway, it seems that I won?t be using up the full capacity of 30:11 of video that the LCD reports ? not unless I buy more expensive batteries and/or an optional power adapter and shoot while that?s plugged into the wall. Once the batteries are dead, you have to replace them before you can download your shots; the device does not seem to draw power from the USB connection. The camera is slow downloading video. I didn?t time it, but I think those 15 minutes of video took something like 10 minutes to download. Definitely not USB 2.0! The file size for that video was 486MB, so it consumes memory at a rate of about 31.5MB per minute when shooting video.I like the camera. I didn't expect it to be a video camera. It has some rough edges, but it does what I wanted. The software is the real weak point.

• Reviewed by: jawah

  Strengths: Low cost, more features

  Weaknesses: looks like a cheap unbranded web camera

  Overall: This is my very first digital camera. Earlier, I thought to purchase a fresh piece of one or two year old model (branded) at low price. Surprisingly I got afresh-new model with more functionality than any other camera of same category at low cost. For the past one month I was trying to explore all the features provided in this camera. I am highly satisfied.

• Reviewed by: Bhagwan

  Strengths: Very compact with both eyepiece and LCD.

  Weaknesses: None so far.

  Overall: C653 is very compact with 32MB internal memory and take both SD/MMC. It is 6.1MP the pictures are very good. Has 20 screen mode I love it. Has anti shake technology helps to prevent from taking blurry in micro mode.