Taking up photography September 25, 2008
Posted by Jonathan in : Other, Photography, Uncategorized, application , add a comment
Just recently, I’ve taken up an interest in photography, and I obviously needed a good digital camera to take this interest into reality and just today, I’ve purchased a ‘Kodak ZD710′ for around $150 dollars to which the retail price is near to $300-400. So you are probably asking, ‘where did you get this steal from?’, frankly, I purchased it from Ebay from a reputable ‘Power Seller’. The posting and packaging was quite expensive, however I don’t care, I just want to get my hands on this baby and start taking some top quality images.
For the price I paid, the camera specifications are just brilliant, there are so many things which you can get so cheaply on Ebay, and if you were to go onto your high street, you’d have to pay top price. I mean, on the Ebay page which was selling this camera, it said that the camera was brand new and never used and had 1 year guarantee from Kodak; which is absolutely amazing. However the best thing about this camera is the resolution of this camera, 7.0 - 7.9 megapixels and you can alter the quality of the image, thus why there is a ‘-’ in between value to which 7.9 is the highest; it just simply takes up more space. (But who cares when you can fit over 19,000 images on the 4GB of ‘hi-speed’ SD chip which comes with it, for free!) More pixels mean that you can crop or enlarge the image the quality still retains no matter what. It also comes with 5X digital zoom and 50X total zoom, and this is just perfect as I’ll be taking shots at long range of the country side near me and of my holiday to Paris, in November.
As you can also see in the image above, it also comes with an LCD display on the back of the camera which you can display current images, multi-imaging and of course when taking shots, you can look at the display to get a wider aspect of what the picture will actually look like instead of looking through the camera hole. It also comes with all the accessories needed to get images on USB and the like which is what makes this camera so versatile & easy to use!
There are also different modes which come with this camera:
- Program mode (P)—camera sets optimal shutter speed and aperture combination
- Aperture priority mode (A)—you choose aperture, the camera sets shutter speed
- Shutter priority mode (S)—you choose shutter speed, the camera sets aperture
- Manual mode (M)—you choose both the aperture and shutter speed
- Aperture—f/2.8–f/3.7
- Shutter speeds—8–1/1000 sec. in 1/3 step increments
- ISO sensitivity—auto, 64, 100, 200, 400, 800** (selectable)
- Exposure metering type—multi-pattern, center-weighted, center spot
- White balance—auto, daylight, tungsten, fluorescent, and open shade
- Flash mode—auto, off, fill, red-eye reduction
The camera also came with a 4GB ‘Hi-Speed SD chip’, which all you have to do is slot the SD into the SD port on the camera. - This actually came as a free bonus with the camera and on the description, it noted that with this chip, I could hold at extra 19,000+ images or record a 80 minute video on the high quality lense that is attached to the camera. So not only can I become a photographer, I can also do a little video recording once in a while.
Bidding war
On Ebay, I was actually having a bidding war and it was actually quite intense as I had to bid to the last, I think, 20 seconds and my sister was cheering me on as I refreshed the page to see what the bidding was at and I must say, I have to Ebay a bit more. 
Random Pictures
I figure that other people looking into purchasing this camera, would also like to see pictures directly taken from the camera, instead of those touched up pictures that people like to advertise with camera’s such as these. To be honest, it takes high quality pictures and the price I paid for a camera like this, is a steal! So here they are:
*Click to make bigger (Beware users with slow internet connections or bandwidth constrictions)
*I did not re-file size the above images, so they are pretty big as-is, I could re-size them to a much smaller size however that would not take away any quality, it would just take my time! (I’m feeling a lil’ lazy)
Update*: I have re-sized a couple of the images to a more suitable size, as it took me even, a long time to load the images before, however I only re-sized the last three images which have time stamps on them, which I regret. (As you have the ability to set this via your camera and I turned this on) 
Enjoy!
As you can see the images taken are of high standard and they are images in Romford, which I randomly took. Though what do you think? In my opinion, the images, in terms of quality look amazing! I LOVE this camera!