Customer Reviews

Kodak Easyshare LS443 4 MP Digital Camera w/3x Optical Zoom (Includes Dock)

5 star:		(36)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(43)

 

 

I use to take pictures with two other Kodak digital cameras, an early 2.2 MP model (very heavy), and the 4.0 MP DX4900. One of the most impressive features of both of these cameras is the great picture quality. I developed my prints from the Kodak ofoto website with superb quality. They are all very easy to set up and use. However,comparing with other similar cameras, I was a bit dispointed about a couple of things for DX4900: 1, it only has a 2x optical zoom instead of 3x., 2, the LCD is too small and can not see clearly at all in sunlight and 3, it did not have the feature to make short video. I was very excited when I saw the new Kodak LS443 and found that this model has all the features I wanted. Plus, it has a very sleek design and is light-weighted. So I purchased it, used it and developed prints from Ofoto. Overall, it is a great point and shoot pocket camera.
One thing I noticed with this camera is that it needs a few seconds to record image onto the memory card after each shot so it is difficult to take quick shots in succession. Also, I wished this camera uses the same compact flash memory card like other Kodak digital cameras. This one uses the smaller SD card to save space, I suppose.

This was a surprise gift from the wife and kids, so I've only had one day to play with it. But relative to the reviewer who had trouble with the EasyShare software and Win XP, I will offer a different (very positive) experience. Kodak indicates that you must install the software before connecting the docking base to your computer or EasyShare will not install properly. They even put a paper cover on the end of the USB connector with this warning on it. (Bravo!)

I was able to take my first pictures after spending about 2 minutes with the Quick Start manual (and charging the battery a bit.) It only took another 5 minutes to get the software installed. A+ for clear, simple instructions and ease of use for the novice. And the same thing for transferring pictures to my computer. Plug the base into a USB port, put the camera in the base, push the button on the base, and the software launches. Then you click on the transfer button, and in a few seconds your pictures are on your computer.

I can't compare optical quality or other attributes with other digital cameras, but I will say that my pictures came out great, even some I took outdoors in fairly low light early this morning. Haven't tried the video capability yet.

The one thing I would recommend is getting a memory upgrade. It comes with 16MB internal, which is enough for 11 pictures at the highest resolution--more at lower resolutions. But then you don't buy a 4 megapixel camera to take pictures at lower resolutions... (16MB is also about 1 minute of video according to the manual.) The 128MB memory card should provide enough memory for over 100 hi-res pictures or 10 minutes of video (again, according to the manual.)

I bought the Kodak EasyShare LS443 to take on my honeymoon. For those of you considering buying, I am an educational technology specialist, so while I am tech-savvy, I wasnt concerned about getting SUPER professional results. Im an amateur photographer and I was looking for a camera with enough oomph to create quality 8x10 prints. This camera claims to be able to generate photos well beyond that size (as any 4MP camera would), so I thought Id be fine.

Wrong. The camera compresses the images to the point where you see SIGNIFICANT artifacts (blurry areas around objects where the camera has averaged some of the data to conserve storage space). The unfortunate fact is that you need to make the image measurements smaller on your computer to mask the effects of the file compression. RESULT: Youre not really getting the full power of the 4MP that youre paying for. We could only hope for decent 4x6 prints from this camera, and even then the compression artifacts are visible.

While the camera does have an image quality feature, it really only changes the physical size (i.e. measurements) of the image; that is, you can force this camera to take photos at a lower resolution (e.g. 2 megapixels), but you cant do anything to make the camera use a higher-quality FILE to STORE the image in. The point here is that it wouldnt matter if this were a 6MP camera, the file storage reduces the quality of the photo to make the FILE SIZE smaller. Theres no option to increase to a higher-quality JPEG, let alone something genuinely useful like a TIFF. By the way, theres no need to lower the image quality setting on this camera: The pictures it takes at 4MP are already small enough that you wont run out of space on your memory card.

The camera itself is pretty easy to use. Point and shoot. On-screen directions are great to let you know what mode youre in and what you should use that mode for. On-screen menus are a little awkward at first, but are otherwise obvious. For anyone used to a standard 35MM camera with any features to speak of, you wont need to read the instruction manual for the LS443.

A note about zooming: The 3x optical zoom on this camera is good for normal family point-and-shoot. Digital zooming is a bad idea on ANY camera, especially if you want to print those photos. The LS443, for example, claims to have over 10x total zoom, which is true in one sense: The combined optical (like a normal film camera would use) and digital do make 10x. However, what the cameras really doing is taking the picture as it appears at 3x zoom (the maximum optical zoom) and guessing to create a zoomed image. The result is a very blurry picture, even at minimal digital zoom. Suggestion: Turn off the digital zoom on any camera you buy, or at least use it sparingly. The 3x optical zoom on the Kodak wasnt enough for us, and were nowhere near professionals.

The auto-focus isnt altogether that great in slightly-less-than-optimal conditions. The shutter speed issue is only a problem if youre interested in taking REALLY high-speed photoslike at a sporting eventin which case Id suggest a plain vanilla 35MM camera (the digital cameras that can do this are prohibitively expensive for most of us normal folk). Even the sport mode on the LS443 yields some blurry pictures.

One of the reasons I bought this camera was the dock and rechargeable battery. Battery life was great for us. I put it on the charger at night, and it went all day without any problems, even with LCD use. I liked the convenience of the dock because I didnt have to deal with any cablesI just left them plugged into the computer. This is a feature that I didnt find with any other camera that I was looking for (it is an ADD-ON for other Kodak cameras). Im going to miss the ease of recharging this camera.

The software to transfer the images to the computer (on PC) stinksdont load it. Its unnecessary and, by default, FURTHER reduces the quality of your images when it transfers them to the computer. No thanks. My suggestion: Load the drivers for the camera and use Windows built-in functionality. The My Pictures function of Windows (including a cool slide show and preview function) beats Kodaks software any day of the week and twice on Sunday.

At the end of the day, the quality is good enough for day-to-day point-and-shoot, ESPECIALLY if you dont plan on printing. The fact that the images are already quite small (in file size) means that theyre readily posted to a website or sent via e-mail. I ended up with an Olympus 3.2MP. Yes, fewer megapixelsbut it uses higher-quality JPEG files. The results are across-the-board better than the Kodak: no more compression artifacts, and my 8x10s look great. Professionals will undoubtedly want a camera that can create TIFF files.

This is a good camera to keep in the car or to have handy to take pictures of your kids being cute. If youre a first-timer and youre looking for something very quick, very easy, and very convenient, you should consider this camera. Its also a good camera to send with your kid to college. The media is also pretty cheap (and relatively fast), and the camera has some built-in memory (16MB, I believe), so you dont even *really* need a memory card to get started. If you do buy, you probably wont need anything more than a 128MB memory card because the camera compresses the image files so much.

For anything more, including pictures that youd like to eventually print, get another camera. Were just a step above amateurs, and the Kodak LS443 didnt make the cut. Youre not getting the 4 megapixel quality youre paying for.

Kodak must be one of those companies that listen to customer feedback because I've experience none of the problems mentioned in earlier reviews.
For starters, installation of the Kodak software couldn't have been easier. Just pop the disk in and forget about it. The software is fairly basic but it handles the job of downloading and sorting your photos very well. Photos transfer is a quick one button operation from the docking station which also serves as the battery charger.
The lens cap, (which apparently popped off) is now gone, replaced by an external iris which closed to protect the lens when the camera is turned off. This is a much better design in my opinion, no cap to lose or forget to take off.
Operation of the camera is very intuitive thanks to the mini joystick and icons on the camera back. The small size makes it easy to carry and use. All of the bells and whistles that you would expect from a camera in this price range are there, (although most people will rarely use some of them). The photo quality is quite good and the battery lasts much longer than expected. I've only been using this camera for a couple weeks now and will update this review after I give it it's trial by fire on an upcoming Florida vacation.

12/12/05
I retract my earlier positive review of this product (see: "A small but capable well-designed camera"). The LS443 did work well, for about a year, at which point it stopped taking pictures. The camera would appear to take a photo but all of the images on the memory card would be blank. Since the camera was still under warranty, I returned it to Kodak and they repaired it at no change, (the lenses assembly had to be replaced). The camera once again worked well, but this time only for about 8 months, it failed for the second time while on a trip to Italy, (the dreaded E45 error). Kodak refused to repair the camera this time claiming that parts were no longer available for the LS443, instead offering to "upgrade" me to a REFURBISHED LS743 at $136, (a whopping $4 off the street price for a NEW LS743).
Adding to my dissatisfaction with Kodak products is the fact that we had also purchased a Kodak CX6330 for my daughter, it too failed while we were in Italy and of course, her camera was about two months out of warranty. This is strike 3 for Kodak; I will never buy one of their products again

I purchased this camera in April of 2003. I upgraded from a Kodak DC240 camera and what an amazing difference. The LS443 is very lightweight, and it comes with a docking station.

The docking station will transfer photos, charge the battery, and save pictures (with one touch of a button). The docking station is really only going to provide a benefit if you have it consistently plugged in to your computer or other electronic equipment. Bringing it out of the box every time when you want to use it defeats the purpose.

The camera is very compact and light (can fit into a shirt pocket). It gives you the ability to alter your image from a 4MP shot to a lower quality shot. Why is this important? Because if you are going to transfer a lot of files via the internet. The slightly lower quality shot will reduce the download time. It has a joystick type button that you use to guide through the menu. It makes it much easier than pushing buttons all the time. One thing a really love is that it has a delete button right on the camera. Many of the digitals, including the older Kodaks, make you go through the menu to delete pictures. This button allows you to rid yourself of pictures instantly.

Drawbacks - sure every product has them. This is what I notice on the LS443. I recommend purchasing additional memory (I purchased a 72MB chip). The reason is if you are going on vacation and are going to take a lot of photos, you could run out of space. This is just an added expense some may not be anticipating. I find that the battery it uses is hard to find at stores (Lithium Ion). The battery itself has a good life before recharging, but we wanted a second one as a back-up and Best Buy didn't even offer this kind of battery.

I read some other reviews where it was indicated that there were software problems:

First, the whole point of the docking station is that you don't even need the computer if you don't want to use it - this is one of primary features of this camera. The purpose of the software is really to do a bunch of editing to the picture. If you are an average camera user, the software works just fine. If you are a pro - expect to be disappointed because nothing will compare to the perfection that the pros expect.

Second, As far as software not working, I have Microsoft XP and I have no problems. Many times it is a case of not having the supported hardware for the software. If you are going to heavily use the software, I would recommend that your computer system is less than 2 years old.

If you don't plan on performing any editing but want to save your pictures to the computer, just use Microsoft's camera wizard that is standard on most computers. It is very easy and guides you to save all your pictures from the camera to the "My Pictures" folder. With the LS443 on the docking station, all you have to do is hit the button on the docking station and it brings up the menu for the wizard.

Bottom line: The docking station makes digital photography much easier - for both picture transferring and battery charging. The camera is lightweight and in my opinion, user friendly....I give it my highest recommendation.

The Kodak camera is really great,beacuse for four hundred dollars (approx) it's a low price for a 4 megapixel camera.You can take photos in different modes(7).The software on it is not relly good beacuse the photos go directly to a folder called "LS 443 CAMERA" so the dock is not good.i suggest you buy a SD Card Reader or you can just pop your card to your printer and just transfer your pictures from the card to the computer.The quality on the camera is really good,and it has an auto turn off feature that is great,beacuse sometimes i leave the camera on and it turns off by itself.The 4x zoom is great,but the rest (6x) are digital and it ruins the quality of the pictures.each photo is 2 mb,which takes a little space.The kodak review says that you can view pictures in the outdoors,but the brightness on the LCD is not to good in the sun.

This camera is the best! I would recommend it for anyone interested in getting a digital camera that is simple to use and ready to go right out of the box. All of the pictures that I have taken are wonderful. The quality is spectacular! It is so easy to use. Since it comes with its own docking station with one touch transfer, there is no guess work in it. I would recommend that you download the more updated easyshare software from the kodak website. The newer software has some extra features that don't come with the disk in the camera. If you get the 128mb card you can take up to 103 pictures at the best quality rating. I have several friends who have bought this camera after seeing mine. I can't say enough! Thanks Kodak!!!

I loved this camera until I decided to buy a memory card and card reader. When I loaded the software for the card reader on two separate computers, one running ME and the other 98, I ran into big problems. The computer with ME refused to update the drivers and the software completely trashed the system with 98. I later learned from technical support, I didn't even need to load the software but could just download the drivers but by then it was too late. Now I'm stuck with one computer that barely functions.

I didn't like the EasyShare software anyway. Paintshop Pro is much better for editing photos. And the camera records movies in .mov mode which means that if you want to make them accessible to everyone you have to run a conversion utility which degrades the quality. Since most people have older versions of Windows Media Player or Realplayer that do not recognize the QuickTime extension, this becomes a necessity to allow them to access the files.

I also learned that Kodak now uses a proprietary media card instead of Smartmedia or Compactflash cards which also was an issue since I wanted to use a Flash Path adapter.

Then to top it off, the camera itself stopped working after two weeks. I sent it back and am trying a different brand.

I gave this three stars instead of one because the camera itself took great pictures while it worked and had a lot of adjustable settings which were easy to use. And the price is right but I guess you get what you pay for. Kokak needs to recognize that the real world is Microsoft dominated and there are very few Apple users and they need to address their software issues.

My husband gave me this as a gift for Christmas, so I've only had a few days to get to know the camera. I spent the first day with the Quick Start Guide which got me using the camera in a very short time.

The next day was spent getting to know just how feature rich this camera is. I'm a "hands on" learning type of person, so it took me a great deal of time to read through the very thorough and easy to understand User's Guide and practice with the camera. Later that evening, I was surprised to learn that it was so easy to load the software program and retrieve the pictures I had taken using Windows 98.

The camera is everything that I hoped that it would be. It takes very clear pictures on still figures. I've tried to take some of my cat, but he moves and the pictures come out blurry in the "Auto" mode. I recommend using the "burst" feature or the "sport" mode for moving objects instead of the "Auto" mode.

I found that I did have to purchase a 128MB memory card becasue 16MB of internal memory didn't allow for many best quality pictures.

I've had the opportunity to use the video feature as well. I took a 13 sec. video to send to my father-in-law for his birthday. The only problem that I had was that the Easyshare software e-mailing program didn't support sending the video. It was 3.67MB and the program didn't permit transmittal of more than 2MB. I sent the video through my regular e-mail program and sent it as an attachment. My father-in-law was very impressed and said that I had a very good digital camera (a great compliment from a computer guru).

I consider myself to be a novice with digital cameras. This is an incerdibly easy camera to manuver your way around. The menu is easy to understand, the delete and review features are clear, and retrieving your pictures is incredibly easy. I highly recommend this camera!

In the ever changing world of digital photography I have been afraid to buy fearing that tomorrow there will be something better for less. But, after using 3 different digital cameras at work I finally decided on this Kodak.

For those of you who think more pixels is not meaningful, believe me when I say 4 is far superior to 3.anything in final picture quality. You cannot tell the difference between a photo printed on photo paper with this camera and a 35mm from the store. I would suggest a good printer. I bought an HP 7550 with the camera. They are both so easy to use.

Even those a bit fearful of techno gadget stuff can use this camera right out of the box. Reading the manual is not a chore for those so inclined. All the controls are easy to manipulate even for the kids. Don't try to look at the LCD screen in the sun with your polarized sunglasses on it doesn't work.

All the normal drawbacks of today's digital photography exist. Things like when you release the shutter there is a brief delay. But you will learn to live with it. If you need high quality action shots of sporting events you have to use a 35mm. Digital [unless you are ready to spend for high end equipment] is not ready for this yet.

Transfer of photos to the computer is the best feature. It is one button and anyone [even my techno negative wife] can do this with no problem.