A New Kodak Camera - Z980 wide angle with *crazy* zoom (24X)

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I'll post an in-depth review hopefully this week. For right now you can feast your eyes on the shots below, and the whole background story!

Get the full-sized versions of the photos below by heading over to

my flickr photostream

In the film days it was a Mamiya and Pentax SLR and for my adventures a Yashica T4 with Kodak 64 or Fuji Velvia. In the digital age it seemed that Canon and Nikon were at the top of the heap, although the first digicams and pro digital SLR's came from Kodak. I've liked the idea behind the Powershot G series from Canon. With the exception of a few stray models, they kept the same general form factor, buttons on the outside etc: Optical 'rangefinder' like viewfinder, plenty of manual modes and the like. The S400 Digital ELPH is a little tank.. keeps going and going and takes wonderful photos. I've been a Canon fanboy for a while now. But lately I'm starting to like Kodak? Huh? you mean those guys that used to make film?

Yes!

This all started a year or so ago. I noticed that some of the new Kodak line of point and shoot cameras were starting to incorporate HD Video. The V1273 came out, I bought one a few weeks after it hit the shelves and I've been pleasantly suprised with the quality of photos and having the ability to shoot HD Video in a compact package. Likes? The Schneider optics (maybe it's the name?), the image quality, the 720p video. Dislikes? the touch-screen 'ipod' like LCD and lack of buttons / viewfinder. The camera is nearly impossible to use in the sunshine but with a good hat as a shade, and peering over your sunglasses you can make it work!

Here are V1273 photos from last weekends mountain bike ride.

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Having HD Video capability in your digicam is cool! With a bit of effort, you can turn a static story into something that helps people *really* see and feel what it was like to be there! Check out this fun HD video from an undisclosed location in San Diego :)

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So when I received an email coupon from Kodak for St. Patricks day, I dove in and started reading about their latest offering the Kodak Easyshare Z980.....

(to be continued..)







Get the full-sized versions of the above photos by heading over to

my flickr photostream

If you like what you see, let me know! I'll post up the rest of my review soon. In the meantime, here is a link to the specs on dpreview.com and a brief writeup I posted there.

Goat Camp Out and Back Ride

Sam pinged me on Facebook the other day and asked if I wanted to tag along for a run out to ride the 'Goat Camp' trail in the White Tanks. Greg and I had already made plans for a dual climb/bike day on Sunday, but when that fell through, I switched plans and met up with Sam at 6:30am for the trek out to the westside.

It's starting to get hot here in Phoenix again. This means early early starts, and lots of sunscreen and water. Today, the breeze out of the northwest saved us. It would have been much hotter without it!

Legs started cramping on the way back down and I ran out of water right at the end of the ride, good workout, but getting warm!

I posted up a few photos from the day over on Flickr, and the Garmin 405 data is here:



As promised.. here is the embed of Sam's video which is excellent!
Even got to close out the video.. witness my weeak manual
attempt at 5:51 or so ;-)



Tossed together this quick video using Quicktime Pro

Click to play