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Photograph courtesy of Kodak
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By WILSON ROTHMAN
The newest race in digital cameras is for 10X optical zoom. More megapixels means you can take pictures carelessly and then crop what you didn't want. Greater zoom lets you put more thought into your shots, and get closer to subjects you can't necessarily walk up to. (Think animals in the zoo or boats out on the water.) Typical cameras have 3X or 4X zoom lenses, so 10X is a great leap forward.
Kodak's DX6490 is the third 10X zoom camera to hit the market for under $500 (okay, so it's $499), and the first of those with 4-megapixel resolution. Although it is a little too chunky to pass the "cargo pants" pocket test, the DX6490 is small compared to other cameras with similar optics.
The 10X lens taunts you to aim for things you otherwise would never shoot. Over Labor Day weekend, I took a nice picture of four turtles sunbathing on a log (which would have otherwise been a nice picture of just a log), and I managed to zoom in tight on a hillside mansion in Millbrook, N.Y., that I typically can only see from a boring distance. The deep lens also lets you perform cinematic focus tricks like having a blurred foreground with sharpened background, or vice versa.
Genuine camera nuts will appreciate "PASM" mode, which gives you control over aperture, shutter speed, white balance, ISO setting and other stuff that makes my head spin. For those who are more rigidly point-and-shoot, the Auto, Sport, Night and Portrait modes, with landscape and close-up options, do fine. Video recording with sound is of fairly decent quality, with a rate of about 16MB per minute.
The DX6490 has 16MB of internal memory, and supports SD and MMC cards but does not ship with one. At first this sounded like a sneaky cost-cutting measure, but it makes sense, since so many 4- and 5-megapixel cameras ship with uselessly low-capacity cards that need to be replaced anyway. If companies are going to bundle cards, make them 128MB or 256MB — you know, enough to get shots of all the animals in the zoo.
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