Kodak EasyShare C530

Auto Mode
The auto mode is the only still image shooting mode on the camera, and it’s completely automatic. There is no access to shutter speed, aperture or exposure modes, and users cannot tweak anything in this mode as they can on other cameras.

Movie Mode
The movie mode takes movies at a resolution of 320 x 240 at 20 frames per second. They are stored as MPEG-4 QuickTime files, so most programs should be able to import and edit them. But be aware: there is no microphone or speaker on this camera, so you cannot capture sound with your video clips.

Drive / Burst Mode
The C530 can capture one frame every one and a half seconds, and in our (limited) testing it seemed to be capable of keeping this up for as long as there was space on the memory card. The stamina, if not the speed, is admirable at least.

Playback Mode
Images can be played back in sequence as previews of up to 9 images, or as a slide show. You may also crop images (although this is a little awkward to do since the controls are not easy to use), and copy images from memory card to internal memory and vice versa. The C530 also allows you to create a list of favorite photos in the EasyShare software and store these on the internal memory—useful if you want to carry around cute pictures of the kids to show people on a business trip. These can be accessed by setting the mode dial on the top of the camera to the "favorites" setting. It’s a simple playback mode that shouldn’t be too much for anyone to handle.

Custom Image Presets
There are no custom image presets; everything is done automatically. This is surprising. Most low-end point-and-shoots will offer four or five, or at least two, scene presets. Then again, the most common three—Macro, Landscape, and Portrait—involve different focal settings, which this camera cannot achieve anyway because of its non-zooming lens.