Kodak Slice 14MP Digital Camera with Schneider-Kreuznach Prism 5x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom and 3.5-Inch Touch-Screen LCD (Magenta) Features
- Instantly locates faces via Kodak's Face Recognition technology
- 3.5-inch, 16:9 widescreen touchscreen interface
- 5x optical zoom
- 14-megapixel resolution for high-quality pictures up to 30 x 40 inches
Price: N/A
User Reviews about Kodak Slice 14MP Digital Camera with Schneider-Kreuznach Prism 5x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom and 3.5-Inch Touch-Screen LCD (Magenta)
Ok, so I'm tired of people bashing things they buy because they're too lazy or stupid to figure it out or do it the right way. I don't care what people say, this camera is amazing! I got it out of the box, fully charged the battery before ever turning it on and in the mean time, I went online and downloaded the firmware update. Granted, I understand that people might not have an SD slot on their computer, but most newer HPs or iMacs and a lot of laptops have an SD slot standard, so it becomes easier every day to get that kind of thing resolved. (I have a 3 year old HP and new iMac, so I can't complain about this issue.) If you don't have this on your computer, you can always find someone that does.
After I fully charged the camera, I checked what firmware it came with FOLLOWING THE DIRECTIONS ON THE KODAK WEBSITE, which is listed on a paper that came with the camera. I noticed the screen being a bit slow and non responsive, so I was hoping the firmware update would fix that, and boy did it ever! It takes a bit to update everything and you have to do it in a few different steps, but if you read and follow the site's directions and are a bit computer savvy, this is not a problem whatsoever, and totally worth the wait. BTW, don't forget to format the Micro SD card in the camera before saving the update on it, since it needs to be done for the camera to recognize it and this process will delete everything on the card.
After everything was installed and updated I powered the camera back on and I can only say that it was worth the wait and the camera is worth every penny i paid for it. It takes awesome pictures and the screen is almost as responsive as my iPhone 4!!! There is a bit of a lag between taking pictures since it will show you the picture you just took, but a light tap on the button to take pictures with brings you right back to the camera view. If you use the red eye reduction option, there is a bit of a delay between what you see and what you shoot, which can be difficult if you have small kids like me or kids in sports and such. I just turn that option off and do the automatic flash and I can always touch up pictures on the computer if it is too bad.
The LCD display is a bit grainy in low light, but the pictures come out great and the flash does what it is supposed to do. The camera takes great pictures in auto mode and adjusts accordingly. There is also an option to change everything manually, but I probably won't mess with it unless I have plenty of time or I want to be really creative.
About the internal memory; the camera's documentation and description clearly states that the internal memory only stores a thumbnail of your pictures, not a full version and that a micro SD card has to be installed. Again, if you don't read anything, you have no reason to complain. You can buy a good 4 gig card on Amazon for like 5 bucks nowadays, so please don't complain. That is an amazing price, since they were $40 a little over a year ago. Just make sure it comes with an adapter if you want to plug it directly into your computer.
This camera has some awesome options, mainly the share button and you can tag people and upload directly to facebook or wherever you want to send pictures to, just check it on the screen and everything gets done for you. The camera does however not have some gadgets that other cameras have, like that black and white picture option with a splash of color like some Canons have, but oh well, that will only be part of that creative mood that comes out once in a while and there is computer software for that.
Over all this camera is awesome and I highly recommend it if you don't like buttons and a good camera. Check store websites often since this camera is being offered at 199 a lot, and that's a really good price for what you get.
I hope this review helps and convinces you to go ahead and get this camera.
-- Kodak Slice Rocks
OK, I shoot with a DSLR. I'm cool. I'm a a photographer wannabe. But my wife insists we have a more family oriented camera that she can carry. Where she is involved it means it must look cool, not cute but cool, it must be stlylish and compact, sleek and fashionable. Sound familiar? But most importantly, to her, it must be simple to use, rugged - imaging riding through life in her purse.... - and it must make actually seeing and sending and showing off her (our) pictures a no brainer.
So Slice is selected. Does it cut it? It certainly looks good. It has a touchscreen LCD. It has a human interface (instead if a technical cryptic interface), it takes great pictures (not DSLR quality but close in some cases and not as close in difficult situations - but it's not a DSLR). But here is where it made the grade and got by the 'wife factor' it's a slam dunk to take, share, send, categorize and get really involved with the pictures she (we) take. It's something like 3 steps to send pictures to facebook and to eamil them to the kids. It's a gas to watch it recognize faces and tag them as the poor subjects they are.... and then there is this Album thing.
Imagine just taking all the pictures you want, do what you want with them, but secretly the Slice camera tucks away a copy in an Album. Up to something like 4 or 5 thousand. When mom meets up for lunch and complains she hasn't seen the kids in months, my wife just whips out the Slice and brings her up to date months at a time. It's a really nice feature in a camera.
I almost never review anything I buy. I'm a gadget hound and it would take up half my spare time. But if a camera can make me the hero that Slice did in my wife's eyes - I must review it. And if you are a husband - in the most classic sense, you know what I mean - get your little wifey a Slice at the next oppotune time. You will owe me big time. -- Slice really cuts it for me and my family
I really like the ease of use with this camera. The touch screen navigation is very easy to use. I also like that the camera can store up to 5000 photos. The picture quality is excellent with the color being right on. The video is ok but there is almost no sound when you play back the video in the camera. It has good volume when played back on my computer. The screen is so large that in bright sun light it had a glare that makes it hard to see what you are taking a picture of. -- Kodak Slice Camera
After having used my Kodak Slice camera for a few hours here are my initial thoughts: overall I like the camera very much, and imagine I'll be using it a great deal, BUT it's not perfect.
Positives: I really like the look of the camera. (I got it in black.) The front of the camera is rather featureless but attractive in a utilitarian sort of way. The back is dominated by a very large touchscreen. The top buttons are raised slightly and surrounded by translucent plastic that lights up and blinks when the camera is charging or connected to a computer. (It works with both Macs and PCs, so Apple owners need not worry.) It'll comfortably fit in most pockets. It's not as ultraslim as some other cameras in the price range, but overall I very much like how it feels when holding it.
I find most cameras' controls frustrating: It's never immediately obvious how to do simple things like turn off the flash, adjust scene settings, etc. I eventually figure it out, but everyone seems to do it a little differently, and figuring out which little switch to push in which direction is tedious. I really like the Slice's touchscreen: it does almost everything except take the picture and zoom in/out. It's nicely responsive: not as good as the screens on more expensive smartphones like iPhones or the better Droids, but nevertheless does the job well. It's size is wonderful for previewing pictures you just took, and the layout of the menus and controls are obvious for the most part.
One thing that may be confusing to some is the idea of the 'Slice Album'. When Kodak refers to '5000 pictures' on your camera, they're talking about the small versions of every photo you take that get retained in the camera's memory in what they call the 'Slice Album'. These are NOT full photos, but rather scaled down versions that remain on the camera. Every time you take a picture and don't immediately delete it, the camera will not only save the full-sized image in memory, but also save the smaller version into the 'Slice Album', where it will stay indefinitely. Eventually when you transfer the image off the camera and delete it, the full-sized copy goes away, but the smaller 'Slice Album' version does NOT. There's a small review button to the left of the other buttons on the top of the camera, and when you press that, even when the camera is off, you will see all the photos in your Slice Album and search by tag or look through them sequentially. The benefit of this is that your camera is always carrying a copy of the last several thousand photos you've taken in your Slice Album, and they're always there to show someone from your camera. Think of it as a gallery of large 'thumbnails' always available to show people. Another nice thing about the Slice Album is that you can also tag your photos in various ways (location, keyword, people), and have the 1000s of photos available to show someone as long as you have your camera with you, and you can quickly search via tags for that one photo or set of photos you want to show them.
You really do want to get some microSD memory to give yourself some 'legroom' for the full-sized photos (I found some cheap class 6 Transcend microsd cards on Amazon for about $20 each, so I got two and now have 16gb of space, and since I have two cards I can use one for everyday and one for special trips, etc..) Overall the Slice Album is a very clever idea, but Kodak isn't doing themselves any favors by not describing it more thoroughly, and leading people to think the camera stores thousands of full-sized photos, which is NOT what it is doing.
I'd say image quality is very good, but not excellent. (Keep in mind I just take casual photos, so I'm no judge of professional quality). Photos aren't always quite as sharp as I'd like when using its autofocus, but the colors are nice, and the 14MP is more than enough for my needs. It's easy to switch into video mode, and other than the camera occasionally struggling to maintain focus I liked the quality. Facial recognition seemed to work well, and image stabilization also worked well: I didn't notice much blurring to my motions, and I'm not always the steadiest when it comes to taking pictures. (In fact, i'm a bit of a klutz...)
I like the idea of the 'Share Button' a lot, but the implementation is a mixed bag: on the good side, it's pretty slick that I can set up several share destinations (facebook, flickr, the Kodak Gallery, and e-mail addresses of my choice amongst others), and then for each picture I've taken I can quickly get to a sharing screen and check off what destination(s) to send it to. Then, the next time I sync to my PC/Mac it will pull the photos/videos over to the computer, and then send them off to their appropriate destinations. I was able to easily send photos to Facebook, Flickr, and the Kodak Gallery with little effort. I was also able to set up e-mail destinations for my TwitPic and TwitVid accounts, and shared pictures and videos with similar ease.
Cons:
As mentioned above, some pictures focus was less sharp than I'd want when using autofocus, and in videos it would blur then re-focus a little more often than I'd expect.
While the Share Button app is a great idea, there's still a few ways it should be fleshed out: For starters, where's Twitter?!? I set up TwitPic and TwitVid e-mail addresses manually, but it would be nice to have Twitter as a pre-set destination just like Facebook and the others. On my first batch of synced photos, one that I had marked to send to my TwitPic e-mail didn't make it through, even though the app claimed all photos were sent successfully. A second batch were delivered to their destinations fine, including TwitPic. You also can't specify what message goes along with your photos or videos, they just get a generic message like 'New pictures from my KODAK camera'. Being able to specify a custom comment would make this much more flexible.
They already have a firmware update out, but you must have a microsd card and a pc or netbook that can write to it, in order to install the update. You download it to your PC/laptop, unzip it (a step they fail to mention in their instructions!!!), and then move the *unzipped file* onto your microsd card. (The Transcend microsd cards I got came with a standard SD adapter so I could insert them into my laptop's reader.) Once you have the file on the microsd card you insert it into the camera and then the next time you turn it on the camera will ask if you want to update the firmware. It would be better if you didn't have to go through all that to do a firmware update, and could just do it via the USB connection like many other devices do. But at least they ARE providing firmware updates, so that's a good thing!
Summary:
Overall, I think the Slice is a solid camera that is easy to use with nice styling, and that (with some room for improvement) makes it easy to share photos to multiple destinations. At its list price there's lots of very strong competition that give it a good run for its money, but at the price Amazon and others are currently selling it at, it's a more compelling product that I'm very happy with. -- Strong offering from Kodak, but not perfect
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