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2026-05-10 2nd of 3 Kodak Digital Cameras—Kodak DC4800

I had to make a tough decision one day. I had unearthed a Minolta XG-M with standard lens (>$13), a Kodak DC4800 with a strap ($6) and then came across a Sony A200 DSLR with 18-70 zoom in a carrying bag for ($37). I was over my limit, so I left the XG-M. I was pretty sure I had one (turns out I did) and the other two cameras were consuming my interest.

    I am thrilled I chose to take the Kodak DC4800. When it was introduced at a list price (In June of 2000) between $750 and $800, it was a real contender against the Nikon CoolPix. It does have some startling features. It was also an entirely new style and marketing direction for Kodak—aimed more at consumers and the mass market than the previous cameras.



    For starters it has two ways you can set the colour balance, outside of the presets you would expect. One way you can set the colour temperature by entering the Kelvin temperature. The other way you can use the four directional buttons to tint the image in four directions as you view the image on the screen. 




    You also have the choice of normal and saturated colours.
    Then there are the black and white choices. You can chose straight B&W, B&W with yellow filter, B&W with red filter and finally Sepia toning.

    Notice the main setting dial has a smaller dial next to it marked with full and half click stops from +2 down to –2. You can instantly change the exposure. How amazing is that! I was amazed you can save the shot as a TIFF Image. Despite being a 3.1 M image it can save as a TIFF image so large you only get one shot on a 16 M CF card. Other strangeness includes having some of the JPEG images end up taking longer to save than their larger versions. Apparently the image is always captured as a 3.1 M image and the time taken to process the image to a smaller file and then write it to the card is what sets the total speed of the process.

    Talk about things we now take for granted.
The camera had its problems. 






    Its battery was undersized for what it was called to do. You could buy the competitor’s battery and get more shots! 






    It had a wide for its time (28 mm equivalent) zoom, but that made the other end of the range being less than some people wanted. Diagonal lines often showed as jagged. Corners were not razor sharp. 
    Oh the nit picking!
    A year after the DC4800 was introduced its price was lowered to the $600 range.
Still, the DC4800 was meant for real estate agents and others who need a wide view of the things they wanted to advertise. It didn’t have the frills like printer docks and download cradles. The money was spent on getting a fine image. For example you could chose three f/stops f/2.8, f/5.6 and f/8 while at the wide end of the zoom.                  Unmarked at the telephoto end of the zoom those f/stops were a stop or so slower. You could manually set the shutter speed to as long as 16 seconds.
    Clearly the Kodak DC4800 was Kodak trying to give you a tool with many possibilities. 
    Here are a series of two subjects. One is inside with flash. The other is outside without flash. Both series are at the wide zoom setting.

Standard Colour

Saturated Colour

B&W 

B&W with Yellow filter

B&W with red filter

Standard Colour

Saturated Colour

Straight B&W

B&W with Yellow filter

B&W with Red filter

Sepia B&W

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