The 2002 Kodak EasyShare DX4900 was advertised as—
- the first print-optimized 4.00 MP point-and-shoot digital camera designed to be one-touch simple
- able to create prints from 4” x 6” to 20” x 30”
- has a 6X zoom—(35-210 mm equivalent) Kodak all-glass, high quality aspheric 2X optical zoom lens
- Exclusive 3X Advanced Digital Zoom
- has automatic and manual settings for total creative freedom
- has a CompactFlash memory card expansion slot
- is compatible with an optional Kodak EasyShare Camera Dock for simple one-touch picture transfer
Note the diffuse flash cover and the optical viewfinder.
Now note the 38.1 mm (1.5 inch) TFT colour screen. It leaves a lot of room for the limited controls. For example the round control actually zooms (left wide and right tele) and allows you to move up and down the menu choices. The other two buttons are Menu (Bottom) and Select.
Just note the quality of the design. The small buttons all stand up just enough to be easy to press. The dial has serrations to provide grip. The shutter button is at the top of a raised island that allows you to find it by feel. The entire camera seems more sculpted than purely engineered.
See how the eyepiece is set off in an “Island” too. The warning LED has a trough to guide its light towards your eye. The more you examine the camera, the more you find that is pleasing in the design.
The battery direction (+ and –) are molded into the dark plastic of the lid just below the chrome contact strip.
There is a metal cover for the zoom when it is retracted. This was sticky and took a little time to start working. You have to be patient with the DX4900. It sometimes seems to be thinking about whether it will follow you instructions. We have become spoiled…
The On/Off switch is above the cover for video out and USB connection.
At its highest quality setting each file is 4 MP. I managed just 16 images on the 16M CF card. Evidentially there are choices of 4.0 MP, 4.0 MP high compression: 3.1 MP, 2.2 MP, 1.0 MP and 1.0 MP burst. The burst setting gives you 12 pictures at 3.0 frames/sec at 1.0MP resolution.
The lens is threaded to accept 37 mm accessory lenses. It can also take 43 mm accessory lenses with a step-up ring.
Normally you can focus from 0.5 m (20 inches) to infinity
Macro-Wide the range is 0.07—0.7 m (2.8-28 inches)
Macro-Tele range is 0.25-0.7 m (10-28 inches)
Note: “Design” was in brackets after both Macro specifications, so I guess we will never know if they achieved it in practice.
The camera came with two regular alkaline AA batteries. The camera was slow to operate. Turns out the camera was designed to use 1 CR3 lithium battery, a Ni-MH rechargeable battery pack (that charges in camera when the optional EasyShare Camera Dock is used) or finally two Lithium or Ni-MH batteries. No matter what I used, the camera is slow to come alive. It is a camera that likes to think a bit before it fires. Still the shots I took turned out very well—
At its highest quality setting each file is 4 MP. I managed just 16 images on the 16M CF card. Evidentially there are choices of 4.0 MP, 4.0 MP high compression: 3.1 MP, 2.2 MP, 1.0 MP and 1.0 MP burst. The burst setting gives you 12 pictures at 3.0 frames/sec at 1.0MP resolution.
The lens is threaded to accept 37 mm accessory lenses. It can also take 43 mm accessory lenses with a step-up ring.
Normally you can focus from 0.5 m (20 inches) to infinity
Macro-Wide the range is 0.07—0.7 m (2.8-28 inches)
Macro-Tele range is 0.25-0.7 m (10-28 inches)
Note: “Design” was in brackets after both Macro specifications, so I guess we will never know if they achieved it in practice.
The camera came with two regular alkaline AA batteries. The camera was slow to operate. Turns out the camera was designed to use 1 CR3 lithium battery, a Ni-MH rechargeable battery pack (that charges in camera when the optional EasyShare Camera Dock is used) or finally two Lithium or Ni-MH batteries. No matter what I used, the camera is slow to come alive. It is a camera that likes to think a bit before it fires. Still the shots I took turned out very well—
Note the neutral gray statue in shade and the driveway gravel in smokey sunlight are pretty close to neutral colouring.
You do start to realize straight files from the DX4900 are pretty close to stunning without a lot of post processing.
We were lucky to find the original Kodak Info sheets for the DX4900
















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