The lens provides roughly the same angles of view as a 34-102mm lens would provide on 35mm. That's certainly in line with the industry standard, but personally I'd prefer a 28-85 or even a 24-70 - it's always possible to crop (or use the dreaded "digital zoom") at the long end of the zoom to get tighter framings, while there are few practical options to reach a wider angle. The general public perception seems to be that the wide end of a zoom is the "normal" view, and that that the zoom is only used to tighten framing (or, like most people think, "move closer"), and Kodak provides what the public wants. Certainly, not including any seriously wide angles allows to hit a good balance between cost and image quality.
Like I wrote earlier, the flash is typical of low-power close-to-the-lens straight-ahead point-and-shoot flashes. Indoors, the results are expectedly poor, but not worse than any other such camera. The flash isn't useless, though. It can be used as a fill-flash, for situations where the foreground is darker than the background. This is typically a hard problem for cameras, as there are quite a few parameters to balance. The CX7530 didn't have any problem, using the proper exposure exposure for the backgroung and adding the right amount of flash power for the foreground to be properly exposed as well. The flash is not incredibly powerful, but it does the job at portrait distances.
Now, the real test. The prints. I got a nice surprise. I did some test prints, full-bleed on letter paper, which is about 220 dpi. The prints were done with an HP 7960, on HP premium plus matte photo paper, with the HP 8-ink inkset, and with all the printer settings set at their default values. I printed the files absolutely unprocessed, without even any adjustment in levels or any sharpening. The prints came out good, very good actually, and undoubtedly frame-worthy. The CX7530 definitely passes the second half of my requirements: I can make good prints out of it. Unfortunately, this being an online review, I can't show you the actual prints, so you'll have to take my word for it: the prints do not show any problem, even under a 10x loupe, and the printer is a bigger limiting factor than the camera. The pictures in this review have been downsized on purpose, so that they're easier to evaluate at sizes typical of computer applications, e.g. e-mail. People who want to do the effort of getting full-size files to evaluate prints can find some here.
Pixel-peeping, I found fewer JPEG compression artifacts on the CS7530 than I had on the CX7220, though there were still a few. Noise reduction did its job well, since little noise was visible, and details appeared to be preserved. A tiny hint of blue chromatic aberrations was visible in the corners when pixel-peeping, but was not big enough to be visible on the prints. Torture-tests did show some chromatic aberrations, but I had to push the camera really really hard, shooting through tree branches straight at the sun, making the camera expose for the shadows so that the sky shining through would be very grossly overexposed, i.e. an absolutely unrealistic situation.
In conclusion, as much as the CX7220 that I tested a few weeks ago can be used for 4x6 prints at a bargain-basement price, the CX7530 can certainly be used for 8x10 or letter-sized prints. In many situations where I can't carry around my Canon 5D, I'll gladly have a CX7530 at my belt, ready to shoot, armed with the knowledge that for common situations it's able to take good pictures.
- "Kodak CX7530, page 1/3"
- "Kodak CX7530, page 2/3"
- "Kodak CX7530, page 3/3"
