Kodak's 3.1-megapixel EasyShare LS633 is the world's first camera to use an OLED display instead of the more traditional LCD display. It's a stylish design offering good features and image quality.
The undoubted star of the EasyShare LS633 is the amazing 2.2-inch, 112,000-pixel OLED screen. OLED - or more correctly AMOLED (Active-Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode) - is a technology which Kodak has pioneered, and which it will brand under the name NeVue.
Unlike in a conventional LCD display, where the shades of light are blocked by the liquid crystal, in an OLED display each pixel generates its own light, hence there's no need for a backlight. The resulting image has a higher colour contrast than an LCD display. It also supposedly improves the battery life, although we didn't find that to be the case, mainly due to the sheer size of the EasyShare LS633's screen.
That screen comes into its own when you view it at an angle; images remain clear, crisp and vivid even when getting close to Kodak's claimed viewing angle of 165 degrees. They also remain clear and crisp even in sunlight.
Aside from this screen, the other important piece of technology is the 3.1-megapixel CCD sensor. This allows images to be captured up to a resolution of 2,041 x 1,533 pixels, good for prints up to 14 x 11 inches. The lens has a 3x optical zoom and is, as with most recent Kodak cameras, made by the German company Schneider-Kreuznach.
The lens has a range from F2.7 to 4.6 and a focal range of 5.6 - 16.8mm (equivalent to 37 - 111mm on a conventional 35mm camera). Captured photographs are perhaps a little over exposed and a little soft on things like trees or grass, but in general the images are sharp and well defined with good, natural colours.
The rest of the EasyShare LS633's features are what you would expect from today's point and shoot cameras. The manual options are simple and easy to use and include exposure metering and compensation, focus setting and light metering (up to ISO 400); the only thing missing is a manual setting for white balance.
The camera also has a "Capture always Ready" feature that allows you to snap a picture in any camera function mode, and although you can't frame the picture with the OLED when doing so, it does allow a picture to be taken, even if you are currently reviewing images.
The EasyShare LS633 can be used in video mode - it has built-in speakers and a microphone. Videos are saved in QuickTime at a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels and you can get around 81 seconds of video on the internal 16MB memory. For extra memory the camera supports SD and MMC cards.
Using the EasyShare LS633 presents no real problems and for beginners it displays a short description when switching between scene modes, helping you to make the right choice. There are six such modes; auto, close-up, landscape, sport, night and burst. To transfer images the camera can be connected to a Kodak cradle, but if you can't afford the extra expense of the cradle (£60), it also has video and USB ports.
