Design and Construction

The dimensions of the Kodak EasyShare Z740 are approximately 3.9" by 3.1" by 2.9" (WHD). It weighs about 0.63 pounds and has a nice silver colored body. Handling this digital camera, I found that it has a sturdy, big body size, is pretty well-built and of an ergonomic design.
 

Optics and Resolution

The Kodak EasyShare Z740 comes with a 5.36 megapixel CCD and takes very nice pictures. The test pictures which I took for this
digital camera showed great color accuracy and brilliance.

The 10x optical zoom functions very well too - I was able to take distant objects with minimal fuss using the zoom lens.

Also, here are some details of the optical system within the Kodak EasyShare Z740 - it boasts an ISO range of Auto, 80, 100, 200, 400, 800, an aperture range of f8-2.88 (wide) and f8-3.7 (tele), as well as
shutter speeds from 8 - 1/1700 sec. Setting the camera to auto mode allows these exposure settings to be set automatically. In my test shots, most pictures taken with the auto mode turned out excellent.
 

User Controls

Most photographers are very concerned about the user controls found in a digital camera. The Kodak EasyShare Z740 has manual controls which let you have better exposure control. You can also have fun with the various focusing and manual options.

The 1.8 inch LCD screen is also easy to view, and provides a intuitive navigation system for accessing the various functions. This digital camera comes with a movie mode which works pretty well. You can take some small video clips for fun using this feature.
 

Battery Life

The Kodak EasyShare Z740 makes use of 2 AA batteries or proprietary lithium batteries and has a pretty decent battery life. The advertised battery life is about 350 images - a fact which I verified in various offline tests of my own. Don't overlook battery life - its one of the most important factors when purchasing a digital camera.
 

Storage and Transfer

The Kodak EasyShare Z740 stores your beautiful pictures in SD and MMC memory cards cards. Given the 5.36 megapixel resolution, my advice is to get pretty large memory cards - at least 128MB. This will allow you to take pictures without worrying about capacity.
In terms of photo transfer, the Kodak EasyShare Z740 uses a USB interface. This enables you to make speedy uploads of pictures to the PC as and when you need to do so.
 

Shortcomings

Two shortcomings of the Kodak EasyShare Z740 should be mentioned here. The first problem is that this digital camera lacks an image stabilization feature. In addition, the Kodak EasyShare Z740 also has noisy images with lots of artifacts at times. Not really big problems if you look at it - on the whole, I'd still say this digital camera is a good buy.
 

Conclusion

Well, that concludes this review of the Kodak EasyShare Z740. You know understand the various characteristics of this digital camera - hopefully this knowledge will assist you in making an intelligent purchase decision. I think this digital camera takes pretty good pictures and on the whole, it ranks high in my books. Do check it out in your local camera store!