This is an awesome camera. It takes wonderful pictures and is sooo easy to use. I always get lots of comments as to how great my pictures always look. I print out my pictures and use them in cards and for gifts. Everyone thinks that the pictures were taken with a regular film camera or even professionally, that is how good the quality is. You can not go wrong with this camera.

This is my first digital camera, which I have shoot over 3,600 pictures for the past 21 months. The pictures are overwhelming if the settings are correct. If you depend on the Auto Mode you will end up with many shots that are sub par. You may need to adjust the lighting to accomodate for indoor and dusk pictures. The shortcomings are the bulking feel when holding the camera for several shots, that is why I prefer the tripod for a steady shot. The optical zoom is pretty good, and the digital zoom is worthless (I hear the same holds for other brands too).

Kodak DC265 is fine for medium/long range subjects. However, because the viewfinder and the lens are off-center, you invariably get off-center results - unless you use the LCD as your main viewfinder (this eats battery life and the display resolution makes it hard to make critical shot decisions). However, the image quality is quite good for most outdoor/lighted conditions.

The interaction and placement of the controls are quite good. There are a few key rubber finger and grip affordances to make the shooter feel in control. The only cheap part is the zoom lever. It's a small horizontal lever, that has to be kicked way over to one side or the other, and the time delay to lens movement is sluggish. The overall construction of the entire body and finish is very nice. There's plenty of standard features like burst, time-lapse, etc. to keep most digital camera enthusiasts happy. A real nice package bonus was the 4, AA NiMH rechargeable batteries and charger + 16MB storage card. At least Kodak was thinking about the entire user experience.

Oh, the software interface is rather silly. The childlike icons and metaphors for album creation, etc. makes you create a parallel cognitive hierarchy model for what is essentially folders/files on your computer. Something more straight forward with clear icons and interface is all we want.

While not an avid Kodak fan (anyone remember 110 film? Disk cameras?), every once in awhile I've got to hand it to them. And this time I handed them $729 for their very fine camera, the DC265.

It was actually my Mom's DC-120 lead me to take a look at this camera. The DC-120, and the DC265, have very, very good color control. We have an infant, and the camera catches that golden glow in her hair, the pink cheeks... you get the idea. Combined with an HP R40 multifunction (get it!), I can make photo's that really bring the kid to life. It's the color quality that really sets this camera apart from most of the rest. Too many digital cameras (notably the Mavicas) have problems with flat colors, overly compressed or poorly mapped or something. Kodak's digital color scientists have been doing their homework, and it shows.

What else is there to like? The USB interface is wonderful. I routinely load up the camera (30 pictures, 0.5MB each) and dump them quickly and easily through my computer to my ZIP drive. MUCH nicer than serial port interfaces!

What's not to like? The camera is (ouch) complex... as is my Mom's DC120. Lot's of little intuitive buttons that take fooling around with to figure out. But most people can hack it, I think... Also, the resolution isn't adequate for really great scenery shots. Fine for snapshots, just not enough to do a detailed Grand Canyon shot. You need 4 megapixels or so for that work.

I just wonder why I didn't buy the DC290? Maybe I need a bigger hard disk, and the DC265's resolution better fit my computer.

I did alot of research on digital cameras before settling on this one. I purchased the DC265 with the lens kit (fun to play with) and a 32MB card with PCMCIA adapter. The PCMCIA adapter is excellent and works very easily with my PowerBook G3 (OS9) and Windows 95 and 98 laptops I also use. The card appears as a hard disk on your desktop and the photos can be edited, copied, deleted, renamed, etc. right on the card - VERY COOL! If you wanted to you could use the card to back up just about any type of data, not just photos! Photoshop plugin is also useful. You will also want the optional AC adapter. Photo quality is excellent even on the lowest resolution and superb on the highest! The only cons are a (sort of) noisy lens movement on zoom, and the fact that closeups don't come out framed exactly right since the lens and viewfinder are a bit off from one another it seems. After a few practice shots you will easily figure out how to compensate for this, however. You will get used to the slight digital delay when taking a photo, as mentioned in other reviews, but it is not a show-stopper. LCD is very useful and the batteries (and included charger) are great and last a long time, even with the LCD on. At low resolution/best quality setting you can easily fit 200 pictures on the 32MB card! This camera wins my vote unless you can afford one of the $2000 models!