{"id":1210,"date":"2010-04-12T11:22:17","date_gmt":"2010-04-12T15:22:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=1210"},"modified":"2010-04-12T11:26:27","modified_gmt":"2010-04-12T15:26:27","slug":"kodaks-v530-the-40-pocket-battleship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=1210","title":{"rendered":"Kodak&#8217;s V530: The $40 Pocket Battleship"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/04\/V530Cameras.jpg\" alt=\"V530Cameras.jpg\" height=\"258\" width=\"499\"\/><\/p>\n<p>The camera gremlins have been active here this year: Both of mine were stolen at a dog show in February, and Carol misplaced hers last week. Fortunately, I bought a used Kodak V530 on eBay to replace my 5-year-old and now defunct V530, so we were able to take pictures at Aero&#8217;s pivotal dog show this past weekend. And of course, with the dog show past, Carol&#8217;s camera turned up again this morning. (I think it&#8217;s taking lessons from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/?p=1199\">Aunt Kathleen&#8217;s Lucky Dollar<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p>The &#8220;new&#8221; V530 is black, which wouldn&#8217;t have been my first choice. Anodized aluminum shows nicks and scrapes <em>much<\/em> better than plain aluminum. My poor busted V530 rode around in my pockets with my car keys on plenty of back-country hikes, to the point where much of the printing on the body is worn away past legibility. Still, it looks amazingly good, and if it still worked I&#8217;d still be using it.<\/p>\n<p>The V530 has a feature important to me: A dock charger. The charger wall wart plugs into this little flying-saucer thingie with a plastic insert unique to the V530 body (other inserts are available for other cameras) and when I come back from a hike, I just drop the camera into the dock and it&#8217;s charged again within the hour. I know, people who take more than forty or fifty shots in a session will need to carry a spare charged battery, but I&#8217;m just not that avid. I have (or will soon have again) a much more capable camera for deliberate photography. Pocket cameras have a different mission in my universe: The V530 rides with me <em>in case<\/em> I need to take a photo&#8211;say, if I spot a bear rifling a trash can or a flock of wild turkeys up on the mountain slopes. Rather than pack a full camera bag when I&#8217;m not sure I will encounter anything remarkable, I just toss the V530 in my pocket with my keys so it&#8217;ll be there if I need it.<\/p>\n<p>The used V530 cost me forty bucks plus shipping. Not too damned bad for a fully-functional camera in better shape than the one I&#8217;d been using. It was dusty (especially the dock) and a little greasy where fingers had been gripping it, but a few alcohol wipes took care of that. I&#8217;m seriously considering buying a &#8220;shelf spare&#8221; if another comes up on eBay, just in case the gremlins descend again in the future. It&#8217;s easily the best digital I&#8217;ve ever had, and for &#8220;opportunistic photography&#8221; I&#8217;m quite sure it&#8217;s as good as you&#8217;ll find.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The camera gremlins have been active here this year: Both of mine were stolen at a dog show in February, and Carol misplaced hers last week. Fortunately, I bought a used Kodak V530 on eBay to replace my 5-year-old and now defunct V530, so we were able to take pictures at Aero&#8217;s pivotal dog show [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[51],"class_list":["post-1210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-photography"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1210"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1210\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1211,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1210\/revisions\/1211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.contrapositivediary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}