Is it a compact or a bit podgy (Kodak Easyshare Z8612 IS)

Member Name: davomrmac

Product:	Kodak Easyshare Z8612 IS
Date:	17/10/08 (202 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good lens, great photos

Disadvantages: Lens makes it to big to pocket, no rechargeable battery included

This Kodak camera, the Z8612 IS,costs around £125. I did not have to buy it, I was sent it by the manufacturer to review.

It has a resolution of 8.1 megapixels. The lens is equivalent (35mm) to 36-432mm thanks to a 12x optical zoom range. The screen on the back is 2.5-inches and has a 230,000 dot resolution, so nice and crisp. It also has an optical image stabilizer. There is 21MB of internal memory, with extra added via an SD or SDHC memory card. It does all the normal things you would expect, like macro, VGA movies, self timer, red-eye reduction, exposure compensation. It has handy scene modes for taking sport, night, portrait (and many more) shots. It also has a a dial on the top to access smart scene, high ISO, P (program), A (aperture priority), S (shutter priority), M (manual), panorama (left-right, right-left ), video modes.

Now, onto handling. The Z8612 is about the size of a smallish compact. The only problem is that it doesn't know if it is a compact or mini-DSLR, as it has this large protruding lense sticking out the front. It looks nice, but means that you CANNOT stick this camera in your pocket. If you want a camera you can take anywhere, don't buy this. The actual size is 104 × 65.6 × 70.5mm and it weighs 290g, so not too heavy.

Let's get the other bad bits out of the way first. Turning the camera on is awful. The on switch is located on the back of the camera, it also doubles as a switch for turning the flash on... so everytime you turn on the camera the flash pops up and you have to push it down again. Second bad thing, the lens cap is not integrated, so forgot to take it off, turn the camera on and the plastic cover pops off onto the floor. Last one now, I promise. The battery is a Kodak CR3V non-rechargeable. This is bad, it should come with a charger and suitable battery. Otherwise, as I did, I got through two charges on a pair of AA batteries to do the review.

Good things now. The Schneider 12x lens is brilliant, this is good glass. It gives a really nice range too, ideal for zooming in on far away objects. The macro is excellent. The images produced are very very nice too. Though they are only just over 8 megapixels, they do not contain a lot of noise and are nicely coloured. Using the flash is also good, it has a nice long range and lit up some of my photos at over 8 metres. Using Smartmode, the Kodak tries to decide what sort of photo you are taking and most of the time it works. If I tried to take a close up of a flower, sure enough it switched to macro, well done little camera. I did not test the movie mode, so cannot comment.

*UPDATE* Having just tried to take some photos on a country walk. The lack of viewfinder is a bad exclusion. The screen is nice, bright and colourful, but the sunny day made it virtually impossible to see. Unless of course I held the camera with one hand and shielded the screen with the other... hardly ideal.

The battery and shape of this Z8612 lets it down in my book, but that said it does deliver good images. If you don't mind the extra size, go to your local camera shop and try it out, you will be pleased with the results.

Summary: Good camera, let down by its size

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