Cons: not small enough, battery life, not enough features
The Bottom Line: Epinions and I have a different opinion about what constitues "good" battery life (200-300 exposures!!) when the battery costs $9. It's a good point and shoot.
danneauxs's Full Review: Kodak EASYSHARE Z1085 IS Digital Camera
BATTERY: Since the most common complaint I've seen about this camera is the battery life I will address this first. I can't speak for others but I have not had a problem with battery life. Most reviews I've seen here and other places that complain about the battery not lasting never gave a length of life for their battery. Some said a few minutes others complained it only lasted 2 days. First, lets consider expected battery life. This camera uses an LCD screen with no viewfinder. It takes quite a bit of power to run an LCD screen and just because it's labeled as a "camera" people seem to expect it to run for dozens of hours on a single battery. That's not going to happen. Most digital video recorders only run for about 1-2 hours and that's considered acceptable but not for a LCD screen camera. Why? I put it down to perception. BUT, I will state that this camera does seem power intensive. Some possible reasons might be the continuous auto focus or a bright LCD screen, the use of the flash in almost all situations. I'm not sure. I do know that this camera does not do well on regular alkaline batteries or even brand new NiMh batteries. I haven't tried Lithium AA batteries as of yet, but the supplied Kodak CRV3 battery took over 100 flash photos and well over an hour of video as well as 1-1.5 hours of reviewing and has not run down. I've replaced this battery with "juice" brand rechargeable Lithium batteries. At $9 a pop at Wal-Mart the CRV3 non-rechargeable batteries are a bit too expensive to make this camera daily use friendly. Fortunately, I was able to pick up 2 of the aforementioned rechargeable lithium batteries, a charger with an AC and auto power supply for around $20. Since I bought the camera for $81 on eBy as a factory remanufactured with a 1 year Kodak warranty plus a 2 year SquaredTrade warranty which takes effect after the factory warranty ($15+) I felt I was still ahead of the game. These "juice" batteries took 2 hours of HD video, dozens of HD flash photos, and reviewed about and hour of video. That being said compared to my dad's Canon which WILL run for hours on 2 alkaline batteries I will state I am disappointed. One of the main (read deciding factor) for buying this camera was it's ability to run on 2 AA batteries. Kodak didn't state that alkies would do the job or that NiMh's would barely suffice for a few shots but that was my assumptions. It's an assumption based on past experience but the past isn't now. Unfortunately, with my current budget constraints info on the lithium AA battery types will have to wait for a future update.
Eventually I'll get around to taking the freshly charge Lithium batteries and posting how many photos you can take on a charge, and again on how much video on a charge. Since this means me sitting around for hours snapping photos, then taking video it might be a bit for that data to show up. Thanks for being patient.
PHOTO QUALITY:
I know this is an important concern when buying a camera. For me though it's a bit subjective. I am not nor will I ever pretend to be a good photographer. I try but... Anyway, people have different expectations and tastes. I think it takes ok photos but for me the smartphoto feature is a bit of a wash. The colors seem too ward and a bit saturated as well as being too soft (not sharp enough). I guess Kodak was going for warm and fuzzy (lol) and they got it. That's for indoor photos. Outdoor photos are still soft and a bit saturated but I suppose you call them vibrant if you were so inclined. That's what I mean by subjective. I've read many excellent professional reviews that are quite detailed in their analysis of this cameras ability. Search for them on your favorite search engine. I'll let the professionals review such things and you'd do well to read several such reviews at least.
Bottom line is I'm Ok with the photo quality. Not impressed but ehh...
VIDEO QUALITY:
Video on cameras is something that has been getting steadily and steadily better. Four of five years ago the best you might hope for was 320x240 @15fps and you were rockin! Then, a few cameras went to full VGA (640x408) and even hit 30 fps. Still, while the resolution was there the quality of the video wasn't. Now, we're hitting HD resolutions and while some reviews for other HD cameras weren't so positive (and based upon the posted sample clips I can't blame them) I have to say that I'm quite pleased with this camera for use as a video camcorder. The HD is wide screen perspective (or at least seems to be) and looks pretty good on my flat screen 19" monitor. The VGA (640x480) video is quite good too and I was happy with the footage I shot of our trip to Sonic (yay M&M blasts!! ) I took when testing it. QVGA (320x240) was ok but as you could expect it was a bit low quality - you could see artifacts, blocking and pixelation. I wouldn't recommend using this setting unless you really want to capture something on video and you're almost out of card memory. Or if what you want to capture isn't really important. Or if you want to send it through email. Whew, that was a lot of ors. One of the neat things about this camera is that you can zoom while taking a video. Yes, you can hear the zoom motor running while you zoom. Get over it people! This is one of the crappiest complaints I've heard from people about video and zoom. If the camera has optical zoom it will make a noise. The microphone is only about a CM or so from the lens, the motor is housed in the camera and sound conducts even with insulation. It's not that bad so deal with it.
Zoom also takes a second or two to refocus once you use it. That's expected. I had some weird experiences with the continuous auto focus while in video mode. I was indoors but well lit, taking a movie of my in-laws toy poodle. The dog was kinda walking a few steps back and forth but not really farther and closer. I was about 3-4 feet away and the camera kept going slightly out of focus. I don't' know if it was having trouble with the slight movement, the fact that the critter was just so darn fuzzy, or it might have been that there was a bit of shadow cast from a table cloth about where the dog was. Now that I think about it I tend to think it had something to do with the shadow, because yesterday I shot some afternoon video of my wife standing under some shade trees. She was at the edge of the woods with limbs overhanging as low as several feet above her head providing the shade and there were one or two trees at the edge of those limbs so it was a pretty large shaded area. When I put the video on her it did the fuzzy/clear/fuzzy thing and was even more noticeable when I went into the shade. Taking the continuous auto focus helped a bit. Probably added a bit to the life of the battery too.
Low light shooting is ok but you can definitely notice noise due to the low light. For those that don't know what noise is, the best way I can explain it is that the video looks grainy like some old time movies. That happens to all but high end video cameras. And remember, this is a CAMERA that takes video. The line is really starting to blur between cameras and video camera but if you really really need video go with a dedicated video camera. I don't see the need for the expense so I can't really compare the Kodak video results against a dedicated video carmera (most take photos too now) but I'm sure if you look you can find a comparison online. Really, I'm just going along with what I've read; that digital camera take photos first and foremost and video cameras (camcorders?) take video first and foremost.
One thing I'd like to mention is the crazy formats cameras take video in. This Kodak uses .mov as it's container. The actual streams seems to be mp4. I don't have anything other than my computer that plays .mov files. My Sony used the .mpg format which my DVD player could play. I simply burned the .jpg and .mpg files to a DVD and popped it in to view it. Most of the DVD players, even the cheap ones, seemed to handle these disks quite well. I thik it was a crime for Kodak to adopt this standard for their movies. I'm not even sure most PVP or Ipod type devices with play them. Fortunately, video format converters are quite plentiful and several excellent ones are free. Also, unless you have an HD tv you can't display the HD videos and you'll need an adapter/dock to view them from the camera on your TV. The video files are quite large too and even with a 300+ Gig drive you'll fill it up fast. I convert my videos to .avi (Divx or Xvid ) at about 3000K bit rate and step the HD down to DVD resolution (720x480). Which shrinks the size of the file by about 60-70% at a rough guess. If need bee I can add in the exact figures that escape me right now. You can certainly keep the higher resolution but I don't have an HD TV and don't plan on getting one any time soon so... Besides, DVD resolution looks good on my TV so I'm happy.
MEDIA CARDS:
So far I've used a standard 2 Gig SD card, a standard 2 Gig Micro SD card (with adapter) and a Class 4 SHCD 4 Gig card. I thought since I had the first 2 cards sitting around that I'd save a few bucks not having to buy media cards. Wrong! While the SD and Micro SD cards work their write speeds are too low. After taking 3 photos at 10 MP I had to wait almost 30 seconds to take a fourth as the camera popped up a message stating it was "processing..." which I assume meant it was writing the files. There's a little green light right above the LCD screen that would turn red at these times. Even switching to the lowest setting of 2.4 MP didn't add but one or two pictures. I find this highly distressing since my older 5MP Sony never did this to me. I could shoot and shoot and never had to wait for the files to be written to the disk. I might could see if I stayed with 10MP photos but there's no excuse, again no excuse I can see for 2.4MP photos to be so slow in writing. There's 32MB internal memory (21MB is available for writing) but I don't know if this memory is used for buffering photos prior to writing to a disk or not. Using the SDHC class 4 (which is supposed to write at 4MB/s and came close in my benchmark program) you'd thing my problems would be solved. Nope, I can take 5 10MP and 8 2.4MP photos before I get the processing message. It only stays on about 10 seconds, but that' enough to loose a photo op. Eventually I'll get a class 6 card (the fastest I've seen listed to date) and post an update. Still stupid though, you'd figure since I was only taking a pic every 2 seconds that the camera could write to the card fast enough. It's not like each 10MP photo is 30-40 megs. Oddly enough, I didn't have any trouble with video. Even the SD card let me record HD video without a complaint. The longest video I did with that card was about 10 minutes but you'd think it if it could handle writing video photos wouldn't be a problem. I wonder if part of the "processing" message means something else? Still, if it does why the difference with a faster card?
Kodak chat wasn't much help. They kept telling me to update my firmware to take care of the problem. Nope, I already had the latest firmware. Their only other advice was to try a "bigger" card. Like a freshly formatted 2 Gig card might have run out of room after half a dozen photos. They couldn't give me specs on the writing speed or bugger either. Might as well have called my grandmother.
Oh, research any card you're going to buy. I've noticed that even among a single name brand and sticking to a single class different size cards have different write rates. For one manufacturer the 4 Gig class 4 card was much faster than the 2, 8, & 16 cards. And with some it was the 8 Gig card so check up on any card you might buy.
Physical:
This is not a small camera but it's not large. You can get the dimensions at Kodak.com but for a quick idea it's about the size of a 3 pack of D size batteries. Just a bit thicker. I carry it in my relaxed fit jeans front pocket and my slacks. Tight jeans no way. Fine for a purse. Not a shirt pocket camera. I wanted something a bit more meaty for my thick fingered hands and it's a bit easier to steady with the grip (where the batteries are stored) but it's portable enough to carry or even wear with a case on my belt (yeah it's nerdy but I'm old so who cares what other people think.)
The buttons are a bit small if you have larger fingers, but nothing too difficult to hit. Just takes a few minutes to learn to be precise in your pushing. Being so small there are not a lot of single dedicated function buttons. Only 5 plus the navigation "circle" and the ok/enter button. Fortunately, there's aren't a lot of choices in the menus. Or unfortunately.
Menus and Options:
In the Smart Capture mode there are not a lot of options. Flash on, redeye and flash off. You can select the MP. That's about it.
Download and read the extended manual as the provided printed manual is REALLY basic.
Manual mode lets you change certain settings. Using the jog dial you can change the fstop, shutter speed, ISO and Focus (AF, macro, landscape, and MF(manual focus) are the options. Pressing the menu button allows you to change your capture settings: picture size, color mode (natural, low, BW, Sepai) and select between continuous or single AF. In a menu labeled Capture+ you can change the white balance (auto, daylight, tungsten, fluorescent, open shade), Exposure Metering (multi-pattern, center-weight, center-spot), AF Zone (multi, center), Exposure Bracketing Interval, Sharpness (high, normal, low).
Program mode allows changes onscreen for exposure, ISO and focus (MF, macro, landscape, MF) Pressing the menu key allows you to change your capture settings. (They are the same as noted in the above paragraph.)
Panoramic mode is quite cool. I remember when you could only do this on your computer with special software. For those that don't know this mode lets you "stitch" together 3 photos to make one big photo. It sort of simulates a wide angle lens. Sorta. To illustrate, years ago I visited Boston. I stood atop that famous tower in the Paul Revere poem and had an incredible view of the city. A single photo just didn't take in enough of the cityscape. So, I faced left took a photo, faced center and took a photo, then faced right and took a photo. Each photo slight overlapped the view of the previous. If I had used a film camera I could have layed one print next to the other and had an 18" (slightly less due to overlapping) long panoramic view show a long stretch of the city. What I did was use my computer to make one single photo out of all three pictures. Now I could print that whole cityscape to a 4x6, 8x10 or whatever. The photo sometimes looks wide but short. Think letterboxed movies on a non wide screen TV.
Onscreen setting are exposure, ISO, and Focus. Menu button allows you to change Color Mode and AF Control, White Balance, Exposure Metering, AF Zone, and Sharpness.
ISO mode is used to capture photos in low light situations. There are no on screen options for this setting. The menu button allows you to change Color Mode and AF Control.
SCN (scene) mode sets the camera up for specific situations. Smart Capture is meant for all around shooting. I think of it as "surprise" mode. It tries to automatically adjust for the best photo when you surprise it by taking a photo. It has to instantly asses the photo parameters, set itself and take the photo. By using scene mode it's like giving the camera a heads up on the type of photo it's going to need to be ready for. For instance, if you set it for SPORT scene it knows to get ready to capture fast action which gives you a better chance of taking a good photo of say a player making that slam-dunk.
Scenes include Portrait, sport, landscape, night, night landscape, snow, beach, text (for photographing a document), fireworks, flower (close-ups of flowers), manner/museum (turns off sound and flash), self portrait, stage ( less blur, brighter, flash off), candle light, sunset. Menu button allows you to change Color Mode, and AF Control.
All photo modes allow you to change the photo size with the menu button.
Movie mode has no onscreen settings. Menu button lets you choose video size and AF Control.
All modes allow you to enter setup by pressing the Menu button. In setup you can change LCD Brightness (power save, high power), Image Storage (Auto, internal), Set Tag ( birthday, holiday, wedding, clear all, add tag [brings up a virtual keyboard], delete tag), Capture Frame Grid (on, off [divides the screen into 6 blocks by putting thin white lines on the screen]), Date Stamp (on, off), Red Eye Preflash (on, off), Image Stabilizer (Continuous, Single, Off), Quickview (On, off) [displays your photo for a few seconds after you take it], Advance Digital Zoom (Pause, continuous, none) [pause pauses the zoom after you reach the limits of the lens zoom, then zooms in digitally. Since a digital zoom is really just a crop some people don't bother with it. You get the same result by taking a max Optical(lens) zoom and cropping (zooming in the cutting out the rest) of photo on the computer. Results are sometimes better with this method.] Orientation Sensor (still, video) [automatically rotates your photo or video so it's right side up. Ever turned the camera on it's side to get a photo of a whole person or a tall building. When you look at it on the computer it looks like the person or building is laying on it's side. You have to rotate the photo for it to look right. Well the camera automatically can do this for you. Wow, and I thought I was lazy!], Camera Sounds, Sound Volume, Date & Time, Auto Power Off (1, 3, 5, 10 min), Video Out (NTSC, PAL), language, Reset Camera (factory defaults), Format (erase your memory card), About (shows firmware version).
I'm a bit put out that you can't set the sharpness or Color Mode in Smart Capture mode, but maybe Kodak thought that would defeat the purpose of a dumb point and shoot mode. I'm also a bit more put out that you can't adjust the flash level. That's basic. It give you about as much control as an old fashioned flash BULB!. BAHH HUMBUG.
I haven't tried it but they sell "sync flashes" for this camera. About $20 on eBay. This is a larger and more powerful flash and can be quite usefull. Instead of connecting to and being set off by the camera (connection usually is via a hot shoe or a cable plugged into the camera) this flash automatically fires when it sees the flash from your camera. Minuscule time lag. A decent one will even sense what type of flash your camera is using (i.e. red eye reduction or slow flash). One benefit is that the flash usually is mounted on a rail that screws into the bottom of the camera (called a tripod mount hole - that screw hole in the center of the bottom of our camera). This effectively makes the camera a bit wider meaning you have a better grip and thus a steadier platform to take pictures from. I sometimes will attach an external flash even when I don't need the flash just for the steadier platform - especially in video. It's also more comfortable when taking long video. Some have a flash head you can angle. This is great when you don't want to wash out your photo (way too bright); you can bounce the flash off an ceiling and light up a whole room. Really good for indoor photos. Ever take photos at weddings and the room looks bright but when people move they are blurred or if they stand still they are bright but the room behind them is very dark? An external flash is great for this. They AND the room will be well lit.
Conclusion:
I'll probably keep this camera. I guess I expect a bit more, and since it looks like a tiny digital SLR I guess subconsciously I was expecting it to closer to one. For a point and shoot with some manual options it's pretty good.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 81.00 This Camera is a Good Choice if You Want Something... Easy Enough for Anyone to Use
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