Kodak Easyshare M863 Digital Camera: An Easy-to-Use Compact Camera for Beginners and Family Memory-Keepers
Written: Sep 26 '09 (Updated Sep 26 '09)
Product Rating:
Ease of Use:
Durability:
Battery Life:
Photo Quality:
Shutter Lag
Pros: Good picture quality, very easy to use, excellent battery life, many scene modes, reasonable price
Cons: No viewfinder, could be faster, doesn’t handle action shots well
The Bottom Line:
The Kodak Easyshare M863 is a great camera for beginners or the average family photographer. It offers good picture quality and a good mix of features at a reasonable price.
noangels's Full Review: Kodak EasyShare M863 Digital Camera
For years I have served as my family's resident digital camera expert. In college, I worked in the digital camera departments of two electronics stores and was required to maintain a high level of product knowledge. My interest in cameras was sustained afterwards by my love of digital photography and scrapbooking. Now that I'm married, I have been elected as the advisor of digital camera purchases for my in-laws as well.
We decided to purchase a digital camera as a joint birthday present for my sister in law. She isn't the most tech-savvy person and this camera was to be her first digital, so I endeavored to find a camera that would be very easy for me to teach her to use. Picture quality is always paramount to me as well, especially since my sisters in law and I often trade pictures and use one another's cameras. This purchase was also a good opportunity to do some preliminary research for a potential upgrade for my mother's Kodak Z730, though it is still going strong after four years.
After comparing a number of models for this purchase, I decided on the Kodak Easyshare M863. My sister in law has been very happy with the camera! Physical Appearance
The Kodak Easyshare M863 is a compact camera model that is the perfect size for those who wish to carry their camera everywhere to always be prepared for recording memories. The camera measures 3.6 inches wide by 2.2 inches high by 0.8 inches deep, making it similar in size to a standard deck of playing cards, but thinner. The rather flat design makes it incredibly portable, taking up little space in a handbag or pocket, but I find it more difficult to hold than thicker models. Rather than extending around the sides of the camera, more of my hand winds around the front of the camera and I have to be careful to keep my fingers away from the lens and flash. It isn't a terrible inconvenience, though, and it's easy to deal with in exchange for the extra portability of having such a small camera. Without the battery and memory card, this camera weighs only 4.1 ounces.
Aesthetically, this is a sleek camera. It is available in five colors; blue, pink, red, silver, and copper. All of the colors are very subtle, metallic tones rather than louder, more vibrant shades. We purchased the pink model for my sister in law. It's a very pretty hue. I really like this trend of more cosmetically appealing cameras as I think aesthetic concerns are becoming more important now that cameras are so portable. As digital cameras become take-everywhere devices, their style will be just as important as it is for cell phones.
The M863 has a simple button layout that is very intuitive. The buttons you need to access while shooting are easily accessible from where your hands rest while operating the camera. It's a very logical design. The top of the camera is home to the power button, flash setting button, mode dial, and shutter button. I found all of the camera's buttons to be a comfortable size for my fingers except the power button, which is small enough that it's easier to operate it with my nail than my finger.
A standard ¼ inch tripod mount is located on the bottom of the camera. The back of the camera houses the buttons for review, share, menu, delete, and zoom. The zoom is located at the top right corner, just above where my thumb naturally rests while shooting. A 5-way button allows you to navigate menus or activate the burst mode or self timer. The buttons are all clearly labeled with words or symbols to indicate their function.
The back of the camera is also home to its 2.7-inch LCD screen. The screen is good quality, providing a sharp display for taking and reviewing pictures. The large size makes it easy to frame photos and check that you're capturing all of the details you wish to capture. The screen is listed as indoor/outdoor quality and most of the time it is visible outdoors, but there are times when it was too dark to see the screen in bright sunlight. The camera does not have a viewfinder, so there is no alternative for when the screen is rendered useless by sun glare. This detail was enough to eliminate the Kodak M863 as ever being added to my personal collection or being the replacement for my mother's camera. I almost never purchase cameras without this feature, but I knew for a fact that my sister in law would never use it, even if the screen was useless.
The screen feels sturdy for a digital camera screen, but I always recommend purchasing a case to protect the camera when not in use. Ease of Use
True to the Easyshare name, the Kodak Easyshare M863 is extremely easy to use. As I mentioned previously, all of the buttons are well labeled and intuitively placed. Once you turn the camera on, even the most technologically-inept user can take a picture. For those who wish to take advantage of all of the camera's features, Kodak makes it easy by explaining everything right on the screen. Though most can guess that text/document mode is for taking close-up images of documents, Kodak explains it in plain language when you select that mode.
My sister in law was able to learn to take pictures with this camera without too much of a problem. She now only needs my help when she accidentally changes settings. She's not the type who would teach herself how to fix these minor problems, but the manual does a very good job of explaining anything you want to know about the camera and its operation.
Picture Quality and Features
The Kodak Easyshare M863 offers good overall picture quality. The images are often properly exposed without much effort from the user. The colors are very vibrant, which may support the notoriety Kodak has for oversaturation of color in their digital cameras. Personally, I think this color is actually preferred for the average user. If you take mostly family photos and plan to display or scrapbook the photos, the vibrancy of the color actually makes the photos more appealing. I've never heard anyone looking at my sister in law's photo album and say, "The pictures from your baby cousin Luke's birthday party are far too colorful!"
The pictures have been consistently sharp in daylight. Lowlight situations are a little tougher for the camera, but its performance is still above average. There is a minimal amount of graininess in lowlight images in auto mode. Despite the camera having blur reduction, blur is sometimes a problem because of slow shutter speeds. It may not be noticeable to the average user. My sister in law has never complained of blurriness, even in images that I considered to be very blurry.
I would consider this camera's performance for action shots to be mediocre. This camera supports shutter speeds of 4 seconds to 1/1400 second. The latter is a little slow for recording some events accurately. I was able to shoot some really nice images of my dog playing with a ball with this camera, but when he was playing with my parents' German shepherd, the pictures were a little blurry. The camera's shot-to-shot speed also contributes to its lackluster action performance. Though the camera has a decent initial response time (0.4 seconds), the 1.3 second shot-to-shot time is average at best. There are many compact camera models that can record more than 2 pictures per second in a continuous shot mode. The M863 is limited to a 3-shot burst mode.
With 8.2 effective megapixels, the manufacturer brags that you can make prints up to 30 by 40 inches. I would actually consider print to a maximum of 16 by 20 inches for best quality. My sister in law primarily prints 4 by 6 inch prints and an occasional 5 by 7 inch print so this camera exceeded her needs. I'd consider 8.2 megapixels to be well suited for most average family photographers as well, providing the flexibility for 8 by 10 inch prints or cropping the images.
This camera has a 3x optical zoom, which is average for a compact camera and sufficient for most home usage. The camera also has a 5x digital zoom which users shouldn't use. This zoom digitally crops the image, reducing the quality and throwing out digital information. It's much more effective to take the picture with only the optical zoom and crop it later. At least editing the image later allows you to save the original for future use.
The camera's flash is pretty powerful, though in some cases too much so. When it fires at full force, it sometimes sucks the life out of photos. The flash can be set to auto, red eye, fill, or off. The camera does a decent job of determining when the flash is necessary in most situations. My only complaint about the camera being flash-happy would be when trying to capture far away images at night. It would have been a good idea for the camera to favor using no flash when the camera is fully zoomed out. Once the flash fires, the shutter speed increases, preventing enough light from hitting the sensor. The result is a dark mess of a picture.
The automatic shooting mode on this camera works well most of the time, which is perfect for my sister in law since she never uses other modes. For even better images, you can set the camera to take normal (default), landscape, or macro images in auto. If you're not happy with a shot, the camera offers a number of different scene modes that may be better suited to your shooting situation:
Portrait mode: This mode is for shooting portraits of people. It automatically switches the flash to red eye and sets an aperture that focuses nicely on subjects that are 6-10 feet away. I use this mode almost exclusively at family events. In this mode, I almost never get red eye. It works well for outdoor portraits but also produces sharp images indoors. Even for lowlight portraits, I rarely find the images to be grainy. I used this mode to take a number of pictures of my husband's cousin at her graduation party, one of which my husband's Aunt loved so much that she used it to make photo thank-you cards! Sports mode: This mode uses the camera's faster shutter speeds to take action shots. In theory this mode should freeze the action but I found it to be hit-or-miss. I was able to get decent shots of children playing, but photos of my husband's cousin diving into the pool were a blurry mess.
Landscape mode: Intended for photos of landscapes, this mode utilizes the camera's vibrant color capturing. I was able to take some really beautiful pictures of a pond in the park with the changing foliage behind it. The images were crisp and detailed. When I transferred the images to my computer, I could zoom-in to see a great deal of detail in the trees which were probably 200 feet away in the background.
Close up mode: This mode produces sharp close-up images of subjects. I don't see any difference between images shot in this mode and those shot in auto mode set to macro. I was able to get some detailed images of flowers in both. One image I took of a sunflower in my mother-in-law's garden turned out well enough that I used it as my September image in a scrapbook calendar.
Children mode: Intended for pictures of kids, which seems to use faster shutter speeds to snap shots, even when the subject can't sit still.
Night portrait mode: This mode has the same purpose as portrait mode, only this one is intended for night use. When I compare night portraits from both modes, the ones taken in night portrait are slightly brighter. All of the photos I took in this mode were sharp.
Beach, Snow, and Fireworks modes: All three of these modes are rather specific modes intended for the subjects they're named after. Beach mode is meant to lessen the degree of overexposure and increase color contrast in bright sunlight. I really loved the results of this mode the one time I actually used it on the beach. The only other time I shot in it was during a barbeque. I shot a variety of portrait and landscape images, and all of them turned out well. Snow mode sets the white balance to ensure that the snow is the whitest white. I have not yet used this mode after a snowfall. Fireworks mode uses slower shutter speeds to capture more striking images of fireworks. If you're going to use this mode, you need a tripod. Even with my arm propped up on the railing of a wood deck, the images I took of the fireworks on the fourth of July were extremely blurry.
Self portrait mode: This mode works similar to portrait mode, but focuses on subjects that are 2-3 feet away. This is a newer mode that I've been seeing in some cameras, likely brought on by a generation of MySpace-inspired self portrait-photographers. It does work, though, as we took quite a few great pictures with it.
Backlight mode: This mode uses the fill flash mode to light the front of a subject that is backlit.
Night landscape mode: Surprisingly (not), this mode is intended for shooting landscapes at night. This is another tripod-necessary mode. I was able to get a beautiful shot of the New York City skyline from the ferry with this mode, but it took me about seven shots before my arm was steady enough against the railing to get a sharp image.
Text/Document mode: Another close-up mode, which is intended for taking pictures of documents. This mode did produce very sharp images of Christmas cards, but I didn't see any difference between the same images taken in the other close-up modes.
Manner/Museum mode: Turns the flash off for instances when the flash is prohibited.
Flower mode: A mode for taking pictures of flowers. Though close-up mode produced better tight shots of blooms, flower mode takes great pictures of beds of flowers. When I took some wide shots in the garden, this mode produced some vibrant pictures.
Sunset mode: Obviously intended for sunset pictures, this mode produced some striking photos.
Panorama mode: Allows you to take three shots and stitch them together into one panoramic shot.
Candlelight mode: This is a lowlight mode that uses a warmer white balance and favors warmer colors. I used this mode extensively while taking pictures of our Christmas decorations. It provided the perfect balance of color for the shots I wanted.
Digital image stabilization mode: This mode should counteract camera shake, but I found it unnecessary as its own mode. This would have been helpful as a feature to be used in conjunction with the aforementioned modes that I said needed a tripod.
High ISO mode: This mode takes advantage of the higher ISO settings on the camera to produce lighter images in lowlight situations. Every picture I took in this mode was grainy, with noise appearing in the darker colors. I wouldn't recommend using it.
Some other features of the M863 include face detection, which actually is very accurate. The camera has a self timer that can be set to one or two shots after two or ten seconds. This camera offers an exposure compensation of +/-2 in increments of 0.3. Aperture settings of f/2.8-f/5.1 are supported. The ISO can be manually set to 64, 100, 200, 400, 800, or 1600, while auto supports ISO 64-320. The auto white balance does a decent job of determining the proper setting, with the exception of exceptionally warm light like candlelight. The white balance can be set to daylight, tungsten, fluorescent, or open shade. The camera offers high, natural, low, sepia or black and white color options. I almost exclusively leave the camera in high color for better contrast. I recommend never using sepia or black and white. This can be done with editing software instead (even the included Kodak software) and you'll have the added benefit of having a copy of the color image saved as well.
The camera's sharpness can be set to high, normal, or low. This is another setting that I never change. I have never found an instance when it was appropriate to lower the sharpness of an image and if I did, I would soften it with editing software.
Reviewing the images is easy. The camera allows you to zoom in on the images, making it easy to see details and check for image blur. The camera does not provide a histogram to show whether the image is properly exposed, but this probably won't be an issue for the average user.
Video
The Kodak Easyshare M863 offers video capture with sound. There are two video quality settings: VGA (640 × 480) at 15 frames per second (fps) or QVGA (320 × 240) at 30 fps. The camera supports continuous video shooting of up to 80 minutes depending on the capacity of your memory card. The video playback on the camera is acceptable. Though the speaker doesn't play very loud, it's enough to hear what you have recorded.
Battery Life
This camera takes a lithium ion rechargeable battery (KLIC-7001). I only purchase cameras with this type of battery as those that take alkaline batteries drain them too quickly. Rechargeable proprietary batteries last for hundreds of pictures before needing to be recharged making them more cost effective. The initial cost is higher, but you won't have to buy new ones for years. The down side to proprietary batteries, however, is that they need to be purchased at electronics stores. If you need to use your camera and don't have time to charge the battery, you can't stop at a pharmacy and pick up regular batteries. As always, I recommend purchasing an extra battery and keeping it charged, in your camera bag. I usually carry no fewer than two extra charged batteries with my cameras. They usually cost about $30-$40 per battery, but it's still more economical than alkaline batteries in the long term.
This camera has excellent battery life. It has lasted between two and three-hundred pictures, depending on the flash usage and how much time I spent reviewing the pictures. The battery is recharged in-camera using the included AC adapter.
Memory Card
The Kodak Easyshare M863 takes the most common type of memory card: Secure Digital (SD) and Secure Digital High Capacity (SDHC). Because of Kodak's high compression, their cameras can squeeze many more images on a memory card than others. I recommend high speed memory cards so the camera doesn't have extra lag because of slow memory-writing speeds. We purchased the San Disk Extreme III 2 gigabyte (GB) SD Memory Card, which holds about 1,000 pictures at full quality. I once used one of my extra San Disk Ultra II 2 GB SD Memory Cards and I noticed that the time between continuous shots was slightly slower, but not very noticeable.
The camera has 16 megabytes (MB) of internal memory. This is meant to serve as overflow memory if you run out of space on your memory card so it only holds about 10 pictures at full quality.
Connecting It
The camera connects to a computer using the included USB cable. It is very easy to connect. The Kodak CD-ROM includes basic, easy-to-use editing software that works with Windows XP or later, or Mac OS X10.3 or higher. I have used it with both Windows XP and Vista systems with no problems. I prefer to use my computer's memory card reader to transfer pictures.
An Audio/Video cable is included with the camera for connection to a television. I have never used this feature on this camera, but the manufacturer does state that it is NTSC or PAL selectable.
In the Box
The contents of the box:
Kodak Easyshare M863 Digital Camera Kodak KLIC 7001 Li-Ion Rechargeable Digital Camera Battery AC Adapter USB Cable Wrist Strap Manual Kodak Easyshare Software Custom camera inset for Kodak dock
Price
We purchased the camera for $180, though it has since come down in price to $120. Walmart currently has it for $99. For the image quality, I'd consider this camera to be a steal. The manufacturer includes a one-year warranty, but we purchased an extended warranty from the store for an extra $30.
Other Items Considered
I compared a number of models for this camera purchase, but the biggest contender was the Canon Digital Elph SD1100IS. This camera is my choice point-and-shoot because it's a little powerhouse of a camera with awesome picture quality. I strongly considered it but decided against it for several reasons. It would have been a very difficult camera for my sister in law to learn to operate. She must have borrowed it twenty times and still asks me to give her a crash course in its operation each time she borrows it. It was also priced at about $50 more at the time of purchase and though it offers plenty of features to justify the increase, my sister in law wouldn't use any of them.
For those considering the two models, my final verdict is that the Canon SD1100IS is good for those with an interest in photography who want moderate shooting control, without digital SLR prices. For someone looking for a reasonably-priced camera without all the bells and whistles, the Kodak Easyshare M863 is a great value.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 180.00 This Camera is a Good Choice if You Want Something... Fool-Proof for Absolute Beginners
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