The Best in the lot... Review on Kodak EasyShare Z612

Take a look at my Flickr Photo Gallery. All my photos are taken with Kodak EasyShare Z612.

https://flickr.com/photos/ronakg/

Here I take the honor to write the first review of Kodak Z612. I doubt if I am the first user of this camera in India, because it is not available in India yet(UPDATE - It is available in India now at a price tag of 18k).

After lots n lots of research work (more than 2 months) I finally ordered Kodak Z612. And let me tell you I am not disappointed at all. In fact this master piece has delivered more than expected. In fact I didn't even considered Kodak against canon and nikon when I initially started looking at different cams. But a salesman at GK Wale showed me a Kodak Z650, and I was very much impressed with it. Then I found Z612 was the best camera for my needs.

Here are the features that I was looking for -

1) High Optical Zoom(but still quite compact)

2) Light in weight that I can carry it around

3) Full Manual Controls so that I decide on the settings not the camera

4) Optical Image Stabilization(not digital)

5) A high resolution LCD screen with a good view finder

6) My budget was not more than 15000

The candidates for me were Canon S3IS, Sony DSC-H2 and of course Kodak Z612. The image quality of these three cameras is almost equal, with one or other being good in some aspect. I think you must have gone through the camera specification, so I won't be talking about that here.

So I'll start with the feel of the Z612. The ergonomics of this camera are excellent. The buttons are very well placed and positioned within easy reach of the thumb and index finger. The LCD is big 2.5 inch 202K pixel. It gains up nicely in low light so that you can frame your subject nicely. The 12X optical zoom and the image stabilization works really well together. The image quality is awesome. The colors that this camera produces is very natural and still very vibrant as with all the Kodak cameras.

I was most impressed with the video quality of this camera. It can take video at 640x320 at 30 fps with stereo sound. And the compression it uses is MPEG-4 QuickTime. So you can store 32 minutes of video in 1 GB card. That is 4 times than that of Canon S3IS. And the video length is alos unlimited(till your memory card fills up fully i.e. 2 GB card can hold 1 hr of video). You can use the 12X optical zoom while using video. Though it does lose focus while zooming in video, but it comes back to focus really quickly.

The battery life is also very good. It uses Kodak KLIC8000 Li-on battery. And it comes with a charger also. It took more than 200 photos, most of all with flash and with reviewing them all on LCD. The camera allows you to edit the photos in camera it self. You can enhance the photos using Kodak's Picture Perfect Touch technology that will improve the sharpness and the colors. You can tag the photos as favorites and they get emailed automatically when you transfer them to PC. You can even crop the photos in camera itself.

The last and the most important thing is the manual controls. You can control all the settings life exposure, aperture settings, ISO from the camera and decide what is going to work for you. It still has some 20 auto scene modes that you can use in many conditions. Like beach, snow, night, sport, portrait, kids etc.

Now comes the comparison. Both this cameras are very heavy in weight and very big in shape. With Sony cameras you can only use sony proprietary memory cards(thats a big minus for me). As far as image quality is concerned, all three are on par with each other.  And the canon and sony are way too expensive. I can invest that money in buying some good lenses and accessories for my Kodak.

So Just go for this and capture all the important moments of your life. I don't know if this camera is available in India or not, because I searched in all stores of Bangalore but it wasn't there. Finally I ordered it from Amazon USA. So if you are looking for a prosumer camera, just go for the Kodak EasyShare Z612.

Please rate my review and leave your invaluable comments.