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Details at a glance
Megapixels: 8
Optical Zoom: 5.8x
Digital Zoom: 2x
LCD: 2.5 inches
Storage: SD/MMC
We clicked with
Manual zoom ring, quick to access scene modes, super wide lens, wealth of features while still easy to use.
Shots in the dark
Not great if you have big hands, slow compared to a DSLR, defaulting to standard jpeg every time you change scene mode, oh and most people say it's ugly.
Links
More Kodak information
www.kodak.com
Price Comparison:
Kodak P880
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Part of Kodak's bridge camera range the P880 has an ultra wide zoom lens and a whole host of features that you might expect from a DSLR. There's an eyepiece viewfinder as well as a large LCD screen and even a dedicated hotshoe to attach an external flash.
Features
Bridge cameras are having a tough time of it. The prices of DSLRs are dropping all the time and for not much more than the list price of the P880 you might be able to pick up something like a D50 if you shop hard. As part of the fight back, bridge cameras are getting better and better lenses and filling out their feature set. At the same time, the advertisers are selling the non-changeable lens as a benefit - if you can't remove the lens then dust can't get in and there are very few DSLRs that let you preview the shot on the LCD before you take it.
As you'd expect from a modern bridge camera, the P880 can do just about everything a DSLR can except change lenses. There are a couple of supplementary lenses that adapt the zoom lens for either longer or wider shots. Here are some of the special tricks the P880 can pull off.
Ultra wide lens
At first glance the 5X zoom looks relatively modest. In 35mm equivalent it runs from 24mm to 120mm. 120mm will get nice portraits and is really the starting point for a telephoto lens that you might use for wildlife or sports. To make it really useful for these purposes you might want a 2X converter.
24mm is pretty wide. In fact, not long ago it would have been called “super wide”. Nowadays most DSLRs come with a kit lens that is something like an 18 - 70mm. What you need to remember is that DSLRs have a crop factor that makes these lenses behave as though they were longer. Most prosumer DSLRs have a crop factor of around 1.5 so that kit lens becomes a 24 - 105mm and that's pretty well what the Kodak P880 gives you. Already we see that it is trying to challenge the DSLR market. Remember that at the wide end every millimetre counts - a 24mm lens is significantly wider than a 28mm which is where most bridge cameras start.
RAW and TIFF modes
Two other features that you would normally associate with a DSLR are high quality uncompressed tiff files and more flexible raw files. Again the P880 has these allowing all the options that the keen amateur and semi pro might require.
One feature that I haven't seen on any other camera is the ability to develop raw files within the camera. Shoot a raw and then process it into a jpeg by applying exposure compensation or changing the white balance or colour settings and the camera will save it as a new file. The only thing that hampers this is the extremely slow write times for raw files. I timed a raw file as about 12 seconds from pressing the shutter to the camera finishing writing on a SanDisk Ultra II card. Worse the camera doesn't have a shot buffer (which is fairly rare on a bridge) so that is 12 seconds of watchin shots go by until you are ready to press the button again.
Eyepiece viewfinder
The screen on the back of the P880 is pretty good. It is claimed to be an indoor/outdoor display and it's true that it works well in both dim light and bright sunlight. However, there will be times when it won't do the job and an eyepiece will work better. The viewfinder on the P880 is quite good in reasonable light. In dark conditions the eyepiece gains up and looks quite noisy but at least you can see what's going on.
I actually found the screen/viewfinder combination a little tricky. The camera is designed very like a DSLR so it's tempting to use the eyepiece for shooting and the LCD screen to review images. To make this work, there's a little button you ave to press to swap from one screen to another. If Kodak could build in eye start technology as seen on the Sony A100 and turn on the eyepiece when you bring it to you eye this would be excellent.
External flash
The Kodak P880 wants to be taken seriously as a DSLR alternative. It's encouraging to see it with not only a dedicated hotshoe allowing you to use an external flash but also a PC socket for studio use. Too many cameras are dropping these and the P880 gives you a lot of options by including them - I was able to use the P880 quite happily with studio flash to produce some really nice portraits.
Handling
The Kodak P880 is rather an odd size. As a bridge camera it is bulky - it's not a camera you could really slip into a jacket pocket. You will want to carry a small bag to keep the P880 in or hang it from your shoulder on the camera strap. However, it is pretty small when you try to use it. If you have large hands then you might fin the P880 a bit of a struggle.
One thing I do love is the manual zoom ring. Even on bridge cameras it's common to see the “W” and “T” buttons to zoom the lens in and out. On the P880 you turn the zoom ring from one side to another and this is quick and easy to use. If you want to get really creative then you can zoom during exposure for those whacky zoom blurs too. If you want to use manual focus then there's also a ring for this and this works much better than any other method I've used. The P880 magnifies the central section of the screen so you can fine tune the focus though you have to turn the focus ring a lot more than you think to focus the camera.
There are buttons all over the back of the camera. I'm used to cameras with lots of controls - the Kodak P880 has 17 buttons, two rotating wheels, a 4 way controller and a power switch. That's almost exactly the same as on the pro level Nikon D2x - which is about twice the size. Once you get used to the buttons they are actually pretty easy to get along with. The only problem comes when you need something that isn't on a button. Since there are so many I always scanned them at least 3 times before going into the comprehensive menus.
One control that works very well is the scene mode dial. Turn this to “portrait” an you actually get a choice of portrait modes. There's regular portrait, night portrait and anti shake night portrait. The other scene modes are similar. It may seem a small thing but grouping the scene modes this way make for very quick selection of the correct mode and I can see owners actually using the scene modes on this camera simply because they are quick to select.
Image quality
Image quality is rather good on the P880. On previous Kodaks, I have commented on the out of focus areas looking plasticky or smeared. The P880 seems free of this fault and pictures look smooth and natural throughout.
Chromatic aberration is virtually absent which is even more remarkable when you consider the super wide lens fitted. The lens will produce flare when the sun is in the frame but this is only to be expected and not too serious. Noise is pretty much what you would expect from 8 MP crammed onto a small chip. ISO 50 and ISO 100 are both very useable. By ISO 200 it is clearly visible in shadow areas and by ISO 400 it is starting to affect skin tones. On my screen noise is noticeable in 10X8 size pictures at ISO 400 if you look for it. Much bigger than this and you will be reaching for your favourite noise reduction software. It's within normal ranges for a camera in this class but you'll want to be very careful with exposure if you shoot a lot of ISO 400 pictures. ISO 800 and ISO 1600 are only available at VGA resolution - presumably because of noise issues.
The lens, like all current Kodaks, is a Scneider-Kreuznack and as we've come to expect from these lenses does a great job. It's pretty sharp right across the lens at all zoom settings and certainly doesn't let the sensor down.
Shooting
Once you look at the stats, the difference from a true DSLR is obvious. Start up time for the P880 is a couple of seconds, which is respectable for a compact but well behind the average for a DSLR.
Shutter lag is a respectable 0.3 seconds. Shot to shot time is quite good at 1.2 seconds. Those figures are both good for a bridge camera - a sluggish DSLR might be at least 3 times as quick as that.
The camera offers plenty of scene modes for different shooting scenarios such as beach, night landscape and sunset. As I mentioned these are logically grouped and scene selection is particularly good on the P880. As you'd expect for a camera in this class there is also P, A, S and M modes. S, A and M modes can be a little fiddly to use because you have to press a tiny button next to the thumbwheel before rotating the wheel. In tests I almost always had to take the camera from my eye to change aperture or shutter speed.
As with other Kodaks, the info button lets you choose 4 different display modes. These range from a minimalist focus area only up to focus area, shooting information, alignment grid and live histogram. All of these work just the same if you are using the display screen or the viewfinder so you can get feedback on any aspect of the camera.
The supplied Li-on battery is good for at least a day's shooting and recharges reasonably quickly. One oddity is that when the battery runs down the camera won't charge the flash - it will still take pictures but without firing the flash. They will, of course, be underexposed.
What's not to like
I've already talked about the handling - to put it simply if you have big hands you are going to hate this camera. That's probably true of most bridge cameras - there are simply too many buttons to fit onto a small body for comfort.
One other huge annoyance is found in the scene modes. If you choose, say, portrait mode then the camera will decide that you want to shoot standard quality jpegs. It doesn't matter how many times you set it to fine jpeg, every time you change scene mode the camera defaults to standard. Thankfully the setting is remembered in P, A, S and M mode but it is annoying to the point of looking like a bug in the other modes.
Focusing can be a little hit and miss and certainly isn't the fastest we've seen. Occasionally the camera can just fail to lock onto subjects even with quite high contrast ratios. This may affect something less than 1% of shots but is frustrating especially because the P880 will let you shoot even when the subject is out of focus. Unless you pay careful attention to the focus marks you can get blurred shots when you wouldn't expect to.
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When I contacted Kodak and told them this camera had done well in our £250 test they were surprised because the RRP is £450. However, search hard and you'll find it for less than £250. At that price it represents a very good buy. Image quality is up there with the best and it has more features than you could shake a stick at. However, if you start comparing it to a DSLR then you will probably be disappointed. The speed of operation is decent for a bridge camera but seems glacial next to even an entry level DSLR. But if you just want an easy to use camera that will grow with you and provide trouble free use then the Kodak P880 is well worth a look - especially if you want a wide angle lens.
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Camera specification
| Mega-pixels: | 8 |
Photo: | JPEG, RAW, TIFF |
| Optical Zoom: | 5.8x |
RAW: | Yes |
| Digital Zoom: | 2x |
Aperture: | f/2.8-8 |
| LCD: | 2.5 inch |
Focal Length: | equiv. 24-140mm |
| Dimensions: | 115.8x97x91.2mm |
Shutter: | 16 sec to 1/4000 |
| Weight: | 500g |
Exposure: | ISO 50 to 1600 |
| Storage: | SD/MMC |
Movie: | 640X480@30fps |
| Int. Mem: | 32mb |
Battery: | Li-ion |
| Interface: | USB 2.0, AV |
PictBridge: | Yes |
