Kodak Z710s,
sample images: one,
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Details at a glance
Megapixels: 7.1
Optical Zoom: 10x
Digital Zoom: 5x
LCD: 2 inch
Storage: SD/MMC
Internal: 32mb
Size: 97.8 x 77.5 x 27.8mm
Weight: 285g
We clicked with
Easy to use control system, huge zoom lens, compact size
Shots in the dark
Below average image quality, annoyances in handling, no battery charger, no Image Stabilisation
Links
More Kodak information
www.kodak.com
Price Comparison:
Kodak Z710
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Part of Kodak's bridge camera range the Z710 has a huge 10X zoom lens and plenty of great features. There's an eyepiece viewfinder as well as an LCD screen all in a very compact body.
Features
The “Z” range from Kodak is their “high zoom” range. C is for “point and shoot” (or entry level), V is for Pocket and P is for “performance” (full blown bridge cameras). That kind of tells you what you need to know about this camera - not enough features to count as performance, too big to be compact and too advanced to be a point and shoot. That's a bit of a glib summary but the Z710 is pretty much a 7 million pixel bridge camera with a huge zoom lens. It has the usual features you'd expect from a bridge (including PAS&M modes for full picture control) - but its main trick is that huge lens.
Huge lens
Sorry if it seems like I'm dwelling on this - but that lens is huge. 38 mm to 380 mm. If you're looking for a smallish camera that will shoot everything from landscapes to wildlife the Z710 will be on your list.
38mm is moderately wide. If you remember that your eyes see roughly the same as a 50mm lens then 38mm is somewhat more than you can see right now. It's like taking a couple of steps back from where you are now.
380 mm as compact cameras go is pretty long. Off hand I can't think of many compact camera that will get you closer to the action (the Z710 isn't strictly a compact but by modern standards it's pretty small for a bridge). The Z710 outreaches the Panasonic TZ1 and is only beaten by the Canon S3 IS.
PASM modes
Most bridge cameras have these but they are cool so they deserve special mention. “Back in the film days” there were 4 basic modes. A where you choose the aperture and let the camera figure out the shutter speed; S where you choose the shutter speed and let the camera figure out the aperture; M where you choose the aperture and the shutter speed; P where you let the camera figure out the aperture and shutter speed. All of the auto modes are essentially variants of “P” where you give the camera clues about what kind of picture it's supposed to be taking.
By including these modes, the Z710 lets you take control of the camera and decide what kind of picture you want to take - if you want to. There is also a stack of other modes. It's also a great way to learn about photography and maybe “train” for a more expensive camera since you get to make decisions.
Eyepiece viewfinder
The screen on the back of the Z710 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 Z710 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 have 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.
Handling
The Kodak Z710 is on the small size for a bridge camera. Small enough to slip into the pocket of a fleece, large enough that you might struggle for a moment to get it out again. For comfort you may decide to use a fairly small camera bag. If you have large hands then you might find the Z710 a struggle.
The back of the camera has a novel approach to the usual 4 way selector. There's a tiny joystick which is surrounded by a mode wheel. The wheel lets you make selections such as “scene”, “auto”, “movie” and the joystick lets you refine these choices. Sounds complicated but it's actually a pretty intuitive system. My view is that the 4 way controller has some way to go before we get the ultimate control system but the Z710 has one of the best wheel and joystick controls I've seen.
There are a couple of handling “gotchas” though - both relating to power up.
Turn the camera on with the lens cap on and you'll regret it. Usually you'd regret it because the lens cap would fall off. Depending on exactly how you have attached the cap, the Z710 either pushes the lens cap off or goes into a strange state where it's not really off and not really on. It certainly isn't possible to take pictures. The solution is to remove the lens cap, mutter under your breath, turn the camera off and back on again. This can take a while due to the rather leisurely start up so you'll soon remember to take off the cap before you turn it on.
The other oddity is that when you turn the camera on the flash pops up. It doesn't matter what mode you are in (even movie mode) or whether you have turned the flash off it will still pop up. This annoyed me a lot because usually when you turn a camera on and the flash pops up it's a sign that the camera wants to fire the flash so I would stop and think whether I really want flash or not and then turn it off. All this takes time and removes a useful clue about whether you have the flash turned on or not.
Image quality
I'll be blunt - Kodak can do better than this. It's not that image quality is awful it's just that it's not very good. Almost every fault I look for in images is there. Some of them aren't particularly bad but they add up to a less than satisfying image quality. The Z710 is far from the worst camera I've tested but I think that people buying it for the Kodak name would expect more.
In good light with a nice subject I got pictures that would look fine on a 6X4 or on a computer screen. I printed some out on the Kodak G600 printer dock. This is a reasonably competent printer ad should be well matched to the Z710. The prints were OK. Start to get into more challenging light or print bigger or look more closely at your images and the cracks start to show.
Here's a run down of things I didn't like. Bear in mind the score at the bottom of the review - that's not a terrible score but I really expected better from a Kodak.
- Noise. First the good news - you won't see any at ISO 64. As you'd expect it creeps in as you go higher in ISO. By ISO 400 - forget about it. At a time when low light photography is one of the hot buttons the Z710 performs adequately at ISO 100 and poorly at 200. I wouldn't use this camera over ISO 200.
- Purple fringing. This is a strange one. In some high contrast situations it does very well and exhibits almost no chromatic aberration. In others it shows a lot of fringing. I couldn't always predict when it was or wasn't going to produce fringing - my best guess is that the camera fringes a little but there is software to remove it. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.
- Smooshiness. Kodak images have a characteristic look to them - the defocused areas have a plasticky or “smooshy” look. I've speculated before that this is overactive noise reduction and I does smooth out the shot somewhat. However, it just doesn't look natural to me and it can be seen quite clearly on a 6X4 print even at ISO 64. There's also evidence of overactive noise reduction in some fine detail. I took some pictures of trees with few leaves on them. The top branches fade into the sky - there's clearly a lot of softening of the image going on.
There is plenty of good stuff about the images though. Focusing is reasonably quick and fairly accurate. Metering is pretty much dead on in all but the most challenging light and the Kodak Colour Science chip and Schneider-Kreuznack lens really make the autumn colours pop with lots of contrast and rich bright colours. The lens itself seems pretty distortion free - giving good results at all zoom settings.
Shooting
Performance is “leisurely”. Start up time is something over 3 seconds. Shutter lag is OK and I see no reason to doubt Kodak's figure of 1.7 fps in burst mode. However, fire off a number of shots (more than say 2) and you'll get a screen that says “processing” with an egg timer. This stays up for a variable period of time from shortish to pretty long (over 6 seconds on one occasion) though it's not really clear what it's doing in this time.
The camera offers plenty of scene modes for different shooting scenarios such as beach, night landscape and sunset. As I mentioned these are easily selected using the control wheel and joystick and this control is probably one of the best bits of this camera. S, A and M modes can be a little fiddly to use because you have to press a use the joystick to choose the item you want to change and then again in a different direction to change it. After a couple of days you should have it well practised - I could leave the “EVE selected and just bump the joystick up or down to give +ve or -ve compensation.
Battery power was quite odd. The camera is supplied with a non rechargeable CRV3 Lithium battery. These give plenty of power - but then they should do. Web price for a replacement battery is about £6. For about £10 you can buy a rechargeable version though you'll need to budget for a charger as well. The camera will also run on AA batteries though the manual says only lithium AAs or NiMH rechargeables. My guess is that you could use Duracells but they wouldn't last long. In these days of environmental awareness it's a little irresponsible to supply a camera with disposable batteries not to say a little mean to make the new owner pay for a charger. If you also buy a dock then that will recharge the camera - though obviously only if you've bought rechargeable battery for it.
What's not to like
A couple of oddities in the handling, below average image quality and an odd approach to power. What else?
Well, the memory is quite odd. I put a 1GB SanDisk card in the camera and went out shooting. After a while I was amazed to see that I had only 4 shots left. I dug about in the menus and told it to stop using the internal memory and use the card. That was fine (though annoying) but then I had some pictures on the camera and some on the card but I couldn't find any way to get them off the camera. There's an option to copy them from the internal memory but this naturally doesn't work when there's no card in the camera. What is odd is that when you do put a card in the camera the option disappears. I'm sure there really is a way to copy from the internal memory to a card but I never found it. I put the camera in the printer dock and copied them over using Kodak Easy Share - no other software on my Mac would find the pictures.
No image stabilisation. I actually couldn't believe this. A 380mm zoom in a compact body and there's no “steady shot” system or anything to stop long distance shots being blurred. Two years ago this would have passed without comment but since more cameras have some form of image stabilisation now than don't it's a surprising omission in the Z710. The only real option would be to turn up the ISO but with visible noise at ISO 200 and unacceptable noise at 400 ISO even this doesn't look a good way out.
Camera specification
| Mega-pixels: | 7.1 |
Photo: | JPEG |
| Optical Z: | 10x |
RAW: | No |
| Digital Z: | 5x |
Aperture: | f/2.8-3.7 |
| LCD: | 2 inch |
Focal L: | equiv. 38-380mm |
| Dimensions: | 97.8 x 77.5 x 27.8 |
Shutter: | 8 sec to 1/1000 |
| Weight: | 285g |
Exposure: | ISO 64 to 800 |
| Storage: | SD/MMC |
Movie: | 640x480@10fps |
| Internal: | 32mb |
Battery: | 2 AA |
| Interface: | USB 2.0, AV |
PictBridge: | Yes |
