Product Details Details at a glance Megapixels: 8.0 Optical Zoom: 3x LCD: 2.5 inch Storage: SD/MMC Internal: 32mb Size: 103 X 54.5 X 25 mm Weight: 141.5g We clicked with Great looks. Easy to use. Perfect Touch can save pictures Shots in the dark ISO 1600 incredibly noisy. Slow startup. Perfect Touch too slow to get much use. Links V803 product page More Kodak information www.kodak.co.uk Price Comparison: Kodak V803

 

Kodak push their compact digital cameras for ease of use. While everyone else loads up on features, Kodak work hard to make photography accessible to everyone - photos should be easy to take and easy to share. But can they still make a competitive camera?
I grabbed the Kodak EasyShare V803 to find out.

Look and Feel

 

The Kodak EasyShare V803 is from Kodak's line of pocket-sized cameras; the initial feel is spot-on. Slightly bigger than most mobile phones, the V803 is nice in the hand and uses a Li-Ion rechargeable battery to keep it small and lightweight.
The camera comes in a choice of eight colours - red, pink, purple, yellow, white, black, silver or blue. I had the black version: clearly targeted at the same market as the Ixus, this is a stylish camera.

Technology

Fortunately, the V803 comes up with a good spec to match its looks. It's built around an 8MP sensor and a 3x optical zoom lens (36 to 108mm equivalent). It also has a digital zoom though we always advise ignoring digital zoom.  However, if you need it then 8MP does give the camera plenty of image data to zoom into.

The V803 came up with a decent enough exposure for this night scene though a little more light in the image would be nice.

In keeping with Kodak's EasyShare principles, the back of the camera has a sharp, bright 2.5in LCD screen - perfect for showing friends the picture you just took. The V803 also has a Favourites feature, so images can be stored on the camera's 32Mb internal memory to share anytime. The camera can use this internal memory for shooting, but you'd do better to invest in an SD card for it. If you do get a card, you can make use of video mode - VGA resolution (640x480) at 30 fps until you run out of storage.

Secrets of Better Pictures

Kodak also pulls out a couple of tricks. First is support for up to ISO 1600. They're pushing it as “digital image stabilisation”, like other manufacturers; it's not that good but is a bonus when you need a picture and can't use flash.

Perfect Touch can rescue shadow detail - if you're prepared to wait.

Second is Kodak's Perfect Touch technology, straight from their commercial printing systems. Applied through the image review, it compensates for poor exposures by balancing the colours, highlights and shadows in your picture. I've been impressed by similar features in software and it may rescue photos that would otherwise be deleted. It's extremely slow though, so don't expect to use it on everything.

In Use

When you turn the camera on, the lens extends quickly but the display doesn't come online for about four seconds. It's a shame that Kodak are making a camera this slow to start up when the lens mechanics are much faster.
Although it looks good, I was disappointed to find the V803 awkward for clumsy people with large thumbs, such as myself. The buttons are softer and smaller than I'd like. The zoom controls especially are neither positive enough nor far enough apart. That said, the joystick for image review is good. Oddly, the joystick also allows for +/- 2 stops of exposure compensation if required, but isn't labelled as such which lends itself to accidental adjustment.
That aside, the camera is very easy to use. Most features are in a straightforward menu. A nice touch is the help system, which gives a short description of a menu item when the telephoto button is pressed. There's missing detail (a note about high noise with high ISO wouldn't hurt) but it's mostly good.

Kodak don't expect you to use the menus though - instead there are 22 different scene modes. The usual modes are here, such as Portrait, Landscape, Close-up, and Sport, but also new ones like Anti-blur, Museum, Panning and Snow. It can be overwhelming when you think, “Do I need Close-up or Flower mode for this?” A best guess usually works.

22 scene modes cover all occasions.

The camera is reasonably responsive. Focusing is okay in bright conditions though never quick, and shutter lag is brief (though hardly a challenge to the best Fujis). Image storage is quick so you shouldn't miss many shots.
The LCD can overlay a rule-of-thirds grid and live histogram, useful for checking composition and exposure. Strangely though, many scene modes won't allow exposures slower than 1/8 second. This prevents accidentally smeared pictures, but it's annoying when shots underexpose. You either need to use a “night” scene mode or select the menu override in this case.
Image review is fast, with quick movement between images and fast pan-and-zoom. Shooting settings can be reviewed for each picture too. Cleverly, pressing the shutter button immediately switches back to shooting mode.

Image Quality

Where the V803 is weak is the final image quality. Images are okay but not outstanding. Exposure is good but there's a tendency for soft images, only slightly helped by increasing the camera's sharpness setting.

ISO1600 is there in an emergency, but it's messy. The 100% crop above shows the noise in the black sections and all across the skin tones.

Pictures are also noisy. In auto-ISO (which stays below ISO 200) blocks of colour suffer from luminance noise (similar to film grain, though you'd never see it in reasonable sized prints). At ISO 1600 you'll be looking at a mess of chrominance noise (speckles of red, green and blue). All credit to the screen on the V803, there's enough detail for you to see the noise on the review, but it's not pretty. In dire times, ISO 1600 would be just useable but there are many compacts that will give much better results.

Our Verdict

So is the Kodak V803 any good? It's a pleasure to use, has scene modes for everything and has looks to be proud of. Picture quality is good enough if you think flash not ISO when it gets dark. But I'm not totally won over. There are rough edges, small buttons and the camera doesn't excel at anything. It's not truly terrible (ISO 1600 aside), but there are compacts that do everything better than the V803. I wish the Perfect Touch technology was faster to give the V803 an edge, but it's too slow to use often. In fairness to Kodak and the V803 though, I'm not the target market. It is simple to use and I'm sure my mum would love using it.