Kodak EasyShare Z950 – Not for the impatient shooter

Sum and Substance:

Thumbs Up:

Nice features, good photo quality for its price.

Thumbs Down:

Narrow lens, slow performance.

The Whiz Kid Speaks:

Kodak EasyShare Z950 is a 12.2 mega pixels camera, light sensitivity options include ISO 3200, ISO 1600, ISO 800, ISO 400, ISO 200 and ISO 100. It has 5x digital zoom, shooting programs include Panorama assist, Night landscape, Night portrait, Self-portrait, Portrait mode, Sports mode, Back light, Landscape, Fireworks, Close-up, Children, Sunset, Museum, Flower, Candle, Beach, Text, Snow. Special effects include Black & White, High color, Low color, Sepia.

Maximum shutter speed is 1/1250 second, minimum shutter speed is 16 seconds, exposure modes include Aperture-priority, Shutter-priority, Automatic, Program, Manual. White balance presets include Tungsten light, Fluorescent, Daylight, Shade. Videos are stored in QuickTime format. Stills are stored in JPEG format. Video capture resolution options are QuickTime – 1280 x 720, QuickTime – 320 x 240, QuickTime – 640 x 480. Image storage resolution options are JPEG 1280 x 960, JPEG 1920 x 1080, JPEG 1800 x 1200, JPEG 2048 x 1536, JPEG 2888 x 2160, JPEG 4000 x 2250, JPEG 4000 x 2666, JPEG 4000 x 3000. The camera has 32 MB of built in memory.

Flash modes include Red-eye reduction, Flash OFF mode, Fill-in mode, Auto mode. The Z950 has Zoom lens – F/3.5-4.8, minimum focus range is 19.7 inches, macro focus range is 0.12-1.3m, lens aperture is F/3.5-4.8, optical zoom is 10x.

Additional features include Camera orientation detection, Scene Detection Technology, Display brightness control, Dynamic Range Optimizer, USB 2.0 compatibility, YouTube capture mode, PictBridge support, Sharpness control, Cropping an image, Date/time stamp, Auto power save, Audio recording, Face detection, Direct print. The Z950 has 3 inch LCD display. Bundled software includes Utilities & drivers and Kodak EasyShare software. The camera comes with a wrist strap (Accessory)

Supported operating systems are Apple Mac OS X 10.4 or later, MS Windows XP SP2 or later, MS Windows Vista. The Z950 is powered by Kodak KLIC 7003 Li-ion rechargeable battery. Kodak gives a one year warranty for this product.

Razzle Dazzle:

The controls and the design of the Z950 are similar to the cheaper Z915. There are no color options, you get an all black model and the exteriors are made of plastic and metal. There is rubberized grip and thumb rest so that you can comfortably hold the camera while clicking pictures. The camera looks good but isn’t compact like point-and-shoot cameras.

Inside Dope:

This is a fairly simple and straightforward camera by Kodak and the manufacturer has given us a simple device rather than putting convoluted features that would confuse a newbie. The best feature on the camera is the inclusion of 35mm-equivalent lens along with a 10x zoom and yet Kodak has managed to keep the body compact. You get semimanual and manual controls and there are no outlandish options for shooting. We liked the performance of the camera and for the given price; this device seems to be a good buy.

Image-stabilized 10x zoom lens is the main attraction of the camera. It is not fast or wide, but you can get close to your subject with it. On the top of the device, there is zoom ring and shutter release, dedicated keys for timer/drive and flash, mode dial and a tiny power button. Icons for mode position, timer and flash are backlight which makes it usable even in the dark. The HD marking button is also red lit.

The LCD behind the camera is reasonably lit and there is a vertical row of buttons for Play, Info, Menu and Delete. Along with these, there is a five way navigator for menu navigation and setting, and Kodak’s Share key which lets you tag your pics as favorites and upload them to a website.

Menus on the camera are easy to navigate and attractive. If you are used to cameras, you won’t be confused with the shooting options at all, but there is an Info button for your rescue in case you get stuck anywhere. It gives you a description of what a feature does.

The Z950 is both for veteran users and newbies. You get full control over the settings or you can choose the Automatic function if you are new to cameras. Except for white balance, you get full set of manual control for aperture-priority modes and shutter speed. At wide ends, the aperture options are 8.3, 6.2 and 3.5 and at long ends, it is 11.3, 8.5 and 4.8. Range of shutter speed is from 1/1,000 of a second to 16 seconds. It is easy to control all this with the five way navigator. You also get sharpness, color effects and exposure bracketing adjustments.

For newbies, there are 17 scene modes as well as Smart Capture mode from Kodak which combines its Intelligent image processing, Intelligent capture control and Intelligent scene detection. This can be used if you don’t want to be too bothered with the settings. There is a 720p movie shooting mode which lets you use the optical zoom, a sport mode that boosts shutter speed and ISO for subjects that are moving and Panorama mode which shoots 2-3 photos and then stitches them together.

The Z950 isn’t the best when it comes to performance. If you are the kind of performance who doesn’t shoot fast consecutive pictures, you won’t have much to complain. When we tested the camera in our labs, the device took three shots consecutively and when we tried for the fourth shot, we got “Processing” screen which got us frustrated. If you take the fourth shot after this, you will again get a waiting screen. The burst mode is also limited to three continuous shots.  It takes 3.2 seconds to wake up and start shooting for the Z950. Shot-to-shot times are 3.5 seconds with the flash and with the flash on, it went down to 7.4 seconds. In bright conditions, the shutter lag is 0.6 second and in dim light, it goes down to 0.7 second.

We were impressed by the photo quality of the Z950. In manual mode, ISO 100 is the lowest it can achieve and in Auto ISO mode, it dips further to ISO 80. The Auto uses settings of ISO 200 and above, and pictures tend to look overprocessed and soft. Details were good up to ISO 800. At ISO 1600 and ISO 3200 the photos can be used only for small prints because the results are really poor.

The Z950 doesn’t have a wide angle lens so there is some visible barrel distortion. There is no purple fringing in our tests and lens sharpness was consistent edge to edge. Photo quality is good if you intend to use the stills for 5×7 or 8×10 prints, digital photo frame or for the Web. Violets and blues are punchy and occasionally appear unnatural. Color representation is excellent.

Nitty Gritty:

Kodak EasyShare Z950 is a good compact megazoom camera. As compared to newer models, it has narrower lens, but still gives semimanual and manual controls which is rare these days in such cameras. Get this camera if you can stand its photo-quality limitations and performance issues.