Stuck On Film? Buy This Camera!
Written: May 03 '06 (Updated Mar 28 '09)
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Pros: Great Picture Quality, Tons of Features, Easy to Use, Price
Cons: Wheel and Joystick control takes getting used to
The Bottom Line: This is a great camera for the beginner to someone who wants to take a step into photography. Excellent picture quality and tons of features for any use.
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| noangels's Full Review: Kodak EasyShare Z730 Digital Camera |
I purchased the Kodak Z730 as a Christmas present for my mother. My mother loves to make scrapbooks and takes tons of pictures to document each memory for her books. Until now she has insisted that the quality of digital photos is horrible and that the quality of the digital prints is even worse. She mainly feels this way after seeing friends buy the wrong cameras or the wrong photos printers. In buying her a camera, I wanted great quality images from an easy-to-use camera. I wanted her to have a lot of features to play with and I wanted it to feel just like a film camera to her. This camera was the perfect fit.
Why Kodak?
Kodak has long been known for easy-to-use digital cameras. Their entire line is called Easyshare, and for good reason. Everything is so self explanatory that the most technology-loathing amateur can pick it up in a few days. The camera does all the teaching for you. Need to delete a picture? There is a button marked delete. Need to take a picture of an item close up? There's a close up mode that even tells you "Use when subject is closer than 28 inches." It doesn't get easier to use than Kodak which spells everything out right on the screen for you!
Picture Quality
The picture quality is absolutely amazing. The camera is 5 megapixels and can effectively be blown up to 16" x 20" in size. I chose a 5 megapixel camera because I feel that this is the standard megapixel that most people would require. 5 megapixel cameras tend to give very clear 4 x 6" prints which is the size my mother prints most often. The colors are always very vibrant, mainly due to the Kodak Color Science Image Processing Chip. This is one of my preferred digital camera processors (second only to the DIGIC II processors in the Canon Elph and Digital SLR series). There is a low instance of noise in the pictures in low lights and I only really noticed noise at ISO 800, but not as much as one may expect at such a highly sensitive setting. To give you an idea of how high quality the images really are, when teaching my mother how to edit them, we were editing side-by-side pictures from the same event (an engagement party-candlelit environment which isn't ideal for picture taking) from 2 cameras, this one and the 6 megapixel Olympus Stylus 600. Often when editing, we would zoom in to 1200% and at such a size the pictures off the Olympus camera were a bunch of squares of color. At the same size you could still see features of the pictures from the Z730. An eye still looked a lot like an eye. There was a great deal of noise from the Olympus pictures but noise occurred only in one of the 67 Kodak pictures. I was very impressed.
Lens
The picture quality is also helped by the higher end Kodak lens. This camera has the Schneider-Kreuznach Variogon lens which is a much higher quality lens than the standard Kodak lens. This is a great feature and I never buy Kodak cameras that do not include it.
Lag
I have not noticed any lag between pictures. I did purchase my mother a high speed memory card, but I find it hard to believe that this is the only reason for this. I have used both standard and high speed cards in different cameras and while there is a big difference, a camera that normally has a lot of lag doesn't get reduced to no lag at all.
Zoom
The optical zoom is a bit above average on this camera at 4x. Cameras of this size usually have 3x with a few having a 4x zoom. The camera does a good job of staying focused while zooming. The picture remains clear as you zoom in rather than blurring and refocusing. It also includes a 4x digital zoom but as with every camera, I recommend not using it. These zooms actually stretch your picture digitally, cutting off the edges and blurring the picture. The picture quality you will lose when using this feature renders it useless.
Flash
The flash is pretty powerful for a built-in flash. I've noticed an average instance of red eye; no more than any other camera in our house but no less. The flash has an automatic, off, fill, and red eye reduction option. The flash range is listed to be 2.0-13.1 ft wide and 2.0-7.6 telephoto.
Compression
A lot of people have problems with Kodak images saying the compression is too great and you lose quality in the images. This camera does allow you to change between two compression settings, standard and fine.
Battery
The Kodak Z730 takes a lithium ion battery. The battery is said to last up to 350 shots. The battery life is excellent. My mother has been using this camera for 5 months and still has never had a battery die on her during use. I did, however, purchase two extra batteries for her when I bought the camera. On a dolphin watching trip I once went through 2 1/2 lithium ion batteries on my old Kodak (It was a case of extreme picture taking, 2 1/2 hours of near constant clicking and video). Just in case, I made sure Mom had extras too. The down side to having lithium ion is that if your battery dies and you don't have time to charge it, you can't just run to the nearest drug store and pick up a pack of Duracell batteries. The batteries are cheap enough to have an extra on hand; only $29.99 as opposed to all other lithium batteries I've seen for other brands starting at $39.99 (Canon battery replacements, generic brand Digipower) to $89.99 (Sony batteries) at major retail stores. The batteries usually only lose 10-15% of their charge after 2 months of storage in a camera bag so its easy to keep an extra on hand.
Features
This camera has tons of different features ranging from the most basic user-friendly controls to advanced controls for the amateur photographer.
Colors:
Color options include high color, natural color, low color, black and white and sepia. I prefer natural color most of the time but my mother usually shoots in high color, saying that they look better when she scrapbooks them.
Scene Modes:
The best features for a beginner to use are the scene modes. The camera has 16 of them, all explained on the screen for the user.
-Self-Portrait: For a close up of self. Perfect for those holding-the-camera-away-from-your-own-face shots!
-Portrait: For portraits of a person other than yourself. This brings the subject into focus while blurring the background.
-Sport: Fast shutter speeds for freezing the action.
-Party: Keeps the noise down in indoor setting where there may be low light (like a party).
-Beach: Those bright photos on the beach will no longer be washed out!
-Flower: For close up shots of flowers in bright sun light
-Fireworks: Creates stunning pictures of fireworks. I used this mode at an engagement party that had a fireplace and the picture was very intense-looking. It drew attention to the fire and blurred the areas around it while sharpening the fire's edges.
-Snow: For those bright snow shots.
-Backlight: This is for those times when the light is behind the subject of your photo.
-Close up: For those times when you need to get a good picture of an object at close range. Mom uses this to take pictures of decorations at weddings and parties. She also uses it to take pictures of items she sells on ebay.
-Night Portrait: Should be used to capture a subject and background at night
-Landscape: Sharp pictures of scenery.
-Night Landscape: Sharp pictures of scenery at night.
-Museum/Manner: Shuts off all sound and flash.
-Text: For taking pictures of documents. My mother uses this to take pictures of Christmas Cards she gets then puts the pictures in her scrapbook and throws out the cards.
Auto Setting Ranges:
The automatic settings for shutter range from 1/8-1/2000 sec. The aperture settings range from f/2.8-5.6 (wide)and f/4.8-9.5 (tele). The ISO settings range from 80-160.
Manual and Custom Controls:
The camera does have a lot of advanced features. The Camera allows you to select high, normal, or low sharpness. It has a program mode (max aperture and shutter combination), shutter priority, and aperture priority. The shutter can be manually adjusted from up to 1/1000 sec. The ISO can be set to 80, 100, 200, 400, and 800. The white balance can be set to automatic, daylight, tungsten and fluorescent.
Video Mode:
The video mode is relatively good quality for a digital camera. Resolutions are VGA (640 × 480 pixels) at 12 fps or QVGA (320 × 240 pixels) at 20 fps. Length of video depends on the memory card. It also captures sound.
Burst Mode:
The camera can take up to 5 photos in sequence at 2.5 frames per second.
Physical Appearance Of Camera
In buying this camera, size was an issue. I wanted something big, that looked like a film camera but not too big that it would be difficult to carry. If I purchased a compact camera, my mom would probably feel like it is not "a real camera." This camera is a good mid size and is comfortable to hold. I liked that it included a viewfinder which I consider a necessity. The screens on cameras are not visible in sunlight and spending a couple hundred dollars on a camera that is useless outside isn't a good idea. The viewfinder allows Mom to see what she is photographing outside and helps add to the "film-like" camera feel. The buttons are conveniently placed and the controls are very intuitive. My only complaint is that the wheel and joystick that controls most of the cameras settings can be difficult to move sometimes. The wheel is a little stubborn and the joystick may take some getting used to for those of us who didn't grow up playing video games.
LCD Screen
The LCD screen is very good quality and easy to see at 2.2 inches in size. I have seen a lot of Kodaks with poor screens that don't do the pictures they take justice. This camera does not have this problem. Colors are accurate and pictures look sharp.
Connecting it and Included Software
Like all cameras today, the Z730 comes with the USB cable to hook it up to the computer and software. It is very easy to connect and the software is average. Nothing really stood out about the included photo utilities. I prefer to use a memory card reader and separate editing software.
Memory Cards
This camera uses the SD (Secure Digital) Memory Cards. This is my preferred card format because it is the cheapest and most widely used. Kodak, HP, Gateway, Dell, Nikon, and Canon all use this card format currently. The cards are always on sale and easy to find in high-speed formats. I purchased a San Disk Ultra II 1 GB SD memory card at the time for $99.99. The average price of this card has since dropped to around $79.99 and even less when it is on sale. I just purchased the same card for my Canon for $52.99.
Price
When I purchased the camera, it was $249.99 on dell.com. I have since seen it in Best Buy for $199.99 and online for $179.99.
This camera would be a great fit for the film-camera junky, the tech-allergic beginner, the scrapbooking lover, the family memory-preserving fanatic, and the amateur photographer. It's easy to use AND it's a great camera.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 249.99
This Camera is a Good Choice if You Want Something... Flexible Enough for Enthusiasts
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Epinions.com ID:
noangels
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Member: Jamilynn
Location: Staten Island, NY USA
Reviews written: 219
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About Me:
So glad to almost be done with Christmas shopping!
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