Kodak EasyShare Z612 review

Unfortunately, the Z612 doesn't offer continuous burst shooting. You can capture only as many as 8 images, but you can choose between capturing the first 8 shots or firing continuously and saving the last 8. Like most cameras that do this, it doesn't refocus or meter between shots, so if you're panning, you might end up with out of focus, or poorly exposed images, especially if you're saving the last 8.
  

Shooting speed
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)

Typical shot-to-shot time

Time to first shot

Shutter lag (typical)

Canon PowerShot S3 IS

1.7 

1.5 

0.4 

Kodak EasyShare Z612

1.5 

1.8 

0.4 

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ4

1.1 

2.8 

0.5 

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ7

1.5 

2.8 

0.6 

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H5

1.8 

2.7 

0.6 

Continuous-shooting speed
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

Typical continuous-shooting speed

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ4

2.7 

Kodak EasyShare Z612

2.4 

Canon PowerShot S3 IS

1.5 

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ7

1.3 

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-H5

1.3 

Image quality
As usual with cameras from Kodak, colours looked natural and well saturated in the Z612's photos. The camera's automatic white balance produced a very warm, yellowish colour cast under our tungsten lights, though in natural daylight, it yielded neutral colours.

The Z612's tungsten white-balance setting fared better in our tests, though its images were slightly cool. Exposures were accurate, but the camera has a tendency to lose detail in brighter highlights. Worse than that was the heavier than normal purple fringing, as well as JPEG artefacts that caused jaggy edges on some curves and obscured some fine details in other areas of some images.

Noise was fairly well controlled. At ISO 80 and ISO 100, there was very little noticeable noise. At ISO 200, darker colours were mottled, and we noticed speckles in shadows. At ISO 400, noise became obvious, but images were still appropriate for printing, especially if you don't print larger than 215 by 280mm. The camera also offers a high-speed ISO 800 mode but reduces the image size to 1.1 megapixels to help keep noise under control. Obviously, these won't yield high-quality prints, but they are useful for email or the Web.

Kodak's EasyShare Z612 has a tonne of useful features, including the normal complement of scene modes plus auto and program modes for people who want simple snaps, as well as a full array of controls for more advanced shooters. If not for its image-quality issues, it would be a solid competitor, but as it stands, we'd recommend Canon's PowerShot S3 IS if you want a superzoom that produces really pleasing images.

Additional editing by Nick Hide