Customer Reviews

Kodak Easyshare Z710 7.1 MP Digital Camera with 10xOptical Zoom

5 star:		(46)
4 star:		(18)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

We bought an "entry level" camera three years ago and were ready to upgrade.

I did some research on digital SLR's but then decided I'm no where near a professional photographer and just needed something to take great pictures of my children and other "normal" events.

I found this Kodak and I'm glad I did! I was going to buy the Z740 after reading the Amazon reviews but ended up with the Z710 for the 7.1 MP.

I see someone else's review that the screen was grainy (I found that not to be true). I haven't printed any pictures yet but have moved them to my computer and they are fantastic.

The camera's optional settings (sports, kids, etc..) are fantastic. I did find that I had to change the flash while on sports last night at my son's basketball game because the gym was a little dark.

Which brings me to an AMAZING quality of this camera. There is a night setting which allows you to take pictures in dark conditions. I tried it out while driving home and it was amazing. What was STARTLING was that I tried to take a picture of our all black dog in our completely dark bedroom (ABSOLUTELY NO LIGHTS ON IN THE ROOM OR ANYWHERE IN THE BACK OF THE HOUSE WHERE THE ROOM IS). The results were fantastic (once I was able to find her in that darkness!!). It was as if you were taking the picture in absolutely perfect conditions.

I will have to get used to not zooming in so much with the 10x optical zoom because I'm not used to having digital zoom also on a camera. Take your picture as close as you can without making it fuzzy and then zoom in and crop with the settings on the camera or with the software that is included.

The camera looks much more expensive than it is. I played with it for hours last night and the battery has not died (did have that problem with other cameras...battery lasting only minutes/hours). Display is fantastic; features are fantastic. Unlike other cameras, the monitor display is crystal clear in all conditions (well, not the total dark room but that's to be expected...and, it is very clear once the flash goes off and you see your image for a moment before it is saved).

THIS CAMERA IS ABSOLUTELY WORTH THE MONEY! You won't be disappointed. If you're looking to take really great pictures with an amazing piece of equipment, you won't go wrong buying the Z710!

Edit in June 2007: Just came back from a field trip on the Maid of the Mist at Niagara Falls. Wait until you see these pictures! This camera is simply spectacular. I thought I loved the pictures indoors at basketball games. Then, the love just got bigger when the pictures are outside. Great colors! The LCD is a bit hard to see in bright sunlight but rest assured, you're getting the shot!

This is my fourth digital camera having owned a Sony, another Kodak and a Nikon - you can see I went back to Kodak and here's what I found.

First the camera isn't quite small enough for pocket size although it isn't cumbersome in the least and is actually lighter in weight than you would think. The pictures give one the impression this camera looks like a full-fledged SLR in weight and size.

Typical of Kodak the controls are very easy to understand and even though the little "getting started" manual included is fairly skimpy - you don't need much to learn your way around the camera. I did find on this Kodak, the adjusting dial which you use to choose your shooting mode, a bit small. The wide/zoom button also seems a bit small so if you have large hands I strongly suggest you hold the camera in a store before buying. These little reasons were the only reasons I didn't give the camera five stars.

I've posted some of my initial pictures and I'm very pleased! The 10x optical zoom puts me up close; the lens captures great detail and the colors look very true to form. I don't know the exact time but from when you first turn the camera on, it's ready to shoot pictures in only a couple of seconds and cycle time between pictures is plenty quick for me.

I've not had any issues with the lens cap myself. It may not feel as sturdy as the camera but then again, it is only a lens cap. I did go and buy an additional memory (SD) card as the internal memory is only good for about 12 pictures in the 7.0 meg' range.

I'll update this again as I spend more time with the camera but so far I'm very pleased and would recommend this to anyone wanting a simple digital camera with a great zoom lens and one I suspect will render crisp, clear pictures.

I bought this camera on Black Friday when it was on sale. I am so happy with it! I recently learned that the optical zoom is really important and 3x zoom is not any good. I had been wondering why my other Kodak camera's pictures always looked far away and now I know. You need at least 5x zoom for good pictures and 10x is even better. Now my outdoor shots look great.
It has a self timer so you can get yourself in those family photos.
I would definitely recommend this camera.

This camera is fun! Many great features. (I finally entered the world of digital 2 weeks ago with this camera. Originally did not like the look of digital pics. that I had seen from other peoples cameras. Was a die-hard 35mm.) This one takes great pics! Had them printed and you couldn't tell they were from a digital camera. I had a zoom on my 35mm so that was important to me. If you like zoom I highly recommend the 10x. (Depending on what you are shooting some pics can seem a little blurry or hazy but so was my 35mm so that did not concern me. Just the nature of SOME zoomed pics.) Origianlly looked at the Kodak C875; but found that in my hands the Z710 was easier to use the zoom and shoot at the same time. The C875 was not so easy. By the time you used your zoom (I was taking a pic. of my toddlers) the shot I wanted was gone. Since I zoom quite a bit there was no question as to which one to get. Am VERY impressed with the quality of the camera and the pics it takes!! Would highly recommend it.

I am very happy with the camera. I was surprised that it is smaller than I imagined. Also, it comes without a rechargeable battery which is no big deal, but was a disappointment or at least a surprise. I would like to see this camera come with a rechargeable battery, charger and ac/dc converter. I bought them later from Kodak, and am quite satisfied. The camera has excellent functionality, more than enough pixels, great zoom,and I would recommend it to anyone with a reasonable level of technical skill as well as for the very demanding user.

The Schneider 10:1 zoom on the z710 is absolutely one of the sharpest lenses I have ever owned bar NONE (including my Nikon F Series pro lenses).

I don't mind the grainy image in the finder under low light conditions, as it serves as an additional warning that you need to use the flash (or intentionally set a lower ISO rating in `programmed mode' and steady the camera for the resulting longer exposures).

It would have been nice if the camera came with a set of rechargeable batteries and charger, but I do like the fact that the camera has very good battery life and will run on several types of batteries, from simple standard AA pen light cells, to AA NiMH rechargeable batteries, to long life lithium photo batteries. This gives you a lot of options if you find yourself in the middle of nowhere with dead batteries.

The z710 has well laid out menus and controls, but if you are a relatively experienced photographer, you may feel that Kodak is guilty of slightly over simplifying things.

For example, though the z710 has very sophisticated multi-zone automatic focus that works quite well, there is no manual focus mode (though it would have been easy to implement using something like the zoomed finder view already available in `review' mode to allow the user to zoom in and tweak the focus accurately)

Also, although you can select several image resolutions, there is no way to adjust JPEG compression to a higher quality or select a standard uncompressed TIFF file format for output (though I suspect some would like to see a feature like that now that the price of 2Gig SD cards has started to drop).

Kodak left out these features in order to leave room for a lot of `cutesy' things I have very little use for like this whole `EasyShare' thing.

Overall I am very pleased with the cameras controls, it's just a crying shame (given the quality of the optics and capabilities of the hardware), that they don't offer a slightly more sophisticated user interface.

Video capture with sound is available, but you can't zoom while filming, and the 640x480 capture mode only runs at a little over 10fps, which makes for slightly jerky motion.

Given the above minor nit picking, I still rated the camera an overall 5 on the strength of the superb Optics (which rate about a 6 on a scale from one to five :)

Kodak has a new z712-IS model coming out which sports a 12:1 Schneider Zoom, image stabilization, and which allows zooming during video captures and supports a full 30fps capture rate at 640x480, so if those features are important to you, then you may want to wait for the newer model.

It looks like the introduction of the z712-IS has caused some retailers to discount the z710 (I just saw it at Best Buy for $179). This is an incredible value compared to some of the past competition, but you may want to look over the new z712-IS models specs before making a decision.

First and foremost, this camera is amazing. Super crisp pictures, good battery life, excellent features, wonderful optical zoom. I'm printing out 13"x18" high gloss pictures that look like professional prints. Wonderful Camera.

Now the bad news.
The "easy share" software that you install with this camera is absolutely awful. It conflicts with Adobe, permeates your system throughout the various programs and is all but impossible to fully remove. Can you say reformat your hard drive just to remove? Or use System Restore to get out of it. DO NOT INSTALL SOFTWARE unless your ready to dedicate your computer to Kodak programs only. Yes It's that bad!

Buy the camera, but just use file transfer programs to move pictures around and you'll be ok. Otherwise, get ready for late nights and locked up software. This comes from my installing it on two Dell laptops, and one generic PC.

Did I mention it's a great camera?

If you want to take quality photos like the pros but you don't want to deal with the technicalities of setting the camera for the shots, then this is the camera for you.

At 7.1 megapixels you simply can't out resultion this technology and why would there be a need to anyway. While the 10 - yes ten - times optical zoom just makes it a nice choice for the lazy Sports pro photographer as well.

I took close ups of a tub of odds and ends, pencils old screwdrivers and other rubbish. Then I enlarged until the definition ( 'grain' in old camera speak ) began to fuzz. Unbelievable results after the edit printed on everday 6x4 HP stock and at normal resolution on a HP AIO printer.

Haven't tried the landscape mode yet, but indoors portrait shots on Auto range/focus etc., came out superb as well. In addition the flash on auto does a great job, no need to tinker with that either. Movies work fine but with some care not to move the camera around too much when recording.

You must get at least a 1 G SD ram card ( we got a 2gig Sandisk on sale at Circuit City for $34 ) with this model. At full resolution you'll get but 12 shots with the internal 32 meg. With the 2 Gig memory card the camera will take 907, yes that is nine hundred and seven, pictures.

A person would be nutz not to buy this Kodak if they are looking for simplicty of use but want a professional print.

This camera gets 4/5 because the lens cap is flimsy and the LCD screen is grainy. Otherwise, you will not be disappointed with this camera.

I previously used a Kodak Z650 on a cruise and loved the results, so when it came time for me to update my digital camera, my husband chose this Z710 for me. The picture quality is fantastic, the menus are easy to understand. Battery life is great.

As I mentioned, the LCD screen is grainy, so pictures may look like they are of mediocre quality when you take them, but when you develop them (or transfer them to your computer), they come out great. I suggest using the viewfinder instead of the LCD screen when you take pics. It preserves battery life and gives you a more accurate assessment of your subject.

The lens cap is flimsy and pops off easily. Be careful.

Photo quality is so great that you can crop a picture and still enlarge it to 5 x 7 or even 8 x 10 with impressive results.

This is a great camera for the advanced amateur or even for a beginner. It may not be as small as some of the compact digitals, but the extra features (especially the high optical zoom) are worth the extra bulk.

This was my second digital camera and was a bit shocked when I received it because I still have an Olympus that I use regularly. I told my husband that I felt like I was cheating on my older camera with this new flashy one. But my concerns quickly faded away. This is such a user friendly camera. When I first opened the box I spent some time reading the manual and quicly realized that I had in my hand the easiest camera I had ever owned.

The picture quality is amazing and I love the 10X zoom. Great for zooming in on my children in a large school photo. I now reach for my Kodak camera when head out the door instead of my old Olympus.