Customer Reviews

Kodak Easyshare V610 6 MP Digital Camera with 10x Dual-Lens Optical Zoom

5 star:		(59)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Kodak V610 review

I have owned this camera for about 3 weeks, and I love it. I have captured about 4 hours of video inside and outside and about 200 still shots inside and outside.

The V610 is a consumer point and shoot still camera and a great 640 by 480 - 30 frame per second movie camera, both with 10 times zoom. If you are looking to have a camera in your pocket whenever you come upon a situation where you want to take a high quality snapshot or a home movie video, I highly recommend this camera. It is fantastic. It takes a reliable snapshot and a very smooth video and fits into my shirt pocket

However, if you are looking to be the next Ansel Adams or need professional videos ... get other much larger and more expensive cameras, with much larger lenses and much more powerful lights.

In my opinion, this is the best and most powerful shirt pocket sized camera on the market today.

Prior to this I owned a digital still camera an Olympus Camedia C-4040 4MP Digital Camera w/ 3x Zoom and a very small DV video tape camera, a Panasonic model PV DV 201. Now that I own the V610, I no longer have to carry a camera bag with me to the zoo, or family reunions or other events. As a replacement for both of those cameras, this is a fantastic choice.

I can't tell you how many times I have seen great photo opportunities at events in the last several years before I owned this camera, but the appropriate camera was either in the camera bag or in the car, and how often I wanted greater than a 3x optical zoom in my still camera.

The 6.1 megapixel resolution is sufficient to allow you to capture nice snapshots, and with a powerful 10x optical zoom, you can be sitting in the back row still get a great still shot or a video and the video to my eye is nearly the equal of a consumer quality DV tape camera. I think that this is one of a very few digital still cameras that allow you to optical zoom while shooting videos.

As with most camera purchases additional equipment is necessary to make the camera most useable. I purchased the following additional equipment to go with the camera:
>> A 2GB high speed (x133) SD memory card which it allows me to shoot a combination of up to almost one hour of video or up to about 1,100 - 6 megapixel still shots- that's right, one hour of MPEG-4 video fits on the 2gb card, with good TV quality video and sound. I paid about $85.00 USD.
>> 3 spare non-Kodak brand batteries. I paid about $12.00 USD each.
>> A 6 in 1 San Disk PC card adapter - card reader for my laptop - no software needed for the laptop, and the SD memory card acts just like a hard drive and I copy the still pictures and the .mov quicktime videos to my hard drive (the provided USB cable is too slow and the camera needs to be turned on the entire time during downloads with a cable). I paid about $24.00 USD.
>> A thin leather case - To protect the camera. I paid about $15.00 USD.
>> A 250gb USB2 external hard drive for backing up the photographs and movies.

Positive:

- 10x optical zoom works well (in good light or with mini tripod).
- Zoom lens does not protrude, very stealthy.
- When using digital zoom, pictures are not artificially interpolated back to the requested size but are kept at the recorded smaller size.
- Blur indicator when reviewing.
- Camera controls and menues are adequate.
- On-camara panorama stitching.
- High quality MPEG4 movie mode 640x480@30fps, size only limited by storage card. Optical zoom can be operated during movie.
- Small size full metal body.
- Adequate LCD resolution (I value LCD resolution higher than raw LCD size).
- Bluetooth transfer works well (tested with Axim X50v PDA).
- Full bound paper manual.

Neutral:

- I don't mind the gap during zooming at the lense switch (need to release zoom rocker and press again, magnification jumps over missing range, does not digitally interpolate unlike V570), and I appreciate the other gap before digital zoom kicks in.
- I would have been happy to live with an even larger gap if the wide-angle range had been extended down to that of the V570.
- Battery life not too good but batteries readily and cheaply available. Likewise for external battery charger. Cheap aftermarket products (Ebay) work well for me (so far).
- No bundled accessories like docks that I would not use anyway.
- Going through favorities mode to review mode seems to be the only way to review pictures with the front lens protector kept closed.
- Somewhat non-standard movie container (quicktime .mov). I use mencoder with options -of avi -ovc copy -oac mp3lame -lameopts abr:br=96 to switch to .avi (or -of mpeg for mpeg container) without reencoding the mpeg4 video stream (fast, no quality difference).

Negative:

- No optical image stabilization. Electronic image stabilization for movie mode only.
- Image noise at all ISO speeds.
- Max aperture quite limited, especially for the zoom lens, tries to compensate with high ISO speeds, noisy pictures.
- Writing to storage card is slow (even for high speed SD cards), very noticable when using burst mode.
- 5 second review delay after shooting cannot be switched off or customized.
- Does not remember most settings, always starts up in auto mode.
- No way to find out which iso speed/aperture/exposure time will be used when halfway depressing shutter button and even which settings have been used when reviewing pictures inside the camera (no good excuse for this I could think of). Need to copy file to computer and read the exif tags.
- On-camara panorama stitching frequently shows visible stitching errors. Can only stitch 3 (or 2) images, not more than 3. Very picky about alignment.
- Expensive.

I did not use the flash so far.
I did not use the bundled the software (unsupported operating system).

Conclusion:

Camera has limitations, some of understandable technical nature, others unnecessary (hiding too many details from the user, could be fixed in firmware but probably won't) but overall is a keeper. Fun factor is very high.

This camera is a pleasure to use. I haven't enjoyed a new piece of hardware
this much since I bought my first Mac Powerbook 3 years ago.

I had a 3-year old camera before, so
let me say what was bad about that one, and why the V610 is so much better.

1) 0 - > Picture time : It would take my last camera more than 5 seconds to
turn before it was ready to take a picture. The V610 is almost instantaneous.
Part of this is that it doesn't have a protruding zoom lens that needs to mechanically
move before the picture can be taken.

2) Time between pictures: My last camera would also take more than 5 seconds
to load the image between pictures. The V610 can take 1.6 pictures per second at
highest quality in burst mode.

3) Menu : My last camera had a non-intuitive menu to find things. With the V610,
I haven't had to look at the manual yet because it is so obvious how to proceed.
There are a lot of easily accessible picture modes, and I do suggest you spend
some time familiarizing yourself with them, since they can greatly improve
your picture quality by for instance decreasing exposure time for action shots,
or allowing in more light for night time portraits.

4) Battery : I used some top of the line AA rechargeable batteries on my last
camera. These used to let me take 50 pictures before discharging.

5) Lens cap: I was surprised when I took my last camera out of the package and it
didn't have a lens cap. I doublechecked that this one does has an automatic sliding
one before I bought it. It slides back and forth instantaneously when you turn on/off.

Here are a few cons :
* There is no viewfinder. You have to use the large screen on the back to
target your shot. This turns out not to be a problem in the day time, since
the screen quality is great even in the sun's glare. At night though, it is hard
to target pictures of close subjects in the complete dark. However, I found that if you
push the button down slightly, a green light is emitted that reflects off your
subject and allows you to see them. When I realized this I had no problem in
targeting pictures of close objects.



Here are a few other pros :
* I love the bluetooth. I took some pictures and easily beamed them to a friend's
laptop without having to have cables. Bluetooth isn't so fast though, so I
recommend just using Bluetooth to send smaller images to people.

* Use the SD memory card to move the pictures onto your computer with one
one of those miniature USB flash floppy drives. The SD memory card is
compatible with other pieces of hardware. I use it also for my MP3 player.
I have an old SanDisk Cruzer with removable SD card. I used to use a 128 MB
card with my old camera, but now I use a GB card for my kodak camera. They
are all compatible with the Cruzer.

I'm a professional photographer who has resisted the digital camera world until now. I really would have preferred to buy a Nikon, but the reviews (Cnet. Crutchfield and here) were so poor on the images I looked further. I almost bought a Panasonic with a Lieca lens, but it has a lens cap and looks/design sucks. If you want a zoom, and you should, buy this camera. It's excellent and the bluetooth works quickly and perfectly with my Mac. It's quite simple to use as well, the only thing I needed to look up was the email function. Two of the best things about this is there is no protruding lens on this huge zoom and there for no lens cap. Though I'll never use it for client work, it's better than I would have guessed for a point and shoot. Oh and the image quality is great for that too. It's also small enough to take everywhere.
Three things: Buy an actual camera case like Zing, an extra battery and a SanDisk Ultra11 SD 1GB USB card. It's faster than other cards and the USB plugs directly into my Mac. This is perfect for downloading movies from the camera - which are sweet.

Kodak dubs this camera as the smallest 10x on the market. Regardless of it's size, it's functionality is very efficient. The presets make up for it's lack of manual options, and the time from turning on the camera to when you can take a picture is very speedy. I would suggest this camera to anyone looking for a wonderful point and shoot that takes beautiful shots, and still has the bells and whistles of larger cameras.

Wow, optical 10x in a small package! That's the innovation we expect from Kodak. I owned a Kodak before and it started to malfunction (dysfunctioal 2x zoom ) only after one year. The next one I owned is a Canon A85. A wonderful machine and is solid built. As time goes on, I kind of like to have a camera that is VGA video capable with enough zoom power. Then it comes the V610. At first I was skeptical due to past experience. After reading so many positive reviews, I decided to give Kodak another shot.

After using it for almost 3 weeks, I have to say that Kodak delivered 95% of it. The response is quick, zoom is excellent. The only complaint I have is that under low light condition, the auto-focus does not function very well, but I guess most cameras are like this at this price range. However, my Canon seems to do better in this regard. Another thing is the battery life. If you want to use it as your camcorder, another battery is necessary to keep the juice flowing. Nonetheless, the Kodak battery is cheap ($16) enough to justfy getting an extra one.

The zoom does have a jump between 3.4x to 4x, but the quality is good and doesn't bother me much. I do love the dual-lens design, which is very unique and way cool! This is the kind of engineering innovation we expect from Kodak. I am surprised that at 10x, the photo is still not blurry as most people would think. Of course you need to be a little steadier than usual, but most of the time you will get good pictures under good light.

However, the only thing unsure is the quality. My last Kodak camera start to have problems after only one year. Let's hope that won't be the case this time.

I am using it both as a camcorder and a camera. With a 2GB SD card, I have plenty storage to shoot around. For casual camcorder users (most people are), this is a perfecct unit. Whoever tried to download and convert a video clip from a mini-DV camcorder konws the painful process of downloading/converting/burning. With this camera, the video is already compressed in MPEG 4 format. Downloading from high speed SD card is way way faster than miniDV and burning to a DVD is also no big deal. This camera essentially solved all my problems with my digital camcorder. I haven't tried the bluetooth yet, but I doubt I will need it. I use a card reader and that will give you the highest speed for downloading large files.

Overall, this a perfect package for everyday photo and video shooting. I just wish that the battery can last longer. But hey, with a small package like this, not much more you can ask at this moment until more powerful batteries are out.

This is my fourth Kodak digital camera. I bought this one because of the small size and the 10X optical zoom. The last Kodak that I bought was a 7490 which also has a 10X optical zoom but kind of bulky. In terms of the picture quality I think the V610 suffers a little bit because the size of the lenses are quite small. At 10X zoom it is also hard to hold the camera completely still because there is no viewfinder so you have extend your arms to use the LCD screen to shoot. What I really like about the V610 is the stitching function. I have taken my V610 hiking in the Rocky Mountains and those wide angle scenery shots with three pictures stitched together are really awesome. If you don't need 10X optical and I think you have to use a tripod to get good pictures anyway, the V570 maybe a better choice.

**UPDATE AS OF 4/10/07**

It died on me. Didnt even last 7 months. Kodak wouldn't honor the warranty, and they offered me a $180 repair bill to get it fixed and shipped back.

No thanks Kodak. I'll be taking my business elsewhere.

There are FAR better cameras for similar or less money than this. Shop elsewhere.

this camera (like it's cousins, the Kodak V570, and V705) takes three pictures and stitches them together IN CAMERA! No computer is needed. just snap a shot, and take another two--the camera's LCD lines the shots up for you. wait ten seconds and all 3 shots are stitched together for a s-u-p-e-r wide panoramic. also, the V610 is the world's smallest 10x optical zoom - pocket sized, a great convenience when you want to zoom without a huge lens.
just see the samples above, or for a wider angle for scenery, etc., look for the Kodaks dual lens V570 or the new V705.

Seldom have I bought anything that fulfilled my expectations to the extent that this Kodak V610 has. From the simplicity of it's menu and buttons, it's many modes for shooting a person can master the controls in one sitting with a bit of experimentation.
With a 2 gig SD card you can get 1056 pics at full resolution or 56 minutes of TV quality video with sound. The stitch panarama mode is effortless and fun. Would be great for scenics and real estate work.
I most like it"s portability which fulfills the first rule of photography,"BRING CAMERA WITH".It fits easily in any pocket.
Like any light weight Camera it is impossible to hold steady for long telephoto shots which a 10x optical and 4X digital allows. However that is fixed with a tripod. The steady shot in video mode does however work quite well.
Pictures are crisp and color clean, great pics! Also love the large clear LCD monitor with framing grid allowing me to look professional at taking shots. So many good things built in that I could get writers cramp extolling it"s virtues, so I will end by saying that I am way more than pleased with my new Camera.