Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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87 of 91 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
WOW what a great camera for this price, outstanding!, September 1, 2007
So FAR I LOVE THE CAMERA, but I am not totally thrilled with the software. The software is good, but I like another program that I a have better (cannon photo shoot), and I transfer photos back and forth to that program.
UPDATE: This Camera eat's ALKALINE Batteries for lunch, USE Ni-NH Recharagable Batteries for longer life and to save money. you can also use KODAK Lithium Digital Camera Battery CRV3. I am noticing people saying they are not getting good shots with thier camera, But I must say I am getting extreemly sharp shots.
The Kodak Z1275 is a great little camera loaded with tones of user friendly features and has fantastic resolution at 12 megapixels. I have a 7.1 megapixels camera and was looking to upgrade a 10, Then I saw this 12 and at the same price my 7.1 coast a couple of years ago. I suggest 2 gig cards to hod more pictures when you shoot at high res and for video. With 12 MP your shots capture every detail, with outstanding resolution. This is easily as good as most 35 millimeter cameras if not better. You can do prints up to 30 X 40 and you can do quite small crops and get great resolution. I am having some minor problems with my memory cards, I have been getting a non format message on the camera a few times, which is not right, I did format the card. So what I do is shut the camera off, and remove the card and then reinstall it and that fixes the problem. Maybe it works better with Kodak cards, and I will get one and see for sure.
The lens is a SCHNEIDER-KREUZNACH VARIOGON high quality lens with F Stop as fast as 2.8 to 5.1 when zooming. The Zoom is equivalent to a 35 to 175 mm on a regular film camera. There is also a 5 X digital zoom and Digital image stabilization (The camera software automatically minimizes camera shake to deliver a clear picture); I still get great resolution zooming all the way out.
The camera has 64 MB of internal memory, and has SDHC/SD/MMC card expansion slot that lets you keep shooting longer, I would suggest you get 2 or more 2 to 4 gig cards for vacations etc., When you insert a card it becomes the defult memory.
The color display is a good size at 2.5 in. (6.4 cm) for such a small camera this camera is elph size (4 inches by 2 1/2 by 1 1/2 basically) and will fit in a shirt pocket. The Viewer is easy to see outside.
If you shoot your pictures vertically or horizontally, you can view them right side up with an orientation sensor, which is automatic.
You can do some editing right on the camera like cropping, histogram, digital red-eye reduction, and undo delete (also you can edit video as well).
The Z1275 has a High ISO mode from 100 up to 3200, and with 3200 you can capture the details in low light situations without using the flash, such as concerts. I can't wait to test it out at a GFR show, I will report back after I do so.
The Z 1275 automatically adjusts for all lighting situations such as tungsten nd florescent lighting and has 9 shooting modes it can automatically select (or you can manually select the mode you wish). Modes include; Portrait, landscape, Bright scene, Close-up, Action, Text/Documents, Manner/Museum (for places you cannot use flash) and Party mode ( for shooting people in low light situations) etc.,. the Macro is good but you can not get within 5 inches you need to stay back a bit. It also has 5 color modes, high Color, Low Color, B&W, Natural Color and Sepia. these are all under one button on the dial they come up on the screen nd you scroll to the one you want, it's very easy to sue and even being a small camera, with my BIG HANDS, I find it no problem to operate.
The Z 1275 has a Panorama stitch mode where you can combine up to three shots together into one large picture with panorama stitch mode. I am not great at this LOL. But it is a fun feature. This gives you a more realistic panoramic.
For Video you can Record HD video (1280 × 720) at 30 fps with sound, with MPEG 4 compression which uses less memory. I don't use a lot of video with my digital camera but its nice to have just incase, this looks very very good and you can Zoom in and out which you can't on most digital cameras.
The Z1275 is a wonderful camera that is easy and fun to use, it is perfect for someone who just wants to set it on automatic and go; and is at a very low price, hear at amazon, it is a must have as a second camera for photo buff and as the only camera for someone whos wants a point and shoot only.
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66 of 75 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Great Specs, but..., September 23, 2007
Let's start by saying mega-pixels don't mean everything! I bought this camera as a second to my fuji 6MP. From the first pictures through the 100th picture I noticed the same problems - high grain even with bright light, dull washed out photos with a flash, out of focus photos. I am quite knowledgeable with photography, so I do know how to take a picture, but just to make sure that it wasn't my imagination, I did an A-B comparison with my Fuji. I set both for the highest quality, and took the same photos with and without flash for each. The difference was like night and day as expected. The Kodak was not even close in quality. What was surprising was that when I blew up each picture to 8X10 size and printed, the Fuji was much clearer even though, due to the lower megapixel count, it was blown up more than the Kodak. Incidentally, I only used the optical zoom, I never use digital zoom.
Also, this uses up batteries faster than any digital camera I have ever owned (this is my 6th). I have taken about 100 pictures with this camera, and have used 6 AA batteries already.
To sum it up - the flash is too small, the lens is too small, the lens is not good enough quality, and the camera is a battery hog. It's going to be returned today...
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28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
A step backward for Kodak in quality and usability, December 14, 2007
Having previously owned all Kodak's (CX6330, CX7430, CX7530, & C875) I thought this camera would be an easy choice since I am familiar with how to use their cameras and from the specifications this appeared to be an improved version of the C875. I also picked up a Panasonic TZ3K 7MP camera to see which of the two that I liked better since that was another camera I was interested in. So, during this review I will compare the Z1275 with the Panasonic and the previous Kodak's that I have owned. As a note about myself, the majority of pictures I take are of natural landscapes, lakes, reptiles, amphibians, and other wildlife. Rarely do I take pictures of people and I've never used the video function on any digital camera that I've owned (that's what camcorders are for) so I will not be reviewing the video function because I never used it. I also do no editing of images on the computer and expect a camera to take photos that look good without enhancements. That being said, I will review some problems I had with this camera that I believe need to be addressed by Kodak in order to make better products.
Shot to shot processing time
This was the biggest problem with the Z1275 and the main reason that I ended up returning it and keeping the Panasonic. Whenever you take more than 3 or 4 pictures in a row with this camera you get a message on screen that says "processing" with a little timer diagram which will go for about 5 seconds during which you can not take another picture. When it finally stops and you take another shot you get the same message again. If you want to wait till it actually stops processing you will have to wait 10+ seconds but will get the message after the next three shots once more anyways. I have never experienced this with any of the previous Kodak's that I have owned except after using the burst mode feature. While taking pictures with the Panasonic in my other hand at the same time using identical Sandisk Ultra II 2GB cards in each I could take about 12 pictures while the Kodak was barely getting 4 or 5. If you plan to take pictures of wildlife or sports this will be a very frustrating problem since time does not stand still while you wait for the camera to process an image.
Missing firmware/hardware problems
Over time I have found that Kodak has constantly removed things that I like from the camera's firmware for no apparent reason. First off, on my old CX6330 there was an option to turn off the digital zoom but they have removed this option from all subsequent models from what I can tell. As someone who has never and will never use the digital zoom since it results in very poor quality pictures I would like the option to turn it off. Second, this camera does not have the AF assist lamp that my C875 had and I found to help out a lot in nighttime shots with a moving animal as it allowed me to take a picture while not actually looking at the screen and just paying attention to where the assist light was pointing. Third is the problem that Kodak's images are definitely over compressed, the average file size I had for pictures was about 1.5MB in regular mode and less than 1MB in close up mode, which is equivalent to just about any other camera manufacturers 3 or 4 megapixel cameras. I believe that this is what causes the shot to shot processing time to take so long since it must compress the image so much. There is no reason for this given today's cheap memory card prices and the low cost of large hard drives to store images on. Fourth, the main reason I was looking for a new camera is that my C875 would occasionally shut off while taking a picture and the photo you took would be corrupt and gone forever, unfortunately this also occurred once while using the Z1275 and I have read it in other reviews. Lastly, another problem with my C875 was that every once in a while for no apparent reason it would give an error message that the memory card needs formatting and I would have to remove the card and put it back in and then it would work, this happened to me with the Z1275 also. I have lost many shots of turtles and other things due to them submerging in the water while I fumbled around removing the memory card and replacing it and this is definitely a problem. Before anyone says it, I have 6 different memory cards from different manufacturers and that is not the problem nor is it a problem with dead or the type of batteries I can say from trial and error.
The flash
The flash on this camera is very weak and not placed in a good position. You will have a hard time properly illuminating anything more than 5 or so feet away. Also, I had the problem that sometimes it will not fire a full flash, it seems to throttle it down and will let out this half flash that you cannot make any brighter in the firmware. In close up mode when using the flash I noticed that due to the design of the camera and the flash being over the lens you will have a shadow from the lens in every picture less than 3 feet away. I never had this problem with the older CX models where the flash was off to the side of the lens and everything would be illuminated well even from just a few feet away.
Image quality
I found that when comparing the image quality of the Z1275 to the Panasonic that in close up mode you can magnify the Kodak's images more on the computer without resulting in quality loss, but other than that the Panasonic was the clear winner even though it has 5 less megapixels. When taking outdoor shots of a tree surrounded lake I found that the Z1275 would have very poor detail in trees seen in the distance where you could not tell one from the other and they would look extremely washed out. Green trees in the distance would appear white and dead when they actually were not. While taking pictures of a Bald Cypress tree with foliage in it's reddish/orange color phase the Kodak transferred that color to the entire picture including the trunk of the tree which was brown. Also, I found that the camera would misrepresent colors and close up mode pictures seemed to have a bluish green tint to them. In close up mode I took some excellent shots of a green treefrog but could not get the camera to focus on smaller things such as caterpillars no matter how hard I tried. When taking pictures at full 5X zoom every single picture was blurry even when steadying myself against a tree or seated, essentially making the optical zoom selling point useless. I never had this problem with the C875 and only rarely got a blurred image with that camera, so I don't know what Kodak changed with this one.
No viewfinder/LCD screen
I don't know why Kodak has decided to make cameras without a viewfinder and it is one of the main problems that I had with my C875 and the Panasonic also. When given the choice I prefer using a viewfinder rather than and LCD screen especially when taking photos outdoors in bright lights or while wearing sunglasses when LCD screens are essentially useless.
Conclusion
I ended up returning this camera and keeping the Panasonic. Kodak seems to be taking steps backward with each camera model and concentrating only on increasing megapixels for bragging rights while making poorer quality products. I would not recommend this camera unless Kodak releases a firmware upgrade that speeds up the shot to shot processing time and fixes the unknown shutdown and memory card needs formatting error message issue. I lost over 30 pictures while vacationing on an island this summer with my C875 due to the shutdowns and will never risk having a camera with that problem again.
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for detailed specifications for the Kodak EasyShare Z1275 12MP Digital Camera with 5x Optical Zoom 
