Kodak EasyShare V1073 10MP Digital Camera with 3x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom

I've had this camera for almost a year. Not only has it broken twice (the automatic shutter does not open and close fully) but it takes terrible pictures. It's so rare that I get a decent photo, I have gone back to using my old-school clunky Sony with a 16mb memory card. I'm tossing this Kodak and replacing it with another Sony.

I bought this camera, the Kodak Easyshare V1073, to replace my old digital Polaroid, yes Polaroid, camera. I wanted something made in this century and a major upgrade, and I think I got both. The touch screen definitely makes using this camera so much easier then having to press a million buttons to do anything like most of the standards on the market.

Pros: Touchscreen makes everything easier, explanations for the different modes are in camera, smart capture takes out the guess work, great macro shots, image stabilization works like a dream; your subject could spin like a Tazmanian devil, and it still takes a great still shot.

Cons: Touch screen is practically INVISIBLE in sunlight. You have to hold your hand over the screen to make it out. The battery door is flimsy. Lense stays out every time your turn the camera on. Must charge battery in camera.

Buy this camera if you are a point and shoot fan, and you want something a little fancier then what's currently out.

The 4 stars are relative. Obviously there are better cameras available, but the price is right for the features this camera has. The lack of protruding buttons (other than the zoom) makes the design ideal for pocket or bag. I also like the under-designed body. That's a big change for Kodak towards better products.

The image quality is quite good - especially if your main photography goal is convenience. Low light performance is also good thanks to a larger chip than most compact cameras have (7.40 x 5.55 mm instead of the typical 5.75 x 4.31 mm). This lowers the pixel density allowing for greater light capture where many other cameras run the needless megapixel race resulting in grainy photos.

The 720p video is perhaps the main reason to choose the V1073. So far I've had good results with the possible exception of the metering going between warm and cool hue shifts when shooting indoors. There is also the purple vertical line problem in small, extremely bright areas that practically all HD compact cameras have.

The battery door problems that others have mentioned has not happened to mine, but I never open it instead using the cable to transfer files and charge.

I bought this camera and tried for a week. Do not buy this camera if you gonna use it outdoors. It's almost impossible to see anything on the big lcd screen on a bright day. For indoors low light situations is a okay camera. Movie mode: I can't say I recorded in HD quality because you need the camera dock to view it in your TV. But when transferred the movies to the computer, the quality is not that great and it skips when played back, and I used a 8gb 150x card. The movies in "HD" are limited to 29 minutes and a 8gb card can record about 80 minutes of movie only. After recording a movie 29 minutes non-stop the camera took forever to "process" the information, that's terrible. I returned this piece of junk without hesitation. Do yourself a favor and save your money for better cameras out there.

It's hard to choose a Kodak subcompact today when Canon remains the standard, with consistent quality through the years. If a particular Canon model is not the leader in it's class it's always a solid 2nd or 3rd, and no company has maintained such consistent standards in this catagory over the years. With such a time-tested pedigree why would anyone choose to NOT buy a Canon? Kodak, by comparison, has nearly vanished from the high end, with the majority of its models sub 100$ generic mediocrities.

In this context, i purchased the v1273 (the 12 megapixel version of this camera), the second most expensive camera offered on the market by Kodak today. So how does it fare?

Suprisingly well, in fact, but with some significant drawbacks.

For the 12mp, the HD quality on my 42" TV is stunningly acceptable (which creates a zoomed in, 16:9 9mp image). Kodak's secret is it's "Smart Capture" function which automatically applies Kodak's "Perfect Touch" technology. Which is, in a nutshell, automatic post-processing. It increase saturation, contrast, and other similar values automatically, creating stunning first-time photos without tedius work on the computer after the shoot. It also retains full access to most manual functions, although this requires a bit of hunting and pecking because these functions are not explained in the manual.

And that manual functions are not explained is just the beginning to this camera's drawbacks. There is no battery meter! You have to guess about how much charge it has; and this is important, as the touchscreen devours energy. The screen is completely illegible in bright sunlight - not sort of/kind of dark but completely washed out (98%-99% washed out). You cannot preview your photos without turning on the lens, and it remains on. It takes dissapointingly average "HD" video, which is all but the exact same as a 4 year old Casio Exilim, only larger. A camera with better lenses and image stabilization, like the Panasonic FZ-18k, takes vastly better videos, despite the megapixel gap.

Perhaps the biggest drawback is with it's very halmark. The Perfect Touch pseudo-postprocessing technology does well in bright sunny days with blue skies and green plants - but it tends not to choose the correct settings in early or late hours, or at night. The rich colors of sunsets tend to be washed out as it attempts to brighten the whole scene and make everything equally visible, blue-ify the sky and green-ify the trees around with somewhat oversaturated "Kodak" colors. Sadly getting pictures to look half as good with manual settings is nigh impossible and often the result is comically bad, like some polarized nightmare.

Still, with all that said... out of the box, on full auto, it took a better landscape picture on automatic than a full 1000$ Canon Eos 40D on auto (we compared). If you're an obsessive control freak about RAW data, ect., this camera will not make you happy. If you want beautiful pictures, on full auto, to show on your 1080p HD TV that make non-photophilles go "wow! ooh, ahh!", without any post-processing effort, this, or it's cousin the v1253, which doesn't have a horrible touchscreen, might be the camera for you.

Just be sure to bring an extra battery.