EASYSHARE Z1275

[hortaja]

I have a question for all of you. My new Z1275 does not have a flash fill icon when I push the flash button on top. It just scrolls thru Auto Flash, No flash, and Red Eye. This is regular Auto mode. It does have the v1.08 software on it. I just bought it last week and love it minus this one thing. In the manual it says it should have it?



Any ideas or comments. I did email Kodak with this issue just an hour ago.



Thank in advance

Jerry

[Alan T]

hortaja wrote:

....This is regular Auto mode. ...love it minus this one thing.

Don't know about the 1275, but on my Z712, many adjustments & features are inaccessible in its fully auto modes, so I almost never use those modes, and stick to A, S, M, and occasionally P for flash shots. It's one of the few drawbacks I've found.

The worst is that I have no control at all when using the otherwise excellent 3-shot autostitching of panoramas. If I use it I have to post-process severely to ameliorate overexposure. So every panorama has to be taken as single shots as well, if I want to ensure a good result.

Good luck!

[paulplatt]

I wound up returning my camera. The picture quality was inconsistent. If you paused and shot it was great. Similarly on video if you composed on a subject with little movement it was fine. I loved the follow focus and zoom during video and the 720p resolution. However write times made picture taking painful. It remined me of my old Ricoh RDC-7. My Fuji F700 is so responsive. I thought all new cameras would be that way but not the Kodak. If anyone knows of a responsive camera with 720p movie mode that my wife can put in her purse then let me know. Price is less important than performance. We do a lot of video clips. We need a new camera since the Fuji has picked up a lens defect. The Kodak had so much promise but it became too frustrating.



Paul

[whinystan]

I'm looking for a compact camera that has fast performance, fast flash recharge times and a good video mode (i.e. would be good for taking photos and videos of a two-year old who almost never sits still), so I picked up a Z1275 along with an M753 (has extremely fast flash recharge times - can get three flash shots in around 4 seconds) from Wal-Mart to take advantage of their 30 day no restocking fee return policy. In the several days I've had the two cameras, I havebeen fairly disappointed with the Z1275. I'veexperienced the following problems:

1) It seems like the ISO settings have minimal effect - even when I have it set to ISO 64 or 100, I'm still getting a fairly grainy photo with lots of noise and little detail, looking like how I would expect a photo at ISO 400-800 to look for indoor shots, maybe ISO 200 level noise for outdoor shots. Using the Auto mode or either the ISO or digital image stabilization modes,indoor photos look like they were taken with one of thefirst generationcell phone cameras (literally, I'm not exaggerating) with a detail level of perhaps a 640x480 resolution at bestand are noisier than a Ohio State - Michigan football game. My four year old 5mp Pentax Optio 555 takes crisper, sharper photos indoors and most of the time, outdoors as well. Low light performance is horrible and even with flash, still inadequate. The little 7mp M753 usually takes as good or better photos, except in low light with no flash. Oddly enough, in 720p video mode, I was able to record several videos in relatively low light conditions indoors that were excellent and approached the light levels I was seeing in real life, so the lens is certainly capable - it's the electronics that are at fault.

2) When I set the white balance control to "Tungsten" for indoor photos, it gives everything a very strong blue cast, looking like I selected a blue color filter with one of the digital cameras that offer that feature (i.e., everything is as blue as the same photo would be brown on a sepia setting). While I would suspect that to counter the yellow light from an incandescent light bulb, there might be a verymild blue filter used in the Tungsten setting, this makes the photos essentially unusable, unless it could be cured with photoediting software (which I prefer to use as little as possible). This occurs in either Natural or High color modes (didn't try the Low color mode).

3) Macro shots are poor. Last night I tried taking some photos of several pieces of audio gear I am selling on eBay, and from a distance of about 20-24" away (should be well within the manual's stated 28" range), I was not getting very sharp images in the macro setting or in the self-portrait mode, figuring the typical hold-at-arms-length and shoot picture of oneself range is about the same as what I was trying to shoot to fill the width of the screen with the audio component. Ultimately, I used the M753 instead and got pretty good photos with that one using the self-portrait mode.

4) Fairly strong aliasing on longer range outdoor shots. Got lots of the jaggies of tree trunks and branches in both Auto mode and on Landscape scene.

Aside from the need to get some sort of image stabilization in the video mode to steady the fairly shaky recording, the HD movie mode produces really nice videos, but I don't think that's going to be enough to compensate for the weak still photography. I think we're probably going to return thisZ1275 unless perhaps a firmware update and/or new techniques can really make big improvements. Or, does it sound like I have a defective camera? Any thoughts? Thanks.

[big_potato]

Paul,

I am using Sandisk Ultra2 SDHC. I can take continuous shots (at least 3 shots) almost instantaneously.

You just half-press the shutter and the Z1275 is ready for the next shot.

I admit as a low-end Kodak DC, z1275 JPEG inages are a bit over-compressed .

Also if you don't use the manual exposure controls of z1275, you'd better choose the full-auto counterpart, V1253.

You may browse all the night/indoor shots I took using manual exposure above.

And these latest shots:

http://www.dcfever.com/photosharing/...1188568067.jpg
http://www.dcfever.com/photosharing/...1193583479.jpg

[whinystan]

jeryst wrote:

I bought this camera from QVC for $198, and I have to say I am thoroughly disappointed.

Cheesy plastic construction including black plastic buttons that will probably cack, chip, and fade over time. The markings on the buttons are embossed, but not painted or illuminated, so you can only see them at various angles when the light reflects off of them. Good thing there aren't many.The battery door is plastic too, with a cheap plastic hinge, and I don't think it's going to be very forgiving, unlike the SD card door that at least has a metal hinge. The battery door is probably the first thing that will make the camera useless. The camera has a nice elegant look to it, but feels cheap, and looks cheap up close. They should have, at least, chrome plated all of the buttons for a nicer look. Menus are laid out nicely, and controls are nice and simple although the positions of the self-timer and flash buttons should be reversed. Your finger naturally rests on the leftmost button, so you keep triggering the timer when you want to adjust the flash. This is totally annoying when you are trying to capture a quick shot. The camera is compact, but unfortunately thick, bulky, and heavy as well. I realize that part of the thickness is due to the AA batteries (Which I prefer), but at its narrowest point, the camera is close to twice as thick as the width of the batteries, and there is no excuse for that today. Add on another quarter inch for the protruding lens, and it becomes rediculously thick for a shirt-pocket camera. Too bulky to just tuck away in the pocket of your jeans too, although it may make the girls think you are happy to see them.

Size is on the large end for a compact or pocket camera, but it isn't that bad. I think saying this is"ridiculously thick for a shirt pocket camera" incorrectly presumes the Z1275was intended to be in the Canon SD class of cameras from a size perspective, which I don't believe Kodak was representing was the case with the Z1275.

Photos lack sharpness. When you blow them up, you can see color bleeding along some of the lines between highly contrasting colors. Lots of jaggies and pixilation. Loss of detail in hilight and shadow areas. I took some photos on a moderately cloudy day, at around 3PM, and every time I tried to use the zoom, the camera shake indicator came on. The colors do look nice, however the photos from my Sony 8MP DSC-N1 are better quality, so the 12MP is just a waste of digital space. I was hoping for a 50% increase in quality considering the difference in MP, but it just ain't so. QVC showed samples of photos blown up to 30x60 that looked incredible. I'd like to know how they did it with this camera. Magic of television I guess.

Agreed, 100%. In the past month I've demoed four 7-12mp cameras and felt that notwithstanding the greater resolution, none of them compared in sharpness and overall image quality to my 5mpPentax Optio 555, which was not one of the top 5mp prosumer cameras judged by photo quality in either Steve's review or in DPReview.com's review of the predecessor Optio 550. Of course, my Pentax had a MSRP of $600 back in the day, more than twice that of the Z1275. I originally picked up a Z1275 for a present for my wife but gave some thought to perhaps keeping it for myself and eBaying my Pentax if my wife preferred one of the smaller and less complex point and shoots. I'm planning on returning the Z1275 this evening, though, as we picked up a Kodak M883 at Best Buy over the weekend for $149 on sale which, although its VGA video mode does not compete with the Z1275's 720p resolution,has better all-metal construction, is smaller, has a much faster flash recharge time and takes significantly better, less grainy and noisy flash photos (surprisingly, since it's so much smaller, the M883 has a lot more powerful flash - it was still useful around 18-20 feet away). My wife liked the little red M883 better and while I prefer having full manual controls, the M883 has more options and control over exposure and shutter speeds than the very similar M753 and M853 models. If she likes it better and it's $70 cheaper, I guess it's not a hard decision.

Videos are QUICKTIME, and I hate Quicktime, or any Apple product for that matter (long story, don't ask), so they are unplayable to me.In my opinion, they shouldn't use any format that can't be played by Windows Media Player. Video was OK, but limited to 30min/2GB segments. Zooms while recording, which is cool. Loses focus, but regains it quickly. Quality is only good if you use ultra-fast cards, so by the time you buy a couple of suitable cards and add that to the price of the camera, you could have bought a higher quality camera or nice digital camcorder, so it's really not worth it for that either.

I don't think Quicktime is that bad. Also, I'm using a Panasonic 2gb Class 4 SD card, which is pretty much middle of the pack in terms of speed and it does a fine job. You can buy 2gb SD cards for well under $20 these days (Office Max has 2gb 60x Ultra II SD cards this week for $17.99)

It takes forever to get photos and videos uploaded from the camera. As a matter of fact, just about everything on this camera is SLOWWWWW! The camera doesn't use a standard mini-USB connector either, so if you lose the cable, you won't easily be able to get at anything in the internal memory. Why, for God's sake, can't they just use a standard cable and connectors? It's not like they're saving tons of room.

Why on earth are you bothering with the cable? Just take your SD card out of the camera, plug it into your USB 2.0 card reader and within a few minutes, you're done.

The image stabilization is a joke, that doesn't work except in a special mode. The reason for this, is that all it does it crank up the ISO, accompanied by all of the problems that go along with that. This point really made me mad because one of the reasons I bought it was because it had image stabilization, and the hosts at QVC conveniently never pointed out the fact that it doesn't work in all modes. While I'm on the subject of modes, there is an ISO mode too. So instead of being able to adjust the ISO in any mode, you have to enter a special mode, where many other things don't work, just like the image stabilization mode. That is totally rediculous, and whoever came up with that concept should be horsewhipped, or better yet, forced to use this camera.

Agreed that the digital image stabilization is worthless. On a camera this prone toward grainy, noisy photos, adding a mode that does absolutely nothing except increase the ISO and make your photos even more grainy is nothing more than a "me too" inclusion at the insistence of the marketing department. You're wrong about changing ISO settings, though. If you are in the P/M mode, you can change the ISO through the menu in program, aperture priority, shutter priority or manual.

So, all-in-all, I guess the old saying "If it looks to good to be true, it probably is" came through again. I thought I was getting a high quality camera for a decent price, but alas, it wasn't meant to be. It may be an okay snapshot camera for my half-blind, half-senile, Sherry-swilling grandmother, but for someone who is even half serious about photography, it's not worth even looking at. This is my first Kodak camera, and will probably be my last if this is the kind of junk they are peddling. If I saw this camera without a brand name on it, I would have said that it was some cheap Chinese import, but certainly not a Kodak. I'm not sure if I'm just going to pack it up and return it, or give it to my wife since she keeps stealing my N1, but I certainly don't want it.

[saleenadam]

My C875 has had it and I was thinking about getting this or a Panasonic as a replacement and havea question for those who have it already. When I had previous Kodak models like the 6330 & 7530 I found that the flashat night was much better than the 875 both at a distance and close-up. When taking a close-up picture at any distance less than about a foot and a half away with the 875 it casts a shadow from the lens in the bottom of the picture as seen in the picture below and I was wondering if this is the case with the 1275 also since it seems to be a very similar design? This is a very annoyingproblem to me since I typically do no editing of photos and hate to crop out that area on every shot.


http://www.littergetters.com/c875pic.JPG

[JLF]

Pls put some party imagest taken by z1275, like many colors and move ...