Kodak EASYSHARE M1073 IS

...I ended up with the Kodak M1073 IS.

The camera is avaliable in black or silver, and has a plastic body. Mine is the black version pictured, it looks quite sleek and classy in the pictures, unfortunately in person it simply looks like a cheap black body with cheap silvery bits. Also worth noting is that the camera unlike many DOES NOT come with an SD card as part of the pack, you have to purchase one separately, of course this unlikely ...
...cant trust a brand like Kodak who have built a reptuation on camera equipment who can you trust? According to Kodak's own site the M-series cameras have image stablisation, and HD image capture among other things, neither of these are evident to me at least.

Before coming to write this review I had no idea of the RRP for this camera, but the quoted £100 - £120 (taken from the information to the left of the product information) has absolutely ... more

I like Canon cameras, I have to state that first of all, so my comparisons will be made to my 'main' camera which is an Ixus 980.

I recently took a weeks leave from work and headed to the South to spend some time with the human I refer to as the maleshape or Mr Scuba, this as I am female meant I was frantically packing at 6am before my 7.45am train, and as a result of grabbing my camera bag on the way out the door I then proceeded to leave it in my Dads car when he kicked me out at the station. So on a week where the entire plan was to go out and be a tourist I couldnt be without a camera!

So when I arrived at the maleshapes home out in Essex *shudders* I forced him on to a bus to the Lakeside shopping centre to seek out a new camera, I set myself a budget of roughly £100. Given my liking for Canons I was attracted to a Powershot A4something or other but the best price was £119, and had a lower MP than several other similarly priced cameras. So by a process of elimination - I've heard of the brand, it has a few MP's, didnt come in pink as standard, and it was the cheapest of the lot I ended up with the Kodak M1073 IS.

The camera is avaliable in black or silver, and has a plastic body. Mine is the black version pictured, it looks quite sleek and classy in the pictures, unfortunately in person it simply looks like a cheap black body with cheap silvery bits. Also worth noting is that the camera unlike many DOES NOT come with an SD card as part of the pack, you have to purchase one separately, of course this unlikely to be a problem for most people replacing an older model.

So what is in the box... Other than the camera itself, there is the battery, a wrist lanyard, USB cable for transferring images, a charger block with changable plug ends - one UK and one continental, and the clear plastic 'printer dock'. The USB cable doubles as the charger cable too.

Setting it up is very simple, insert the battery and SD card, plug in the charger and away it goes, there is a small LED on the back of the camera body which indicates the status, red = charging, green = charged.
Its worth noting that when charging you cannot use the camera for anything.

Ok so its charged now what? Better find out what the buttons do, the front has no buttons. The top features three, from right to left, shutter, flash, on/off. Nice and simple so far. On the back you find the usual LCD screen this is 6.9cm so is fairly big, on the top right is the zoom button, cleverly indicated by little silver coloured magnifying glasses on the plastic. Below this is the 'mode' dial, to the left of this are two small buttons the upper one is the erase button, the second the menu button - again these are clearly marked. Moving lower yet is a large silver round button - which covers four functions, 'up' is a small box with two lines next to it not a clue what it means, 'down' operates the timer function, left and right are scroll buttons. The centre of this round button has the 'OK' button. Below this is a red button marked 'share', and a silver button which features the box with arrow symbol indicating this is what to press to view the images stored. Easy.

Once charged you'll want to finish setting it up, switching it on is simple the on/off button is on the top closest to the middle of the camera body. You have to set the date and time options, these are simply altered by pressing the up/down buttons on the dial to the relevant digits are displayed.

Ok so we're all set up and ready to go!

My first attempts at using this were somewhat unsuccessful due to my having it set to video and the male hiding whenever I picked it up. But I can report that the video function is ok, picture and sound quality isnt great but adequate - its better than the video I can get from my phone. Once I worked out where I was going wrong I started aiming at his sleeping cats instead. Photos of the sleeping moggys were ok, clear and when zoomed in to on the LCD screen look to be of a decent quality, though not great beyond one push of the zoom button - little evidence of the 10.2 MP this camera claims to boast.

But having worked out the basic functions I was happy enough that I could use it during my week away.

So how did it cope with other things?

Once in the Big City, the first thing I attempted was a photo of Big Ben (told you tourist!). Of the two attempts, one without flash looks very very dark, the other having used the 'night landscape' mode looks odd, its a strange colour and fuzzy due to the shutter speed being slow to capture as much light as possible.

My next few photos were back to the 'Auto' setting for some snaps of the hotel room (to be attached if I get around to reviewing the hotel). These appear to have worked just fine.

Back outdoors and being a tourist I turned my camera to the Tower of London, again in Auto mode these were decent pictures - uninspired granted but thats my problem not the camera, trying with other settings resulted in blurred, fuzzy or strangely coloured snaps.

The same pattern was to occur on every photo I tried to take using the mode most appropriate for it, photos have an odd shading, the shutter speed slows so much that there is no way I could avoid shaking the image without a tripod. This is particularly irritating when it is set to 'sports' mode, when the speed at which the image in captured is meant to be quicker - the result more blurry images even of slow moving or stationary objects.

A minor plus, the menus are easy to navigate and clearly explained. But other niggles I had with the camera are the slow speed at which it turns on, slow menu navigation process, the lcd screen displaying the mode description everytime you change it, the fact it can take a couple of seconds for the mode to change and the camera become useable again and most annoying of all that after taking a photo the image is displayed on screen for almost 6 seconds which seems an eternity when you want to take several photos in a short space of time. And strangely prehaps given I don't tend to use it the lack of viewfinder has annoyed me intensely!

Once you transfer the photos to a larger screen I found yet more issues, the camera claims to be 10.2 MP, well some of the images from it are less sharp than those taken from my 1.2 MP camera phone - so I have to sumise that the lens and software in the camera arent particularly high quality. I have not downloaded the software from the disc provided so have no idea what manipulation tools might be avaliable but as I prefer not to use the likes of photoshop on general snaps I like my images to be clear and bright no matter what, this camera simply does not provide this.

After just 5 days use - 5 days in which the camera was kept in a camera bag except when in use there are several scuffs on the corners where the black has come away completely exposing greyish/white plastic underneath, and the silver coloured printing has already started to wear off! To me these small things imply a cheap construction and materials.

Frankly I have to admit I very much got what I paid for with this camera, but if you cant trust a brand like Kodak who have built a reptuation on camera equipment who can you trust? According to Kodak's own site the M-series cameras have image stablisation, and HD image capture among other things, neither of these are evident to me at least.

Before coming to write this review I had no idea of the RRP for this camera, but the quoted £100 - £120 (taken from the information to the left of the product information) has absolutely horrified me, I paid a 'mere' £87.99 for the camera and an add on deal of 4GB SD card and camera bag for £25. In all honesty I do not feel that the camera was worth this much. As this is me, I find myself also checking the cost of U/W housings for the camera Kodak themselves don't make one, indeed there is not a solid housing avaliable but this model would fit in to a ewa marine soft housing (basically a clear dry bag) which would cost around £40 and is only suitable for snorkelling with as it is only rated to 10m depth. 

...less