Kodak EasyShare P850 digital camera

Posted by T3 Online on Fri 26 Oct 2007

Kodak plays catch-up with its feature-rich but ultimately disappointing digital camera.

Kodak is breaking out of its lifestyle ghetto with this optically stabilised, five-megapixel super-zoom.

It's compact and sports features such as RAW image capture (the closest you'll get to a digital 'negative') and a hot-shoe for a flash-gun. It also has a big 2.5-inch LCD and dozens of easy-use scene modes to keep its core customers happy.

There are lots of buttons and dials, which control everything from focus and metering to a useful AE/AF lock button. This can cause confusion, especially as the jog dial works some menus but not others. The whining noise from the lens whenever you alter focal length is also irritating.

Image quality isn't great. Photos are soft on detail and there's some purple fringing. It failed to focus once, on a night-time shot, but the flash is strong and colour reproduction is very good.

The real problem here is that Kodak is playing catch-up. This may have a 12x stabilised zoom, 2.5-inch screen and manual controls, but the Panasonic FZ7 did all that first, with higher resolution, less bulk and at a lower price.