dpk’s weblog

Over the weekend I picked up a Kodak EasyShare Z612. It was $379.99 at Best Buy, but I’d check other places first ($56 restocking fee) It’s a 6.1 megapixel camera with a lithium-ion battery, 12x optical zoom, optical image stabilization, and it can be operated in a “fully” manual mode. That is, you can set the f-stop, ISO, shutter speed, etc — about as manual as a non-SLR digital camera will get. You can direct it to take multiple shots (2 per second) of a scene, and it will store the first or last 8 shots (depending on the mode). This may be a feature all cameras have nowadays, but it also stores all of the shot meta-information in the EXIF fields of the jpeg. (I’m using this information to re-learn, in a practical fashion, how to use f-stops and etc.) It’s a pretty feature rich camera, IMO.

Here’s a picture of a crow, which happened to be the second picture in an 8-shot series. I believe everything was in auto mode when I took the series. It was the best shot taken — the image stabilization is great, as evidenced there, but it can’t counter everything I throw at it: I was zoomed pretty far in and the crow was walking around pretty quick, so the other 8 (#8: blurry crow) shots were blurry.

Now there wouldn’t be a dpk’s weblog without a downside statement. The jog dial that controls the manual features is somewhat difficult to use — it may just take getting used to. More importantly, however, is that the camera has a severe problem with color bleeding. You can see it best here: A picture of a pinkish-purplish rhododendron, zoomed in on the upper left. The camera was set to “auto” mode, and I was using the macro auto-focus. The color itself is correct, as far as I can see, but there’s an obvious problem with either the blue pickup alignment, or the pickup arrangement. Notice how the blue bleeding is to the left in the top left, and to the right in the bottom right.

I tested the camera at Best Buy and found the same results, although the effect is much less obvious on the camera’s LCD — if you zoom in all the way, while in review mode, you can see it. Zooming doesn’t affect the width of the bleed, by the way, so I suspect it is a problem with the image processing chip rather than the lens. Kodak calls that the “Color Science Chip”.

The software that came with the camera doesn’t install either, but that’s not as big a deal — computers suck. Technical support is attempting to help me with that.*

So, I attempted to exchange the camera. Well, Best Buy’s manager determined that there is not a problem with the camera (although all of the staff that viewed the images confirmed that the bleed effect is present), so I would have to pay a restocking fee to exchange it. We basically have a difference of opinion on what counts as “defective”.

I’m left with one reasonable option, I have to try to work with Kodak to see if there’s a way to resolve this issue. A less reasonable option would be to figure out how to write a image filter that can remove the excess blue. Because computers suck, I am loathe to pursue this.

In summary:

Pros:

• Fully auto or manual operation
• 32MB internal memory — can come in handy
• Supports 2GB SD cards (maybe more?)
• Uses a Lithium Ion battery pack

Cons:

• Color bleeding — obvious blue bleeding on the edges of purple images
• The jog dial is kind of weak.

And, unrelated to Kodak, and apparently already very well known: Best Buy’s return policy stinks. I had a lapse of judgement. I still have 12 more days to decide if it’s worth paying a 15% premium on a replacement camera. Chances are I would not purchase the replacement from them, of course.

* The problem is that the installation doesn’t do anything after it asks me what language I speak. It just exits. I could probably manually install the drivers and the software, but I purposely choose not to. My home computer is a “sanctuary” from manual hacking. Computer hacking has been stressing me out lately, so anything I can do to reduce that at home is a bonus. For the most part the computer works fine. When issues like this come up, I often just give up and forgoe having the software rather than fighting with it.