Kodak EasyShare V610

The second release in Kodak’s dual lens camera series after the V570 is the much awaited V610 — the camera that offers more than a mere increase in the megapixel count. This one goes all the way of taking full advantage of its second lens to add 10x optical zoom functionality in its ultra compact body. If that seems great this one is feature-packed with Bluetooth for wireless communication with other devices like printers, mobile phones, PCs and other cameras, tremendous amount of scene modes that will suit just about any photographic opportunity, and a lot more. But does it really live up to these killer specs when it comes to actual performance? Let’s find out.

Build
Kodak has stuck to the design aesthetics that they applied on the V570. Only this time, it’s a little bigger (111 x 55.5 x 23.2 mm) and heavier (160g). Sure it’s going to look cool when you pop it out of your pocket and expose the dual lens, but practically speaking, I didn’t find the earlier build comfortable, and I don’t find this one much better. But that’s not the biggest problem with the camera design — it’s the buttons.

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But before I get to griping about the button layout I’d like to say that the V610 has an impressive 2.8” LCD screen that supports 280,000 pixels, and works pretty well under most lighting conditions. The image quality was consistently clear unless direct sunlight fell on the screen, which is a common issue with compact digital cameras.

With that said, everything else about the design seemed uncomfortable to me. The buttons on the top section were sunk in, there were buttons for commonly used functions lined up indistinguishably on the left of the screen and a navigational D-Pad along with the wide and tele zoom switch on the right. The thing I like about having a camera is the ease of use and the option for single-handed operation. The V610 design is clearly not meant for that. That and the buttons are generally a bit too tight and uncomfortable to press.

When it comes to build quality, the V670 was clearly designed to look groundbreakingly stylish. Too bad functionality was thrown out the window to achieve that.

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Features
The 6.1 megapixel V610 boasts 22 scene modes that, as I mentioned above, cover just about every shooting condition and situation. My favorite scene mode out of the lot was the panorama mode. It allows you to take three consecutive shots from left to right or right to left, covering a wide perspective. The camera does a brilliant job of seamlessly stitching the images together, making it look like a single naturally wide shot. It’s definitely the one of the best quality stitching I’ve seen straight from the camera.

The Bluetooth function is sure to make your life a lot easier. No more messing around with data cables every time you need to transfer pictures to the PC. It also eliminates the need for a PC to transfer data from the camera to another device like a mobile phone or a Bluetooth printer.

Performance

The V610, like most Kodak cameras gives you excellent colors; the kind that would make vacation shots look bright and cheerful. It takes advantage of any bright color it finds in the frame and saturates it give the overall picture a livelier effect. That’s not all, it also further darkened the shadowy areas of the picture to give a higher contrast ratio. Though a lot of professional photographers may frown at this quality, I personally feel it suits the casual photographer’s interests pretty well.

I also appreciated the fact that the camera captured the reds, oranges and pinks as what they are, unlike many other cameras in this category that are incapable of recognizing oranges and pinks, and reproduce them as reds instead.

The shot above was taken using a tripod and the “Night Landscape” scene mode on the Kodak V670. As you can see, the image has come out a bit too dark, even though the appropriate scene mode selected. This problem can be easily fixed by using the custom mode and manually setting the camera’s “Long Time Exposure”, but the point is that the selecting the “Night Scenery” itself should have done this for me.
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It’s easy to get fooled by the specs of the V610 and mistake it to be a compact prosumer, when in actuality, it really doesn’t present many manual features. It offers preset and auto white balance settings but no manual, which is very strange for a camera of this caliber. It supports ISO sensitivity levels of 64, 100, 200, 400 and 800. Shooting in ISO 800 sensitivity should be pretty much avoided, because, whatever you shoot would be filled with high levels of noise.