Kodak EasyShare Z1085 IS review

In general the photos from the Z1085 IS are good for the money. Colors are generally accurate as is white balance, both indoors and out. Detail remains good up to ISO 200 with little to no noise and no issues from suppression. At ISO 400, however, aggressive noise reduction in the red channel turns red objects smeary and the photos develop the typical overblurred, painterly look. The camera boasts ISO settings up to 3200 at full resolution and up to ISO 8000 at a 3-megapixel resolution. The results at these ISOs are pretty useless. Yes, you'll capture something that may be acceptable for Web use at a small size, but if you're expecting to get the same performance that the camera gives you at ISO 800, you'll be disappointed. Exposure also tends to be a bit off, with occasional blown-out highlights.

The Z1085 IS, like many Kodak cameras, records 30 frames per second of 720p HD video (1,280x720) in MPEG-4 format. The video quality is very good for a point-and-shoot camera, especially if you're keeping the camera focused on the subject and not moving around too much. Otherwise, the camera's exposure metering and focus will abruptly change causing scenes to suddenly be blurry and exposure to be off, and it takes a couple seconds to correct it. It supports optical zoom in movie capture, which is nice.

The 10-megapixel Kodak EasyShare Z1085 IS offers up a reasonably price-to-feature ratio, produces good, though occasionally overexposed, photos at ISO 200 and below, and offers uncomplicated operation. But while the 5x optical zoom is nice to have, performance is merely average for its class.

Shooting speed (in seconds)
(Smaller bars indicate better performance)

Time to first shot

Typical shot-to-shot time (flash)

Typical shot-to-shot time

Shutter lag (dim)

Shutter lag (typical)

Kodak EasyShare Z1085 IS

2.9 

3.2 

2.6 

0.7 

0.4 

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W150

1.9 

3.7 

1.5 

0.9 

0.4 

Canon PowerShot A580

1.6 

5.9 

2.2 

1.2 

0.4