Kodak EasyShare Z612

The Kodak EasyShare Z612's performance was fast. It took 1.8 seconds to power up and capture its first image and 1.5 seconds between images thereafter. In high-contrast situations, its shutter lag was a zippy 0.4 second and, even more impressive, stretched to only 0.6 second in low-contrast lighting. Burst mode yielded 8 frames in 3.3 seconds for an average of 2.4fps, regardless of image size. Unfortunately, the Z612 doesn't offer continuous burst shooting. You can capture only as many as 8 images, but you can choose between capturing the first 8 shots or firing continuously and saving the last 8. Like most cameras that do this, it doesn't refocus or meter between shots, so if you're panning, you might end up with out of focus, or poorly exposed images, especially if you're saving the last 8.

As usual with cameras from Kodak, colors looked natural and well saturated in the Z612's photos. The camera's automatic white balance produced a very warm, yellowish color cast under our lab's tungsten lights, though in natural daylight, it yielded neutral colors. The Z612's tungsten white-balance setting fared better in the lab, though its images were slightly cool. Exposures were accurate, but the camera has a tendency to lose detail in brighter highlights. Worse than that was the heavier than normal purple fringing, as well as JPEG artifacts that caused jaggy edges on some curves and obscured some fine details in other areas of some images.

Noise was fairly well controlled. At ISO 80 and ISO 100, there was very little noticeable noise. At ISO 200, darker colors were mottled, and we noticed speckles in shadows. At ISO 400, noise became obvious, but images were still appropriate for printing, especially if you don't print larger than 8.5x11 inches. The camera also offers a high-speed ISO 800 mode but reduces the image size to 1.1 megapixels to help keep noise under control. Obviously, these won't yield high-quality prints, but they are useful for e-mail or the Web.

Kodak's EasyShare Z612 has a ton of useful features, including the normal complement of scene modes plus auto and program modes for people who want simple snapshots, as well as a full array of controls for more advanced shooters. If not for its image-quality issues, it would be a solid competitor, but as it stands, we'd recommend Canon's PowerShot S3 IS if you want a superzoom that produces really pleasing images.

Shooting speed
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)

Typical shot-to-shot time

Time to first shot

Shutter lag (typical)

Canon PowerShot S3 IS

1.7 

1.5 

0.4 

Kodak EasyShare Z612

1.5 

1.8 

0.4 

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ4

1.1 

2.8 

0.5 

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ7

1.5 

2.8 

0.6 

Sony Cyber Shot DSC-H5

1.8 

2.7 

0.6 

Continuous-shooting speed
(Longer bars indicate better performance)

Typical continuous-shooting speed

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ4

2.7 

Kodak EasyShare Z612

2.4 

Canon PowerShot S3 IS

1.5 

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ7

1.3 

Sony Cyber Shot DSC-H5

1.3