The zoom range doesn't much matter if the photos don't look good, and those produced by the Z980 are a bit mixed. Even shooting at its lowest sensitivity of ISO 64 noise is present, adding graininess to the photos. Shooting below ISO 200 is your best bet, which is before noise and noise suppression kicks in heavily and starts destroying detail. You get usable results at ISO 400, but photos taken at higher sensitivities are fairly smeary. If you're looking for something to shoot with in low light without a flash, you probably don't want this camera. Also, other than macro shots, photos tended to be fairly soft. What the Kodak does well, however, is color, which was pleasingly vibrant. Exposure was very good, too, as was white balance; even auto white balance is decent, instead of the overly yellow results from other manufacturers' cameras.
The Z980 captures video at an HD resolution of 720p. The quality is generally very good and you get full use of the optical zoom, which is a definite plus. You just have to be patient as it's unsurprisingly slow to focus. What is disappointing, however, is that there is no way to view the HD video out of the box on an HDTV nor is there a connector for Kodak's docks. Judging by the company's site for this camera, Kodak would like you to purchase its $199 Theatre HD Player for viewing the videos on a TV (of course, the box does much more than that).
Marred by a wonky design and photo quality that drops off significantly above ISO 400, the Kodak EasyShare Z980 isn't easily recommendable. There's no doubt that the wide-angle megazoom lens provides a lot of fun and flexibility as does the camera's capability to be fully automatic, fully manual, and everything in between. But it seems like Kodak needs a generation to work out some of the design kinks.
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(Longer bars indicate better performance)
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