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The Kodak EasyShare V610

Ease of Use:Overall Rating:

Reviewed by Jamie Lendino 9/6/06

The EasyShare V610 sports some interesting high-end features, including a powerful 10x optical zoom, and Bluetooth wireless technology for transferring your photos to your computer without a cable. Fortunately it also takes decent pictures, it’s ready to take the next one almost instantly, and it has a nicely sized 2.8-inch LCD screen. If you’re looking for a camera with a slim form factor, the V610 is a contender, but some issues with the auto-focus gave us pause.

The V610 is slender and finely constructed, but a little more difficult to hold compared to some of the other designs we tested. The V610’s menus are very legible and easy to read, with clear text to explain all the icons. This gives you easy access to dozens of preprogrammed scene modes. Plus, it’s simple to change all the various settings, so no need to fear digging into the menus. We found a couple of glitches, though; switching from internal memory to a card always took two confirmations in either direction, which was clumsy.

The large LCD looks incredible and doesn’t wash out in daylight. It also makes framing a shot super-easy. Picture quality wasn’t the best we’ve seen but was average for the price, and the camera has a very fast response time. Interestingly, we ran into some problems with the auto-focus on our indoor, non-flash test, which was about 18 inches away from a bookshelf. On the camera’s default settings, we simply couldn’t get it to focus, which didn’t happen with any of the other cameras we tested. We engaged the close-up feature, but even that was touch in go, requiring several shots to get one that was sharp.

The V610 sports a whopping 10x optical zoom, and it warns you with a yellow graph and double-press required before entering the digital zoom mode. Check out our example zoom shot from across a river to see how close we were able to get, compared to comparably priced cameras like the Canon PowerShot SD550 Digital Elph. We did see some pixilation in the tree leaves, however. Please note that this example photo has been compressed for the web site and does not show the full quality.

Selecting video recording mode requires just one button press at the top of the camera. The V610 took beautifully animated videos at 30 fps ; no qualms there. Overall the V610 is a very ambitious design that doesn’t always hit its targets. We’d suggest checking out the Canon PowerShot SD550 before making your decision.

Pros: simple menu system, slender, fast boot and recycle time, beautiful LCD
Cons: feels delicate, some image quality issues, auto-focus didn’t always work

Details:

Price: $449
Dimensions: 4.4 x 2.2 x 0.9 inches
Weight: 5.6 ounces (without battery)
Sensor resolution: 6.1 megapixels
Movie recording: 640x480 at 30 fps
Optical Zoom: 10x
Screen Size: 2.8 inches
Internal Memory: 32 MB
Card slot: SD/MMC

Ease of Use Rating: 3.5 stars
Overall Rating: 2.5 stars