Kodak has announced its latest addition to its family; the Kodak EasyShare Z980 is the first megazoom camera to have a wide angle lens that has the zooming ability of up to an attractive 24x zoom along with some outstanding capabilities such as smart capture and the control over the camera. The camera is bulky but the bulkiness has to be ignored since it’s a pioneering effort. The major plus points are the battery backup and the comfortable design. The pricing has also been made very affordable for the features added.

Key features/specifications:

• It measures at 4.9×3.5×4.1 (HWD) and weighs 18.7 ounces.
• The Z980 is of 12MP and the prints can be up to 30”x40”.
• The LCD display is of 3 inches and the resolution is 230K dots with an electronic viewfinder.
• The lens is a 26mm wide-angle zoom lens with 24x optical zooming.
• The image and video capture is of High Definition.
• A hot shoe option is provided for a Kodak P20 flash.
• A vertical shutter release is provided for user comfort.
• The file format for images is JPEG and for video, it is MOV H.264.
• The highest size of resolution is 4000×3000 pixels for image and 1280/720 for video.
• The image can be stabilized mechanically or electronically.
• The battery type is NIMH rechargeable; 4 AA cells, pre charged.

Performance and Working:

The Z980 comes with a price tag of USD399.95 which is approximately INR18500. The exterior body is strong, well built covered with black shiny plastic. The 12MP sensor enables you to crop pictured without any compromises made on the image clarity. The Z980 provides a 3.0 inch LCD in which the brightness can be adjusted at five levels. The viewfinder offers great relief to the eyes and the images can be shot after the viewfinder moves through the blurry image to finally indicate the best capture with a beep sound. The Z980 has a vertical shutter release which enables you to shoot vertically as well as horizontally and a detachable grip will help you enjoy shooting vertically while it provides optimum comfort.

Coming to the shooting performance, the click to capture speed is 0.02 seconds and it might be lengthened if flash is enabled. For vertical shooting a plastic grip is included that is screwed to the bottom of the camera so that you have more grip. But it is annoying that you have to put it and remove it each and every time you want to access the SDHC card slot and battery combo compartment. The range of Z980 flash is attractive, reaching some twenty feet at wide angle. And a hot shoe is provided that enables the addition of a desirable external flash. The lens offers optimum apertures at wide angle and telephoto which gives a decent speed. But some noise exists such as barrel distortion in wide angle shots and a pin cushion in telephoto shots. The corners and edges appear a soft and some chromatic disturbances can occur in areas of high contrast.

Quality images can be captured with great accuracy and with default settings being normal. There are various manual shooting modes such as low, natural and high color settings available. The sharpness can also be adjusted. There are various other settings that can be helpful in capturing a better quality of pictures such as lightning control, manual control, multiple scene selection, color modes, face detection etc. The video can be captured at a max of 1280×720 at 30 fps and up to 29 minutes in Z980. The audio and video quality is satisfactory. The long lens of the Z980 is very tempting to bring the distant objects closer. But holding the camera steady in hand is not an easy task. A tripod or any other support for the camera would be good to capture videos and images.

Pros and Cons:

The major plus points are: the ease of use, vibrant color, variety og shooting options, manual control, hot shoe option and a fast start up.

The drawbacks of Z980 are its awkward and bulk body design, noisy photos and the poor battery life which might be disappointing for a few.

Conclusion:

The Z980 has a variety of features that provides the users a range of functions for shooting purpose. It is definitely a contender in the megazoom class of digital cameras. Image quality and the color preciseness were satisfactory as the images produced were noisy. The touch of horizontal and vertical shutter buttons is an attractive feature. The battery life hinders with the usage of flash and monitor. It almost equals the small DSLRs with its ultra zoom capability and with an attachable vertical grip. The full usage of optical zoom with the video capture is definitely a plus as the quality of the video is pretty appreciable.

It provides a wide-angle megazoom lens that provides flexibility and the capability to be fully automatic and manual. Yet, the Kodak EasyShare Z980 cannot be recommended as easy as one can expect. The Z980 has the inability to turn on immediately when you turn off the flash back in shutter priority and manual modes, but you have to switch to aperture priority to turn on the flash and then switch back into shutter or manual mode.

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