Kodak EasyShare V1273

Sporting a svelte black body and a touch-screen interface, Kodak’s EasyShare V1273 is a pretty stylish package. It comes with 720p video recording and a 12-megapixel sensor, both of which are welcome additions. However, when you look past the glitz it has a few problems, including an extremely irritating and unresponsive interface and some slightly soft images.

Kodak has been one of the longest proponents of touch-screen interfaces on cameras, and with the popularity of the iPhone there is increased interest in this technology. So it’s a shame to see the implementation of the touch screen on this camera is poor.

The biggest issue is sensitivity. It often takes multiple taps for something to register. Furthermore, several times we successfully hit a menu option and it lit up but nothing happened until we tapped it again. Some icons are extremely small, leading to quite a few errors for users with larger fingers. We also experienced several delays when doing basic things like adjusting ISO. Not everything is done through the screen; there are several buttons on the side that bring up some of the basic menus, but after that you will need to use the screen.

The other thing to note about the display is how poorly it performs in bright light. Under any kind of sunlight it loses all definition, making it difficult to use outdoors.

In our image quality tests the V1273 returned generally good results, with a few small flaws. Its pictures were fairly sharp but considering the 12-megapixel sensor they could probably have been a little crisper. They will still look fine for most print sizes, but once you start to make sizeable enlargements the issue will become a little more noticeable. Chromatic aberration is relatively well controlled, with only some minor purple fringing and a little detail loss towards the corners of the frames.

Noise was extremely well controlled. At low ISOs there was no sign of graininess, and while ISO 400 and 800 both saw some minor blotchiness it was minimal and didn’t really detract from the overall clarity. ISO 1600 and ISO 3200 were progressively worse, and we’d recommend staying away from these settings unless you can handle a little detail loss.

Colour balance was exactly as we expected. Everything looked bright and vibrant — perhaps too much so at times, but many users will enjoy the lively and strongly saturated look. If not, you can always tweak things later on. There are a handful of colour settings on the camera itself, but no manual white balance.

The unit performed adequately in our speed tests, returning fast results that were up to par. It started up in just under two seconds and exhibited 0.08 seconds of shutter lag. The shot-to-shot time was somewhat variable: occasionally we snapped two shots off in just over a second, while at other times the processing lag slowed this to once every two or three seconds. The burst mode was snappy, at just under three frames per second.

In terms of features the V1273 is a pretty standard compact. It has face detection and a limited number of focus and metering options. The most notable feature is the 720p video recording. It looks decent, but really isn’t substantially better quality than video recorded on most other cameras, apart from the extra resolution.

The standout feature of this camera is its design. Entirely built from matte black metal and with a dark gunmetal grey lens, it looks dark and intimidating and is very different from the bright, vibrant cameras from other manufacturers. We think it looks pretty smooth but some may prefer something with a lighter vibe.