Available in a range of colors, the Kodak V803 packs an 8-megapixel sensor and 3X optical zoom in a stylish candy shell. Is it more style than substance?
Review summary of the Kodak EasyShare V803:
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 If you are going to take pictures of outdoor fruit stands on bright sunny days, the EasyShare V803 does a nice job with exactly this type of shot. Panorama shots, too, came out looking great, once we got the hang of lining up our shots. Otherwise, the V803 had some serious problems with image quality. Indoor shots were rarely usable, even with the middling flash, and low-light or high-speed shots suffered from serious noise issues. The camera was also very slow to startup, and slow to focus, defeating some of the spontaneity of a point-and-shoot camera. Though fashionistas may be enticed by the delightful colors available for the camera's shell, even casual shooters will be disappointed by the images this camera produces, especially if you're going to be taking most of your pictures indoors. Release: March 2007. Price: $100.
Pros: Compact camera. Good price for the high-megapixel sensor. Panorama mode was fun and effective.
Cons: Slow operation. Poor image quality indoors and in low light, lots of noise and grain. Slow auto focus. Mediocre battery life.
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Full Kodak EasyShare V803 Review:
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Design - Good
The Kodak EasyShare V803 is an attractive, simple camera, and though our review unit came in the most bland color available, Kodak offers the device in eight attractive hues. The camera was easy to pocket, and not difficult to hold, though it lacks any ergonomic grip. The zoom rocker button was a little small for our taste, and placed poorly, making one-handed shooting difficult. Also, we like a viewfinder on our camera, for saving battery life (a problem with the V803) and taking shots in bright daylight, though glare wasn't too much of an issue with the bright, 2.5-inch LCD. Though we didn't use the camera with a tripod, we also prefer the tripod mount to be inline with the camera lens, but on the V803 the two were about an inch apart, laterally.
The interface on the camera is simple and easy, with a few nice options. There are plenty of scene modes to choose from, though we only found a few to be truly useful. Also, the camera has an "undo delete" function, which we liked very much, though it only works immediately after you delete a photo, so you can't resurrect a shot you took during your last photo session.
Features - Good
The scene modes on the EasyShare are a mixed bag. We quickly grew fond of the panorama stitching modes (right-to-left and left-to-right, why?), which did a very nice job assisting us in lining up pictures for a three-frame panorama shot, and then stitching them together. Other scene modes didn't seem to have much effect, such as the "panning shot" mode, or the "self portrait" mode, which didn't improve our pictures. And other modes seemed to result in pictures that looked worse. The "high ISO" mode resulted in images that suffered from a glut of noise and splotchiness, and the "custom" mode presented us with fewer options than we'd like, even on a $200 point-and-shoot camera.
Kodak also includes a "Perfect Touch" option, which is a picture enhancing feature. In practice, this feature worked best with underexposed images, revealing some of the details in shadows, but also produced some noticeable noise in these shots, especially as we cropped and zoomed our photos. Though the Perfect Touch option was nice while we were away from our office, it took a long time for the camera to apply the changes, so if you're going to transfer the images to a computer anyway, you might be better off just adjusting them there.
Performance - Mediocre
The V803 is a slow camera. It is slow to startup. Auto focus takes longer than we'd like. When you press a button, the camera is slow to respond, and occasionally doesn't respond at all, requiring some repetitive jabbing.
Outdoor images from the camera looked very good, but quality deteriorated as the light grew dim. Outside, colors had a nice pop, and seemed accurate. Though the slow auto focus kept us from capturing some interesting moments as they happened, with a steady hand, we were generally happy with our test shots. The flash was too weak to use as a fill, and pictures taken in shadows or under cloud cover were obviously less saturated, but we didn't detect much noise or color aberration in our shots. Indoors, as we moved above 200 ISO, images suffered greatly. The camera could not handle the lower ambient room lighting, and the flash was not powerful enough to produce a decent-looking image. A higher-speed shot of our ceiling fan took on an antique quality, the grain and noise was so bad. Even the included Perfect Touch feature was no match for the poor image quality, and usually resulted in noisy, unusable images.
In a day of shooting, mostly outdoors without flash, we managed about 230 shots on a full battery charge. This is a little low, especially considering our 2GB memory card can hold about 3-4 times this many images.
Software - Good
We didn't spend too much time with the EasyShare software beyond its file transfer capabilities, but it does offer a nice set of amenities to digital photo newbies, including plenty of uploading, printing, burning, e-mailing and print ordering options, some of which require signing up with Kodak's online services. For image transfer, the software seemed took some time to load our photos into its preview window, but transferred images from the camera about as quickly as the Adobe software we usually use. We liked the editing options, which brings up a side-by-side view of the photo before and after an effect is applied, including a live preview which changes the "after" image as you work the controls. Beyond the normal image editing tools, Kodak offers a few fun options, like a fisheye effect and a "cartoon" filter, which worked nicely and produced a fun effect. The editing software itself has a very nice, polished looking interface, with menus that were easy to use and icons and interface effects that looked modern and professional.
High resolution image samples
Noise on low-light imageGood detail on bright, daylight shotsNo jaggies or chromatic aberrationSample panoramaAnother panoramaClose-up handling
Price and availability
The Kodak EasyShare V803 will start selling for $100 () in March 2007.
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