Guest post by Geeks.com, as usual a great source of Kodak digital cameras, sent us a Kodak P850 for review. The P850 is a current camera in the Kodak lineup, announced exactly a year ago. It’s the lower model in Kodak’s “performance” P range (the other ranges are the entry-level C cameras, super-zoom Z cameras, and pocket V cameras). As a member of the P range, the P850 has a few features that are only found in some high-end point-and-shoots and in DSLRs, e.g. the ability to record raw files, or to use an external flash via a hot shoe. Note: OSAlert is a broad tech site (and has been for years), such non-software reviews are welcome here even if our focus remains towards “system software”.
As Geeks.com had indicated, the camera was a refurbished one, and (as we’ve experienced several times in the past) the only hints that it had been refurbished were the generic box and a “refurbished” sticker on the camera; without a doubt Kodak is serious about bringing the camera back to their original specifications when refurbishing them.
There are plenty of digital cameras from all manufacturers that offer different features, at different price points. Whenever I consider a digital camera, I try to consider how the manufacturer intended to position them on the feature/price curve, and how they succeeded in that goal. That is why I don’t rush to compare specifications between cameras.
The P850 is priced aggressively against its competition, being listed below $300. In fact, there are very few cameras with a 10x or 12x zoom and optical image stabilization at that price, and none that offers raw shooting or a hot shoe.
So, what market does Kodak target with this camera? I’ve struggled for a while trying to find an answer to that question. It’s certainly priced far too low to compete with DSLRs (the cheapest DSLR costs about twice as much, and that’s without a lens. Adding image-stabilized lenses that cover the same range of angles makes the price sky-rocket). On the other hand, its distinguishing features (flash hot-shoe and raw shooting) are an indication that Kodak intends the camera to be used by photographers aspiring to do more than simply point and shoot. The best description of the market for this camera is that it might be the second camera of someone who already uses a DSLR but needs a smaller and lighter camera, and that’s how I’m going to review it.
By DSLR standards, the P850 is very small and very light. In fact, it weighs less than a pound in “ready-to-shoot” configuration, and it is smaller than even the Canon Digital Rebel XT. While not really intended to be a pocket camera, it does fit in the side pocket of my cargo pants and shorts, but I wouldn’t leave it there for a long hike.
What I quickly noticed about the P850 when I started to handle it is the sheer number of buttons that it has. There are 13 buttons, one more than on my Canon 5D DSLR, and their layout doesn’t seem to follow much logic. The autofocus control is on the top-left, the auto-exposure control is on the top-right, while the AF/AE lock is on the back. There is a programmable button on the top-right, but some of the functions that would be likely to be assigned to such a button (e.g. explicit AF) aren’t available. While the layout of the buttons is sub-optimal but can easily be learnt, the tactile feedback of the buttons is very poor: the buttons are very small in diameter and are mounted flush with the surface of the camera, which makes them hard to feel and harder to press. Because they’re mounted close to one another and there’s no difference in their textures, it’s easy to press the wrong button. Michael Reichmann (of Luminous Landscape fame) always tests cameras with gloves, because he knows he often shoots in cold conditions, and the P850 wouldn’t pass his glove test. Finally, the location of some of the buttons makes them uncomfortable (exposure) or impossible (focus) to reach without taking the eye away from the viewfinder and shifting the hand positions; some others (share) are in locations where they tend to be pressed by accident. That’s certainly a disappointment.
In addition to the buttons, the P850 has several other controls. There’s a master mode dial at the top, with the usual PASM, green, scene and movie modes, plus 3 sets of custom settings. Having 3 different sets of custom settings is certainly nice to have. In fact a common complaint about the Canon 5D is that there’s only one such set (and plenty of available space on the master mode dial). Just below the master mode dial is the zoom control, which feels unpredictable: from the widest setting, a quick flick to the right causes the zoom motor to emit some noise, but the angle of view doesn’t change. From there, it takes two quick flicks to the left to get the zoom indicator back to the starting pint, and at each point the zoom motor emits some noise but the framing doesn’t change. Just next to the zoom control is the command dial. Combined with the set button, it is used to change various shooting parameters like aperture, shutter speed, sensitivity, exposure compensation, flash exposure compensation. Unfortunately, the dial is too small, made of hard plastic, and mounted too deep inside the camera, so that it’s somewhat hard to use. Finally, much further down the back of the camera is a 5-way joystick, which is used to select the focus/meter point while shooting.
Besides the placement of the buttons, there are in my opinion a few issues with the ergonomics of the camera. With the size of my hands, trying to tightly grip the camera like I usually do in order to avoid camera shake, I end up covering the passive AF sensor, and the loop for the neck strap uncomfortable pokes into my hand. I guess that the designers expect people to hold the camera delicately with their fingertips, not to wrap their hands entirely around the camera body. Also, I don’t understand why the camera doesn’t have a standard 52mm filter thread on the extending inner zoom barrel itself, and requires to buy a separate adapter which uses 55mm filters. With that design, leaving a filter on the camera makes it significantly larger even when the camera is off. I understand that having a thread on the fixed outer barrel allows to use a heavy wide-angle converter, but even with a 52mm thread on the inner barrel there shouldn’t have been any problem to use a 58 or 62mm thread on the outer barrel.
Image quality is somewhat lower than on a DSLR, which shouldn’t surprise anyone. The size of the sensor is about 35 times smaller (in surface) than in my Canon 5D, and the pixel size is 2.2 microns (i.e. 11500 dpi). Such small pixels each receive very little light, therefore creating images that are somewhat noisy, and even the smallest of lens aberrations or misalignments will be visible in the final picture. That being said, the resulting images are certainly printable at 8×10, especially the ones shot at the wide end at the lowest sensitivity, and there’s no doubt that using an optical zoom is a far better option than a digital one. The camera has an optical image stabilizer, an unusual option for a lens with such a zoom range at that price point; the stabilizer works, and I consistently got sharp results at the long end of the zoom at 1/125s while holding the camera with my arms extended and framing with the back LCD. I noticed while zooming that the lens is not a true zoom, i.e. it doesn’t maintain its focus while changing the focal length. It’s especially visible when zooming out from the telephoto end, especially since zooming is actually fairly slow. The camera uses a hybrid autofocus system, using both TTL contrast detection and a passive AF sensor.
While the long end of the zoom is really long (432mm in 35mm equivalent), the wide end is barely wide at 36mm. Personally, I’d have preferred a 28-300 or even 24-250 zoom. There is a dedicated (and expensive) wide angle adapter which allows to get to 25mm (in 35mm equivalent).
Auto-exposure seems to try to aggressively expose as much as possible in order to avoid noise, which unfortunately often results in overexposed highlights. Worse, the histogram sometimes suggests that this is not the case. There is a flashing warning for both underexposure and overexposure in one of the review modes, but it’s several clicks away and takes a while to actually start displaying.
Finally, the two features that distinguish the camera from its competition are only moderately useful. Raw images are very large (8MB), which indicates that they’re not compressed at all, and the camera freezes for several seconds while writing such a file. Instead of using standard DNG files, Kodak uses a proprietary KDC data format (download a KDC Kodak RAW picture here). The Kodak software that reads those files is quite poor. Recent versions of Adobe Camera Raw can read KDC files from the P850, while the command line utility DCRAW handles them well too (you can use CinePaint or UFRaw under Linux to manipulate these RAW images). The flash hot-shoe, which would have been very useful if it could be used with Canon and Nikon flashes (and possibly others), is limited to a single Kodak model, the P20. To redeem itself, the P20 is both affordable and powerful, and with its tilt head will allow to bounce off a white ceiling (or even a pocket bouncer) for more natural look indoors.
Like all Kodak cameras, the P850 comes with some internal storage, which is great to have when you leave home without a memory card. 32MB allow to store approximately 26 pictures in 3MP standard mode, 9 pictures at the highest JPEG size and quality, or 3 pictures in raw mode. Unfortunately, if you leave home without the dedicated battery (which has to be charged on a separate charger), you’ll be out of luck as the camera can’t be powered from standard AA batteries.
Overall, the DSLR owner will be able to take satisfactory pictures with the P850 and print them at 8×10, as long as there’s no need to push the camera to its limits. The ability to use a powerful bounced hot-shoe flash means that the P850 will take excellent pictures indoors. The small and lightweight construction and the very long telephoto will make it perfect for photos of wildlife during mountain hikes.
Geeks.com paid how much for this link?
No offense but a digital camera review has little business on “osnews.com”.
And “as usual” Geeks.com? Who the heck are these guys.
CK
Geeks.com is our usual supplier of review units. Without them, we wouldn’t be able to write lots of the reviews that you find on osnews or on tuxtops.com. And no, Geeks do not pay us anything for the article, it is not an advertisement of their product, but a review (if you had read the article, that much would have been obvious). They simply send us the hardware, and we review it and that’s the end of it.
Also, as we have said MANY times, osnews is a broad technology site.
Please keep the discussion ON TOPIC, and the topic is Kodak digicams and photography. All off topic comments will be flushed down. If you have a problem with it, email the osnews-crew but don’t reply off topic here.
Edited 2006-07-31 18:27
A link to a more specific page regarding the camera would have been infinitly more usefull than a generic camera search at geeks.com.
This is the page of the actual camera:
http://geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=P850-R&cat=CAM
We linked to their generic camera page because the specific camera is currently out of stock.
This article has the tone of a review and not of advertising.
Also, this time, it is explicitly mentioned that
Note: OSAlert is a broad tech site (and has been for years), such non-software reviews are welcome here even if our focus remains towards “system software”.
so no confusion here, even though the topic has little to do indeed with OSAlert’ vocation as I was seeing it.
As always, one can vote with his feet.
Very good review
I learned something – I didnt know there was such a big differeence in the sensor size & a few other things .
http://www.dpreview.com/ is a good source for reviews of digital cameras and for background information on the topic.
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/kodakp850/ is their review of this camera, if anyone wants a comparison.
Yes, JBQ reads dpreview all the time. Daily, in fact.
I used dpreview to pick out my Canon S3 IS, I was going to mention dpreview in another comment but you beat me to it.
So I modded you up instead
Good indepth reviews, samples, comparisons, forums. It’s a great site.
I too used DPreview to pick out my S1IS. Good camera and I was able to get it for $220 from Amazon new. The S3 certainly looks awesome. My dad has a Kodak, I dont care for them, but my dad loves his.
Yes, dpreview is excellent.
http://www.steves-digicams.com is another camera review site that I’ve found to be excellent and on-par with dpreview. I usually cross-check them when buying/recommending a camera.
… to be a patent troll after purchasing Wang’s chest of patents and getting 100 million dollars out of Sun.
Why is the link to an online store for cameras?
I think that is maybe why I initially thought it was some kind of blatant plug.
Chris
The name of the link is KODAK P850.
There is *NO* Kodak P850 even on that page.
This is EXPLAINED above. The specific model is out of stock. When we received the product (about 2 weeks ago) it was NOT out of stock.
And yes, when a company is sending you their product to review it, YOU LINK back to them. That’s how it works, with ALL reviews. It’s standard procedure.
Edited 2006-07-31 20:05
A couple things seem obvious when purchasing a digital camera.
1 – The more megapixels there are the more data is available which means you can crop a smaller section of the photo and enlarge it while still keeping the picture from becoming blurry/pixelated.
2 – Ignore the digital zoom and only worry about the optical zoom.
I would like to know what the feature that determines how fast a picture is taken after pressing the button and how soon another one can be taken is called. To me this feature is more important than megapixels and zoom because pictures can be missed when timing is paramount. For example, you want to take the picture of the football player diving and catching the ball just as it crosses the goal line, but by the time the photo is taken the only thing you get is the player’s feet in the bottom corner of the photo.
There’s actually no one “feature” that determines the speed of the camera. It involves the shutter lag, the buffer speed, the memory card speed (where its high density/low speed, or low density/high speed), and also the processor of the camera. Finally, the format you’re shooting in itself can cause issues (RAW is much slower than JPEG) primarly influenced by buffer but also processing.
dpreview.com does often show metrics for this, but in reality if you want ultra fast camera speeds you really don’t find it until you get into dslrs.
The Kodak P850 really isn’t ment for that kind of photography. Its ment for a more casual entry into the line of prosumer cameras, as can be gathered from its price point (anywhere from $260-330). Half the price of even the cheapest DSLRs and almost $200 less than the Canon IS3
Also, addressing your other points.
1.) While a higher mega-pixel does mean you have more data to use, it doesn’t mean that data is GOOD. Many manufactors are drastically increasing the amount of mega-pixels, but keeping or decreasing the size of the sensor. This means you’re requring MUCH more light to hit on one tiny, microscopic dot. Generally, all you do is increase the noise so that going over ISO 100 on many p&s cameras is a waste, and can literally ruin any print over 4×6. Dans data has a great post on it http://www.dansdata.com/gz059.htm
2.) Absolutely true. Digital zoom is a complete waste, unless you just want to get a snapshot of something, much like using your camera phone to say take a pic of a celebrity. The quality is hell, but atleast you got it.
I’ll address your first two comments first:
1- More data doesn’t translate into more information. In fact with pixels that are 2.2 microns and a lens aperture of f/2.8 (wide open at the wide end) it’s likely that diffraction alone (not counting lens aberrations) is already a limiting factor. It might sound surprising, but not all pixels are created equal. On the other hand creating pixels that hold a lot of information requires expensive equipment.
2- In a camera that doesn’t allow to store raw pictures, digital zoom can be a reasonable alternative to cropping, typically resulting in pictures that compress better and have fewer compression artifacts when you print them. Of course, pictures where a digital zoom was used should be treated according to the actual amount of information that each pixel holds, i.e. I’m not advocating printing 8×10 from a 5MP camera on which a 4x digital zoom was applied.
Now, your question:
The time between when you press the shutter and when the shot is taken is called the shutter lag. There are different relevant scenarios, the fastest one always being when the camera was pre-focused. http://www.imaging-resource.com is a good source of information about shutter lag. The P850 has a shutter lag of less than 100ms when fully focused, which is good. Canon’s 1DmkII sport-oriented DSLR clocked at 54ms. Canon’s EOS RT (“Real Time”) went as low as 8ms.
Beyond shutter lag, there’s shot-to-shot speed, either in single mode (how quickly you can take another shot after the first one), or in continuous mode (how quickly pictures get shot in a burst). Imaging Resource measured a shot-to-shot delay of 1.84s in JPEG (though in my experience it’s much slower when shooting raw pictures), and 1.8 fps in bursts (for 5 images). Once again, as a comparison, the 1DmkII gets 0.6s shot-to-shot (about 5 times faster) and 8.1 fps (almost 5 times faster) for 33 images (many more images).
Sports photography is typically done in fast bursts, not by trying to capture exactly the right frame, so the burst speed and duration are in my opinion more important than the shutter lag.
Another good resource on timing is dpreview.com, which others have already pointed to. A link directly to the timing part of the review of the kodak camera:
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/kodakp850/page5.asp
Lets review this item we got for free so they’ll send us more items.
Hey, osnot.com is available, why not buy that domain and put your reviews there?
Oh yeah, that can be read as O’snot, or OSnot, both quite fitting names.
Edited 2006-08-01 01:11
I’d liek to mention i think this was a good, and balanced review. My mom and I purchased this camera at Staples (where I work, got a great deal) for Fathers Day and we’ve been loving it every since. The ergonomics can be a pain, especially if you try and get the random, live actions and events that friends will always do especially if they fall out of your “custom” settings (the three allowed through the scene selection dial) however “auto” mode does do a pretty decent job.
The noise level IS excessive if you go over ISO 400, but thats really an issue on almost all prosumer cameras, let alone regular point and shoots. It all translates down to the sensor size.
The image stabilzation works great, and its enabled me to take hand held shots of the moon, at night. Something I was never able to do with my Canon film SLR.
RAW shooting is incredibly slow, but I find I spend most of my time in regular jpeg mode unless I’m really in the mood to do post-editing.
Finally, the major, MAJOR downside to this camera is the damn battery. You get a large amount of shots, but you have to put it in the charge the night before each go-out, or else put out for a second battery. I find I keep my Sony P51 (old, 2Mp camera) on hand for random, point and shoots, and only get out the P850 when I know Im out hunting for something. Though I still bring the Canon Rebel (Film) if Im really in the mood.
Is it just me or is there just one photo… once in jpeg, the other time in kodak raw?
If it’s not only me, then I have to point out that a single shot is kind of… not too illustrative as far as seeing what it can do for yourself goes.
The textual content of the review may come in handy, there are some nice points in it