We don’t publish lots of camera reviews at OSAlert, but sometimes something refreshing and interesting comes out, and we feel the need to report on it. Geeks.com sent us for the purposes of this review the Kodak V1253, a 12 megapixel digicam with a 3.1″ screen, that can also record 720p MPEG4-SP video at 30fps. At just $220, this must be one of the cheapest 720p solution in the market.
General
The V1253 uses a 1/1.72in CCD that captures 12.1MP pixels. It features a 3x varizoom, an electronic image stabilizer, and a huge 3.1″ LCD screen. It comes with a 32MB flash storage and it accepts SDHC cards up to 8 GB. The camera sports two microphones, so it’s able to record in stereo mode. We tested the camera with a 2 GB Sandisk SD card that Geeks.com also send us in order to properly review the HD capabilities of the camera.
In the package we found the camera, a rechargeable battery, a camera bag, a wrist wrap, a USB cable that fits on Kodak’s proprietary slot, a composite A/V cable, an insert dock for Kodak printers, a CD and a manual in 4 languages. The camera is refurbished, but we found no blemishes or scratches.
On the top of the camera you will find the Favorites button, Video button, Picture button, on/off and flash button’s on/off/auto/red-eyes modes. At the far right there is the zoom slider button and the snapshot one. Vertically, along the screen, you will find the review, delete, menu and Kodak’s “share” buttons. On the top right there is a good quality speaker to review your videos, and on the bottom right you will find the joystick that let’s you navigate on the different menus. When not on menu mode, the joystick allows you to go into landscape/macro mode, and enable/disable the guidance text from the screen.
The camera is surprisingly thin and small, considering its feature-set. The screen takes over most of the back side and it’s very bright. I shot the video below in the afternoon when the sun was high, and I could still use the screen with no problem. At low light, I found the flash very powerful, surely more powerful than my Canon’s A700 digicam. Another interesting tidbit is that pressing the video or picture buttons the camera will turn ON, you don’t have to press the on/off button to do just that! If there is only one usability issue, it is the two mics on the two edges of the front side, because someone not too careful can easily cover those with his/her fingers. The only technical issue I had was that while XP would recognize the camera, it wouldn’t mount it as an external drive, I had to use the EasyShare software or a flash reader to get my media out of the camera.
Custom settings include LCD brightness, LCD dimmer, image storage, album, orientation sensor, camera sounds, sound volume, date & time setting, digital zoom setting, auto power off time setting, video out setting, language, reset camera and memory format. Firmware version used was 1.01.
Battery life was good. The camera still had 75% of juice left after 20 minutes of HD video recording with its big screen always ON. That’s on par with some miniDV cameras.
Picture mode
Pressing once the picture button the V1253 will get itself in “auto” mode. But pressing once more, it will bring up scene options: portrait, sport, landscape, close up, night portrait, night landscape, snow, beach, text/document, fireworks, flower, museum/manner, self portrait, hi-ISO, children, backlight, panning, candle light, sunset, custom, panorama R-L, panorama L-R, digital image stabilization.
The camera allows for custom white balance, normal, micro and infinity focus modes, auto and two other types of macro focus ranges, several exposure control techniques and compensation (including selectable ISO values). The V1253 allows for a single shot, burst mode up to 3 frames, and self timer up to 10 seconds. There are also several color modes (high color, natural color, low color, sepia, black and white) and three sharpness levels. You can shoot 12 MP 4:3 pictures or 9 MP 16:9 ones. Other options include 6.0 , 3.1, 2.2, 2.1 MP (1920×1080) and 1.2 MP.
Reviewing pictures was a bit slow because loading 12MP pictures is not always an easy task. You can view by date, view by album, view by image storage, add a new album, view a multimedia slide show etc.
The picture quality of the V1253 is acceptable for its price range. It has the recognizable Kodak “look” where some surfaces look “mushy”. There is some noise when zooming in and it tends to over-expose a bit too easily. It does well under low light though. I had to turn off the “Continuous AF” option though because trying to focus all the time was pretty slow compared to the Canon cameras. By pressing lightly the snapshot button, you can instruct the camera to autofocus only when it’s needed (this works for video too).
Video mode
Ah, my favorite subject. The V1253 supports QVGA, VGA, 720p (10mbps) and 720p HQ (13mbps). I shot all the videos in high quality mode. You will need a 2 GB SD card for 16 minutes of 720p HQ recording (files will be cut off at 2 GBs because of the FAT limitation). Audio quality from the stereo mic was very good as you can see in this unedited, straight out of the camera, sample video (right click to download and view). The camera records in MPEG4-SP at 30fps, although unfortunately the frame rate is not constant. There are variations between 30.04 to 30.73 fps. Although this doesn’t seem a big deal, it’s enough to bring difficulties during video editing or TV viewing.
Unfortunately, there are more bad news: there is a lot of over-exposing going on and there is absolutely no exposure control in video mode. There is no manual focus either, which half of the time made impossible to focus on the flower I wanted to instead of the ground (I find Canon’s autofocus more intelligent). Then, there is this noise everywhere in the video that becomes even more apparent when zooming in. The final strike comes from the video format, which is extremely slow to edit. I had to create proxy files on Sony Vegas in order to put together a presentable video for this review. There is a possibility that iMovie will be faster to edit these clips though as .mov is its native container format.
Without a doubt, there are problems on the video side, as this is a new front that Kodak is stepping into. However, if you just want some quick HD video, it will do the job. Overall, its HD quality is as good as some higher-priced miniDV camcorders, so there is definitely some winning situation here. To view your HD files you need to buy the Kodak cradle that costs $100 though, and apparently it’s kind of hard to find. A smarter way to view these files in HD is to edit one way or another, and export in .mp4 h.264 6mbps, and then view these files on either the XBoX360, AppleTV or the Sony PS3.
Conclusion
For the price, this is a good digicam with an added value. It lacks some basic video features and enough zoom for both video and picture modes, but the result is not too bad. It takes good pictures so at $220 this makes an impressive Christmas gift. I am thinking of getting one for my brother in Greece too who’s currently stuck with an old 3.2 MP digicam. Given that he will be a dad soon, taking 12 MP pictures and HD video is possibly something that his child will appreciate more in 20 years from now when viewing back the family’s digital album.
Rating: 7.5/10
What use is 720p video if its that noisy (witness the ground, especially)? Was that filmed from a tripod?
Yes, it was filmed with a tripod. However, as I explain on Vimeo, it has a gracious amount of color grading on it. Sometimes grading creates noise. Download the other sample, the straight out of the camera one, to make your assertion about noise.
The quality of those photos seems pretty bad to me. They seem like a slight blur has been added in Photoshop.
Nice review though.
Why are you mostly filming 95% still pictures with some leaf moving slightly? Would be much more interesting to see how it handles moving objects, e.g. by shooting people passing by on a busy street.
I don’t live close to busy streets, and i would need image release license for that anyway.
No you wouldn’t, the photos would be editorial use.
Since these reviews at OSAlert I know just one thing for sure, the difference between a nerd and a geek. A geek just buys everything out there and doesn’t know much about it, a nerd doesn’t buy everything because he does know that most of the goodies a real crap And this el cheapo cam, well nice review, but what’s the point? Why not test some real geekware like the Casio Exilim (V7/V8) with 800p resolution, h264 recording, better quality with less MP for just a couple of bucks more?
http://www.steves-digicams.com/2007_reviews/casio_ex-v8.html
It’s just an example for some really special stuff, but this cam above is more or less nothing special at all.
Thank you, Eugenia, for your review. I am saddened by those who feel they must attack any article or author who doesn’t conform to their world view.
When playing the 720p version it seems to be playing back at a low FPS (15 or so) while the standard def is much higher. Is that the playback software limit?
No, it does not play in low fps, it seems that you just don’t have a powerful enough PC to run 720p.
My Mac Dual G5 2ghz is fast enough to do 1080p. Nope, that is not the problem.
If you are talking about the sample from the camera, it should playback fine on your Mac. If not, then there’s something wrong with your Mac.
If you are talking about the downloading version from Vimeo, this was re-encoded in h.264 with CABAC in it. Quicktime does not support CABAC well.
You color corrected the sample video? Since it’s a review and all, I would kind of like to see the video uncorrected to gauge the device’s color ability. I could tell it was corrected the moment I hit play (unfortunately the world is not that vibrant).
Was the weird plant photo also corrected? If not, there is a /lot/ of bleeding coming from this camera in bright scenes.
I have a non-color corrected video to download. All other normal videos that are meant for *presentation* will get color graded (NOT color corrected, these are different terms). Everyone who is serious about video should color grade. Besides, I had to re-encode anyway (because the camera files are huge), so you would not get the “straight out of the camera” look to evaluate the true quality of the video. Which is why I uploaded the short unretouched video.
As for the pictures, they are all unretouched, straight out of the camera.
Edited 2007-12-15 21:25
To some around here: before you post another comment of “why is this osnews” and “where my comment went”, please read article 8 of our Forum Terms and Conditions. Any other such comment will be removed by either myself *or* Thom, no questions asked. If you want to comment, comment ONLY about the product. Discussion about the topics only via email please.
Edited 2007-12-15 22:43
The video’s pretty good, although it has a tendency to blow out the highlights a bit– some negative exposure compensation might help. Also in several scenes there appears to be a hot spot (pinkish circle) in the middle of the images, usually when strong sunlight is involved.
Unfortunately, however, the still images are terrible. The palm trees in the background are just a green smear on the horizon, with almost no visible detail.
Looking at the specs on the camera, it’s easy to see why– 12.1 million pixel sites on a (roughly) 7.6mm x 5.7mm sensor.
Sure, it keep glass costs down to use such a tiny sensor, but digital imaging has been getting *worse* for the last 5 years, not better. Smaller sensors mean less light gathering, more interference, more noise, and of course, cranking up the ISO (amplifying a weak signal) introduces *more* noise, resulting in increasingly paranoid noise-reduction.
A 5 or 6 megapixel camera will produce smaller images, but they’ll have just as much detail– and more importantly, they’ll look just as good (if not better) when printed at 8×10 or 5×7.
I notice on the site that it says “Prints up to 40×30 inches!”– proving that somewhere, someone at Kodak has lost their minds. While I’m sure you can print at that resolution, it’s going to look like something by Monet, only less inspiring.
For something you’re going to hang on a wall, having it professionally printed/framed at 200 dpi will still look great, and with a 6-8mp camera, producing a 17×11 print is no problem. With a package like Genuine Fractals, you can get some *REALLY* large prints. Panorama stitching can also produce really large images if desired.
Finally, “HD” (720p) in this case means “1280×720”. That’s smaller than my desktop resolution, less than 1 megapixel, and produces really nice video. 1080p, being 1920×1080, of course looks better, and comes in at just over 2 megapixels.
So why does this camera need to be 12mp? 6mp, and it would take superb photos, and videos.
You are of course very right in your comment. Part of the smearing look is the kind of compression Kodak uses. They don’t want to get rid of it, because it looks good when pictures are printed with their printers. But for general picture-taking, if you are not interested in their printers, you aren’t gonna like this look. There was a hack once, for an older kodak model, to take the smearing out, that’s how far some people have gone to “fix” that look.
As for 720p video vs 1080p, 720p is plenty enough IMO, it’s just needs to be better. The video too has the smearing you see. And there is no exposure controls for when in video mode.
Because more megapixels == more better, in the minds of many. The best way to disabuse people of that notion is to show them a picture from something like a Rebel XT (“only” 8MP) and compare it with a picture from one of the high MP cheap cameras.
Unfortunately, you have the marketing departments in all of the major manufucters to blame for this lie. This is one of the reasons why I have an extreme dislike for marketing people – they knowingly lie, and generally have no technical knowledge of the products that they are marketing. Sorry guys, but every marketing person at every company that I’ve worked for in near 20 years has been what I consider useless.
Dave
++
The old saying should be revised to: “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, work in sales and marketing.”
I just ordered this camera.
BTW Kodak Australia get your act together for your brick and mortar suppliers pretty please.
I have several worries about this camera (and most digital compacts):
1. Actual speed of use. Most (even modern) digital compacts are still slow to use, taking a second or so between shots. Kodak says 1.7fps for up to 3 frames, does it actually live up to this?
2. Slow/inaccurate autofocus
3. High noise at higher ISOs
4. Fastest shutter speed is 1/1200 second, and the slowest, 8 seconds, that’s rather limiting in my eyes.
5. Kodak’s compression ratios have been dodgy for quite some time.
6. No RAW file ability – a necessity for any serious photography, in fact, any semi serious photography.
Kudos to Kodak for making a smallish camera, that’s sexy, and has a nice large LCD screen, and also has a variety of manual adjustments.
I suspect that the macro modes aren’t true macro – which is 1:1 or greater. This is a specialty area of mine (see my website and my flickr pro account), so I would like to think that I know what I’m talking about
My final comments are that Kodak says it’s a “1 / 1.72 in. CCD”. Well, 1.72″ is 4.3 or so centimeters. I doubt very much that the sensor is that large, especially since Canon’s full frame sensor DSLRs cost a LOT more (due to fabrication issues), and that Canon up until the release of the Nikon D3 has been the only full frame competitor (other than a single Kodak DSLR 5 years or so ago).
The smaller sensor sizes of digital compacts causes several issues:
1. loss of resolution
2. High increase in noise at all ISO settings, but especially so at higher ISO ratings.
The usage of a CCD sensor instead of CMOS also causes several technical issues (higher power consumption, hower noise per pixel than equivalent CMOS technology).
The only real advantage that smaller sensor sizes have over the larger ones in DSLRs is the increased DOF due to the circle of confusion having less affect on the final image.
For the money, and for the average “snapper” it does seem good value.
Dave
PS Kodak’s software totally blows – at least with my dad’s version of software that he has…it screws up jpeg association, screws up EXIF information etc etc. Maybe newer versions of the Kodak software are better.
“The only technical issue I had was that while XP would recognize the camera, it wouldn’t mount it as an external drive, I had to use the EasyShare software or a flash reader to get my media out of the camera.”
You’re right. That’s easy. No thanks.