Let me start by saying I love taking pictures. I consider myself a pretty decent, though amateur, photographer. I also believe a photographer is only as good as his or her camera.
My Kodak EasyShare Z8612 IS is a replacement for my
CyberShot. I gave that one to my 13 year old daughter.
Not being the type to read and understand instruction manuals, I had to learn this camera by using it. That's just my learning style, but I do recommend reading the owner's manual. It isn't all that long, and is packed with great information (according to my instruction manual reading hubby) that will make your use of this camera much easier.
Out of the box, this camera is pretty easy to get started. It comes with a strap that has to be attached, and that was a bit difficult for my fumble-fingers. Attaching the lens-cover strap was no picnic either, but I finally managed.
Next, I inserted the memory stick. The camera came with a Kodak High-Speed 2GB 60x speed SD flash memory card. Fairly reasonable choice for an 8.1 mp camera, but a faster card would probably be better. The memory stick is accessed via a small sliging door on the side of the camera, and slides in to its slot very easily. Simply push in on the card to eject. Inside the door is also an A/V slot where you could attach the A/V-USB cable (included) to upload photos from the cameras internal memory. It has 21 MB of internal memory.
Next, time for the battery. No standard batteries will fit this thing. The only batteries my local Wal-Mart stocks that will fit the EasyShare Z8612 IS are Energizer Lithium Photo CRV3 batteries, which run $13.99 for a 2 pack. They are disposables, and this camera eats them like a hungry Border Collie eats a hot dog. I think I got about 100 photos per battery, not a very good value. Had I done my homework, I may not have purchased the camera solely because of the batteries. However, I did find some rechargables on eBay. I paid $30 total including shipping for 2 rechargables and a charger with home and car attachments. I really don't know what brand of battery they are, everything on them is in Chinese. They last a bit longer than the Energizer, and only take a couple of hours to recharge at home. The car charger takes longer. The battery compartment is accessed by another sliding door on the bottom of the camera. It is very easy to open, not so easy to close. I worry every time that I will break it. To close it, you must force the door down onto the battery, and then slide the door back into place. I've had bad luck with battery doors on digital cameras before, so perhaps this is just my personal fear. On the plus side, the battery will only fit in one way, so you never have to worry about putting it in wrong like you would with AA batteries.
Now, the camera is ready to go. Just above the 2.5 inch color lcd screen is the power button. A quick slide to the right turns the camera on. The flash is just above the power switch, and it pops up automatically whenever the camera is turned on. A bit annoying, but a simple push closes the flash.
There are so many different settings for taking photos! There is a small selector wheel on the top of the camera. This wheel can be turned to video, M, S, A, P, auto, ISO, panorama, and SCN. SCN I believe stands for screen (remember, I haven't read the user manual) and this is the setting I most frequently use.
The SCN setting has numerous sub-settings. I will list them all here:
Portrait: Use for full frame photos of people and other subjects
Sport: Use when subject is in motion
Landscape: Use for distant scenery
Night Portrait: Use to capture subject and background
Night Landscape: Use for distant scenery in low light conditions
Snow: Use for bright snow scene
Beach: Use for bright beach scene
Text: Use for photos of documents
Fireworks: Use for photos of fireworks
Flower: Use for close-ups of flowers in bright light
Manners/Museum: Use when sound and flash are not desired
Self-portrait: Use for closeup photo of yourself
Stage: For pictures of people on a stage. Less blur, more brightness, flash is off
Backlight: Use for photos where the light source is behind the subject
Candlelight: Use when capturing in candlelight
Sunset: Use when capturing in sunset conditions
Each different setting on this camera focuses differently, and has a green box on the display showing where the focus is. On low-light settings, the camera tends to focus on the brightest object on the screen. Other settings will focus more to the center, or to the background, or on human faces. I do like that, while not specified, the
portrait setting tends to focus on faces versus other objects that may be in the picture. In bright sunny conditions, I have taken an admirable shot of an 18 wheeler, moving, on a highway 1 mile away using the
distance setting. I have gotten the best pictures of blooms and bugs using the
flower setting, standing about 4 feet from the flower and zooming in pretty close. I've not used the
sports setting much as I am the soccer coach and I try to focus my attention more on the game, but my husband has gotten some wonderful action shots.
The zoom is great. You zoom in and out via a small slider that is just in front of the 'shoot' button. It zooms smoothly and quickly to a certain point, then you must release the zoomer and press it again to zoom closer. It zooms much slower past Holding it to the right zooms in, and to the left to zoom out. The lens is a
Schneider-Kreuznach Variogon 36mm-432mm equivalent AF 12x Optical Zoom. The video setting takes clear videos in a wide range of light conditions, but is best in outdoor daylight conditions. Video clips can be as short as one second, and as long as your memory card will allow. Video zoom is not as close as for photos, but generally not needed anyway. I've found the best video quality comes when the subject stays in the frame. If you have to move the camera to follow a moving subject, the focus does not hold. But, it only takes a moment to refocus. Still, that makes for choppy looking videos. Once a video is begun, you cannot zoom/unzoom.
Be sure to have a fresh battery if you plan on shooting long videos though, as this camera is not good about giving much notice of impending battery death. It would be a good idea to always have a spare battery on hand for the same reason. In my experience, from the
low battery indicator to battery death is about 4 photos on the lowest mp setting.
A press of the
Menu button to the lower right of the screen accesses the Picture Size, Color Mode, and AF Control settings. The picture size can be adjusted from 1.2 mp all the way up to 8.0mp. The color mode has settings for natural color, sepia, black and white, low color, and high color.
The
Menu button also accesses the
Setup menu which is where you adjust settings such as the LCD brightness, how you want the picture preview to appear (as individual, full screen pictures or in a grid of all pictures), whether to use the memory card or internal memory, turn on/off the date stamp and red-eye reduction preflash, and the image stabilization settings.
The
Trash button just above the
Menu button has options for deleting the current picture or all pictures stored on the memory card or in internal memory.
Pictures and videos may be uploaded to a computer or photo printing kiosk via a memory card reader or a USB cable. This camera will also print directly to some printers
(G610 Printer Dock
G600 Printer Dock*
Printer Dock Plus Series 3*
Printer Dock Series 3*) without the use of a computer.
Kodak has a support page for this camera located at kodak.com. Here you will find links to service and repair, live service chat, and an interactive demo of the camera.
I purchased the camera at Wal-Mart, and their website has specs listed that will not properly format here.
The camera is a little bulky, so a small camera bag is probably not going to work. I found a Lowerpro bag on the Wal-Mart site and I am happy with it. The site says this bag is not available in the store, but there was one in my local store, and discounted to $10 to boot! Perhaps it was ordered site-to-store by another customer, and never picked up, or it was a return. That bag is 7x5.5x6.5, and I would not recommend anything smaller.
Overall, I am very happy with my camera, and I hope to be annoying everyone around me for years to come!
