Kodak Easyshare P712 Review

Review Date: September 1st 2006

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Conclusion

Ratings (out of 5)
Design	4
Features	4.5
Ease-of-Use	4
Image Quality	3.5
Value for Money	3

The Kodak Easyshare P712 is one of a handful of compact digital cameras with a 12x zoom lens, offering a versatile focal range of 36-432mm that will satisfy most photographers. The ability to zoom from 36mm up to 432mm and still get sharp results thanks to the image stabilization system is a revelation if you're used to a camera with a smaller zoom. Everything from mild wide-angle scenics to distant close-ups is possible, all from a camera that you can fit into a small camera bag, and there isn't too much distortion at either end of the zoom range. The Kodak P712 will feel instantly familiar to anyone who has used an SLR before, with a full range of automatic and manual exposure controls available, although its "distinctive" looks may put some people off. It's also a very customisable camera which you can configure to meet your own specific needs, and has a wealth of still and video shooting options.

The P712 is not the most responsive of cameras, though, with a poor continuous shooting mode and sluggish start-up time. If you want to use the RAW or TIFF file formats, the P712's general lack of speed suffers even more, making these formats only suitable for photography where you can take your time. Although the Kodak P712 exhibits very few chromatic aberrations, allows you to to alter contrast, colour, saturation and sharpness in-camera, and has a very effective image stabilization system, image quality is only average thanks to a poor macro mode and noisy images. The slowest ISO speeds of 64, 80 80 and 100 on the P712 are perfectly fine, but ISO 200, which isn't exactly a fast speed, displays noticeable noise and blurring of detail, and ISO 400 is very noisy indeed. The optical image stabilisation system partially makes up for the noise problems, in that you can take a photo at a slower ISO speed and therefore a slower shutter speed, and still get sharp results, without adversely affecting the battery life too much, but it isn't a complete solution.

So overall, the Kodak Easyshare P712 is a fairly easy-to-use, feature-rich camera with that 12x zoom lens as its main attraction. The slow responsiveness and noise issue are by no means show-stoppers, but they do stop us from recommending this camera more strongly. The Panasonic DMC-FZ7 is a very similar camera with the advantage of being quicker to use, although it does only offer JPEG mode and suffers from the same problem of noisy images. At £350 / $500, the Kodak P712 is also more expensive than the Panasonic, although actual street prices seem to be significantly lower.

PhotographyBLOG is a member of the DIWA organisation. Our test results for the Kodak Easyshare P712 have been submitted to DIWA for comparison with test results for different samples of the same camera model supplied by other DIWA member sites.