Kodak V610 Super test

Guide price: £249.00

6 megapixel 10x zoom digital camera. This has all the features of its stable-mate the Kodak V570 but everything has just got bigger! The zoom has increased from 5x zoom to 10x! The LCD screen is increased from 2.5" to 2.8" and the megapixel count has gone up by a megapixel to six. The truly great innovation on this model though, is the inclusion of Bluetooth wireless image transfer; this ability is extremely useful if you have a wireless set-up between your computer and your printer. It also means you can select the images you want printed and without removing the memory card send them to the instant printing Kodak Kiosks. (These are dotted around most High Streets in shops and supermarkets). The Bluetooth worked faultlessly and picked up a good connection every time I used it, it did however seriously knock the battery life.
If you are not interested in the Bluetooth you cannot fail to be impressed by the wide-angle (38mm-380mm) zoom lens and wonder how Kodak shoehorned it into the very compact metal body! Zooming is fast and the lens is again of a very high quality, manufactured by SCHNEIDER-KREUZNACH and is an all glass C-VARIOGON (The top lens((zoom)) is huge in comparison with the V570 and is very prone to greasy fingerprints, a super soft microfibre cloth is an absolute necessity to keep it clean) The rear LCD screen is also crisp and clear and has a good refresh rate (ability to keep up with the action) it still can 'wash-out' in bright light, but on the whole was good to use and the extra size over the V570 was a pleasant bonus.
The ease of use was exactly the same as the V570, it really is a doddle to navigate around the menus and basic camera set-up and I still think lit buttons are very useful(they light up when the camera is turned on, show image transfer status and camera mode) This camera also sports 22 'scene modes' and the superb panoramic photo stitching that I raved about on the V570.
Sadly this is where my review turns a little less complimentary- at the launch everybody was itching to get their hands on this camera, (especially after seeing the beautiful, sharp images the first tester had shown as a digital slide show) the photos I took on the long test were nowhere near as good and although bright and colourful were over compressed and under scrutiny surprisingly mushy! I really expected to be able to blow the pictures up to a good size and found I could not! At 6x4 size the pictures were OK but anything over 5x7 and the image was poor. I know I had all the settings initially at Auto but even at 6M and 64 ISO I was disappointed. Funnily enough I could not find a quality setting, other than the megapixel size selection and wonder if this really is not offered on this camera. In my opinion there should be a low compression jpeg setting or even a Tiff format to maximise the potential of those quality lenses.

Hilary's conclusion: Maybe the poor image quality was just confined to my pre-production test model because I really wanted to love this camera, it has every feature you really could possibly want and need, yet I was quite happy to return it. Kodak need to address this issue before it is released in June.

Please note this camera is not yet available and the camera I tested was pre-production model and came without a manual.