Kodak Easyshare V1073

Kodak's Easyshare V1073 is the company's latest digital camera to feature a touch screen. In general, Kodak has done a fairly good job of it, and the camera itself performed well in our image tests. It's an attractive option for users after a relatively affordable point-and-shoot.

Sporting a 10-megapixel sensor this camera is competitive with other, similarly priced units in terms of resolution. We were quite impressed by its overall performance in our image quality tests.

Our shots were sharp and crisp with good levels of detail. We could make out fine brick patterns from long distance and foliage was well rendered. At times the shots looked perhaps a little over-sharpened, but this wasn't too prominent and shouldn't be an issue. There was some softening towards the edges of the frame that was noticeable even at medium magnifications, but it was in line with our expectations. We also spotted some relatively prominent purple fringing, which was quite strong when it did occur, but didn't seem to spread too widely across the shot.

The unit's colour reproduction was quite impressive. We shot mostly on the natural colour setting and it produced accurate and well-saturated tones that were rich without being too vivid. Greens in particular impressed, looking lush and full.

Noise performance was reasonably good, although other units have impressed us more in this regard. Rather than producing a fine grain, as you increase the sensitivity the V1073's shots become increasingly blotchy. At ISO 100 and 200 it isn't evident, but at ISO 400 and beyond you begin to see splotches of noise in areas of block colour. It doesn't really detract from the clarity and isn't evident at small print magnifications, but anyone making enlargements will notice it at higher ISOs.

The speed of this model was fairly standard. It exhibited 0.09sec of shutter lag and had a 1.9sec start-up time, both of which are quite speedy. However shot-to-shot time was flaky at best, with the camera regularly popping up a 'processing' message if we'd taken more than one or two shots in succession. On the other hand, the burst mode was impressive, snapping three frames per second at full resolution.

As mentioned earlier, one of the key things about this unit is its touch-screen interface. On the whole, we haven't been that impressed with touch screens on cameras. While the V1073 sports one of the best attempts we've seen, it still has a few niggling issues. We really dislike the way the menu is laid out: there is no way to access commonly used settings like white balance unless you open the menu. A simple icon on the screen for ISO, white balance and so on would have been much appreciated. That said the sensitivity of the screen is impressive, and after we'd worked out where everything was it was fairly intuitive to navigate.

The camera comes with a 'smart capture' mode that helps pick the ideal scene setting and configuration for your shooting conditions. It does a good job and should be a boon for novice users. Other features of note include face detect and optical image stabilisation.

Aesthetically the V1073 is extremely slick, with an all black metal body. While it has a fairly boxy shape, the colour scheme is appealing and it manages to stand out from the hoard of matte silver units out on the market.