Kodak EasyShare V610

Kodak's EasyShare Software is another big part of the story. Especially in its latest implementation, it walks you through every step of uploading, enhancing, and emailing your photos, and has about the most graphically intuitive interface of any consumer imaging software I've seen. It automatically sizes the images for printing or emailing, stores copies, applies simple effects, and allows you to make image corrections, such as color, brightness, and contrast adjustments. The entire line of EasyShare cameras has some of the most goof-proof digital cameras out there, and the Kodak V610 and its included Picture Software carry on that tradition admirably.

The Kodak EasyShare V610 is based on the twin-lens design concept that first debuted in the EasyShare V570 -- a camera that included both a 39-117mm optical zoom lens, and a 23mm fixed focal-length lens, each coupled to their own five megapixel CCD image sensor. The Kodak V610 takes that idea a step further, featuring not one, but two optical zoom lenses. A 38-114mm equivalent lens provides a moderate wide angle to a moderate telephoto, while a second 130-380mm equivalent lens offers a moderate telephoto all the way out to a fairly strong telephoto. Each lens is coupled to its own dedicated six megapixel CCD image sensor.

The 16mm gap between the two lenses' focal length ranges is unlikely to be an issue, given that compact camera lenses tend to have predefined steps in their ranges anyway, rather than allowing perfectly smooth zooming throughout their range. The combination of lenses results in an impressive 10x effective optical zoom range; and indeed in its marketing materials, Kodak is describing the V610 as the "world's smallest 10x optical zoom camera." One zoom lever and one LCD display are together used to control both lenses and imagers, with the camera switching between the lens/imager combos as necessary depending on the zoom range requested by the user.

Two lenses coupled to two sensors aren't the only feature helping the Kodak V610 stand out from the crowd, however. The company has also managed to shoehorn integrated Bluetooth wireless connectivity into the V610 (something we've only seen in a handful of digital cameras until now). And this isn't just "plain old" Bluetooth either. Bluetooth lets you wirelessly transfer data to and from other Bluetooth devices, for example letting you swap photos with other V610 owners, send photos to cell phones or PDAs, or print to some printers and photo kiosks -- all without any annoying, bulky wires. Kodak's V610 implements the new Bluetooth 2.0 EDR standard, which was ratified late last year and offers almost triple the speed of previous Bluetooth implementations (although still nowhere near the speed of 802.11a/b/g wireless lan, better known as WiFi).

As well as the speed boost, Bluetooth EDR offers the possibility of increased battery life over an older Bluetooth device -- even though power consumption is technically higher. This is because Bluetooth devices switch to a low-power mode when not actively transferring data, and since the EDR devices can transfer data faster, they spend more time in the low-power mode. You can also save a little more transmission time (and hence power) courtesy of the Kodak V610's ability to resample images in-camera to 1024x768 pixels if you're making 4x6" prints, or 320x240 pixels for viewing on a handheld device such as a cellphone. As a Class 2 Bluetooth device, the Kodak V610 has a range of just ten meters (30 feet) -- significantly less than WiFi devices, but with lower power consumption. Further security comes in the form of a PIN number that's required to access the V610 from another device.

Compared to the V570, Kodak has also boosted the size of the LCD display in the Kodak V610 by a third of an inch, to a whopping 2.8" display that dominates most of the rear of the camera's sleek, stylish body. Other interesting features include Kodak's "Perfect Touch" technology, which lets you correct exposure after the fact, and preview results side-by-side to confirm them on the camera's LCD -- all while only affecting the underexposed areas of the image, and leaving the correctly exposed areas alone. There's also an anti-blur mode (which doesn't use any form of mechanical stabilization, but rather boosts the camera's ISO sensitivity and aims for a faster shutter speed in the first place). The unusual (and rather fun) panorama mode from the original V570 also returns, letting you stitch up to three images together in-camera with an on-screen template helping you position the shots. Finally, the Kodak V610 offers the unusual ability to extract JPEG images from videos captured on the camera, as well as to save 4, 9, or 16 equally spaced frames from a video as a single (tiled) image, ideal for analyzing your golf swing or tennis serve.