Kodak EasyShare Z8612 IS review

The Z8612 IS is the most affordable ultra-zoom camera we have ever seen. It's also one of the lightest, at just 290g.

At this price it's hardly surprising that features have been pared down. We're not too bothered about losing the electronic viewfinder, but the lack of a command dial for quickly adjusting settings is more regrettable. There's no manual focus or manual white balance, and face detection is absent. Still, it's great to see that priority- and manual-exposure modes plus exposure bracketing are included, as these are usually the first things to go on a budget ultra-zoom camera.

There are dedicated buttons for flash, macro and drive mode, which leaves the navigation buttons free to access the exposure controls at the bottom of the screen. The remaining options appear in the menu, but the truncated list keeps scrolling to a minimum.

The camera was slow to switch on and capture a photo, taking four seconds. Autofocus was quick, though, and subsequent shots took 1.5 seconds. However, this only lasted for four shots, whereupon the gap extended to eight seconds. As with all other Kodak cameras we've seen recently, the Z8612's processor isn't powerful enough to save photos as fast as it can take them. Continuous shooting ran at 1.6fps for four shots, then required 27 seconds to recover.

Image quality was much healthier. Detail lived up to the specification, with particularly impressive corner sharpness for an ultra-zoom camera. Skin tones were a touch too pink, but colours were otherwise vibrant and attractive. The optical image stabilisation worked well in telephoto shots and although the High ISO scene preset was required to eliminate blur in low light, smart noise reduction kept noise at bay while maintaining a reasonable amount of detail.

It's far from perfect, but if you want an affordable ultra-zoom camera and you don't expect to be taking multiple shots in quick succession, the Z8612 IS is an excellent choice.