Product Reviews

Canon, Fujifilm, Samsung and Sony have announced 12-megapixel compact cameras in recent months, but Kodak and Panasonic are the first two manufacturers to send us models for review. If their images are as detailed as the specification suggests, they are perfect for people who want to make A3 prints or crop photos on their PC without sacrificing too much detail in the process.

Considering its cutting-edge resolution, the Z1275's plastic body looks surprisingly dowdy. The use of AA batteries is disappointing, and the 21/2in screen's 115,000-pixel resolution is below average. However, the 5x optical zoom peers further into the distance than most compact cameras, and the Z1275 is the first camera we've seen to capture MPEG4 video at a high-definition 1,280x720-pixel resolution. Optical zoom and continuous auto-focus are available during video capture, but videos were spoiled by a mercurial auto-exposure that reacted in abrupt jumps and flashes to changes in subject brightness.

An automatic mode and various scene presets make their usual appearance for stills photography, and are joined

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by a less common manual exposure option. It works well, providing easy access to shutter speed, aperture and ISO speed, plus an exposure value (EV) reading to help you choose settings. It helps that the navigation buttons you use to make these adjustments don't double up with other functions, as there are separate buttons for flash and drive mode. A temporary digital zoom helps with manual focus adjustment, but it still feels fairly imprecise, due in part to the low-resolution screen.

Performance is generally acceptable, with a three-second start-up time and two seconds between shots. However, after three shots at maximum quality the buffer memory was full and performance fell to a shot every ten seconds. Continuous shooting is limited to three shots at a time, which take 27 seconds to store.

Higher-resolution cameras are more susceptible to image noise. As with some 8- and all 10-megapixel cameras, the Z1275 addresses this by using a physically larger sensor than most digital compact cameras, but there is no escaping the fact that its photos are always a little noisy. However, in most cases it was evident only under close scrutiny and, to the camera's credit, pictures in low light at ISO 400 and 800 were fine for casual snaps. There were other problems, though, including aggressive sharpening and contrast boosting to exaggerate the high resolution, which made photos look unnatural. Worst of all, taking a photo without half-pressing the shutter and waiting for the auto-focus to find its subject invariably resulted in an out-of-focus shot.

The Z1275 has some amazing specifications for the price. Sadly, though, there are too many flaws for us to overlook them all.