At the hour when the tactile screen is at its apex (iPhone, GPS, PC monitors, etc.), digital compacts are increasingly yielding to this technology with more or less good results.  Here Kodak introduces a compact with a different look and equipped with a pleasant tactile 3 inch screen for increased ease of use.  So was this a good wager?

Handling
Standing out in the wave of colorful cameras, Kodak went the opposite way and offers the EasyShare V1273 with its attractive black and simple design.  The few buttons (5 in total) barely stick out and the only (very small) zoom control breaks with the lines of this compact. Construction is serious and the finished product is truly of good quality.  Of course, the main attraction is the 3 inch screen on the back.  Before using it, you will have to wait roughly 1.6 seconds.  This is a rather classic value but we could have hoped for a faster startup.  A first glance at the screen and we had our first disappointment as it strongly lacks contrast and the image appears faded.  Changing the brightness doesn’t improve the situation much.  On the other hand, the tactile menus are pleasant, even if there is a tad lack of reactivity.  More disappointing were the direct controls which turned out to be somewhat limited to exposure compensation, flash, macro and burst mode. For the other parameters (ISO, white balance, light meter, etc.), we unfortunately have to go through the menus.

These weren’t the only downsides.  Outdoors, the screen proved to be of minimal utility in framing or visualizing images.  Other ergonomic characteristics could also be improved.  When the camera is turned ON, the previous settings are not conserved.  For example, if we were previously in P mode, the camera goes back to AUTO.  In terms of speed, the V1273 is rather fast in focusing; however, the recording time between two photos is rather random. At best we obtained 3.5 seconds, but with more and more photos, processing took longer.  In the end, this turned out to be as long as 6 seconds.  As for the burst mode, it was nothing too impressive with 2.3 i/s.

Quality of images

Overall, the quality of images is satisfactory.  In the lowest sensitivities (64 - 100 ISO), images are very clean, colors are good, and there is a nice level of detail.  Accentuation is rather noticeable with prints (A4) that are very vivid.  We did however see a loss of sharpness on the edges of images, although this was nothing too dramatic.  Otherwise, optical stabilization was efficient and our test Barbie was sharp at 1/10 s.  Noise control is rather classic and well contained up until 400 ISO.  Beyond this, smoothing and the loss of detail becomes a problem.  At 3200 ISO, the image is practically unusable and likewise at 6400 ISO colors run as the definition is reduced to 3 megapixels.  With its 12 million pixels, the Fujifilm 100fd does much better in terms of noise control.


Finally, the macro mode was mediocre with focusing at 13 cm.  As for video, quality wasn’t comparable to the HD which its rivals offer and it was impossible to use the optical zoom while shooting.