This is a short video recorded in the yard of our home in South Florida, in December 2008. It features flora and fauna typical of our sub-tropical climate, such as palm and pine trees, ficus, lizards, and various flowers. I recorded these sequences with a (then) new digital camera, the Kodak EasyShare Z1015 IS, a 10 megapixel, 15x optical zoom camera that also takes 720p HD videos.
Given my fairly positive experience with the Kodak EasyShare v610 camera, I thought the Z1015 IS would be a good step up. It would have been, except for certain flaws which made me return it, such as its unacceptably soft and grainy images at 12-15x zoom, and heavy banding and compression artifacts visible on a lot of the HD video clips I shot with it.
Perhaps I’ll post a fuller review of the Z1015 at some point. It would still be relevant, even though it’s been almost 1½ years since I tested it, because Kodak still lists it on their website, and the price is only $20 below its original $299 tag.
The video was intended to be a test of the camera’s capabilities. The only editing/manipulation I did was to image-stabilize some of the clips in iMovie. The camera’s image stabilization work alright for photos at long focal lengths, but it has a difficult time keeping up when video is being recorded at 7-15x zoom. The audio is unchanged, so you’ll get a good sense of the microphone’s ability, and the colors are what the camera gave me. It’s in HD, so watch it full screen to enjoy it.
Raoul Pop 