Kodak EasyShare C1013

With some swanky technology such as face detection and on-camera picture enhancing and editing features, Kodak’s EasyShare C1013 seemed like a promising budget camera.

Handling
Nothing to marvel about in terms of design here: the body is made of thick plastic and the interface is far too small. Even the on/off button is tiny. The 2.4 inch LCD has a 115,000 dots resolution.

Navigation is rather puzzling. Most often, macro mode is to be selected within the menu. Here you have to turn the dial on top of the camera. Automatic mode also has specifications usually found in P mode.
The camera is not very fast and it takes a whole second for AF to detect the subject in bright daylight. In poor light, the camera is unable to autofocus at all. Shutter lag is on the slow side (2,20 seconds).

Image quality

Inside our studio, this little camera fared poorly. Automatic white balance is far too warm and the picture is overexposed with little detail in high light. The resolution is however that of a 10 MP. Outdoors the colours are rather good. In high sensitivity, the camera fails to adapt. Overexposure increases and there is noise. This sort of quality is just good enough for a 10x15 print. As there is no optical image stabilizer, a digital system steps in to limit camera shake. The sharpest photo was captured in 1/8 s and 200 ISO.

Macro mode is not very inspiring either at 13 cm. Video (640 x 480) records only 15 frames per second, therefore playback is not very fluid. You can record sound, but the optical zoom cannot be used with video on.