Kodak V610, poor pic quality?

AmmoWaster · 27 Jan 2007 at 23:36

I'm not a photographer, but i've had my eye on this camera for a while as I was after something with a decent zoom and small enough to put in your pocket, I spend a lot of time on car tracks, drags strips etc where you can't get close to the action. I recently bought one as it came down to £150 from £350 on launch.

Problem is I think the pics are to be frank rubbish. My old camera a Kodak DX4900 takes brill pics in all lights, only down side is it's on 2x opitcal zoom and the digital zoom is so bad it's not usable.

He's a pic taken with the V610 on my local landmark on the settings given when you turn on the camera, the camera was also rested on a wall for steadiness.

Click for 1mb pic

If the res is low it looks fine but if you view it at actual size the pic is really grainy.

Is the camera setup wrong or this this how all camera are now days?

I'm not impressed with the pic quality at all, so if anyone can give me some help to make them better or another camera that has a good zoom and will fit in your pocket, cos i'm really considering taking this one back at the mo.

Doohickey · 27 Jan 2007 at 23:56

Hmm, there is a quite bit of noise on that picture, it's only at ISO 64 and good daylight as well... I've read reviews on this camera, and read that it doesn't process pictures too great, and there's no image stabiliser (but you say you did stick it on a wall so that shouldn't be an issue).

Jotun · 28 Jan 2007 at 00:02

Doohickey said:
there's no image stabiliser (but you say you did stick it on a wall so that shouldn't be an issue).

The shutter speed was 1/320 so camera shake should not of had much effect.

Sol · 28 Jan 2007 at 12:59

I wasn't aware that Kodak made any decent modern compact cameras. Probably that the sensor in it isn't particularly great, or you got a duff model. Check on google to see if there are any reviews of the camera and if you see anything saying "this camera has terrible noise" then it means that your camera model sucks.

For £150 there are some excellent compacts too!

SDK^ · 28 Jan 2007 at 13:30

This is the camera

It has 10x optical zoom :eek:

You are not going to get good image quality from such a small camera with a tiny 10x zoom lens.

DP Review rating image quality 6.5/10 - http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/kodakv610/page9.asp

Secondly, an image taken with any point & shoot viewed at full size will look grainy, especially if it has 5 or more Million Pixels.

If you really need 10x zoom then look a the Canon S3 IS or Panasonic DMC-FZ50

JIM_BOB7813 · 28 Jan 2007 at 14:30

You could also take a look on flickr, you can browse by camera.
http://www.flickr.com/cameras/kodak/v610_dual_lens/ check out everyone else's photos with the same camera.

Sol · 29 Jan 2007 at 04:23

Yeah I reckon its the camera mate...

Nice Photo, Rubbish Noise

If you could I'd maybe see if you could take it back, if not it's just something you'll have to live with I think.

Sol · 29 Jan 2007 at 04:27

SDK^ said:
Secondly, an image taken with any point & shoot viewed at full size will look grainy, especially if it has 5 or more Million Pixels.

If you really need 10x zoom then look a the Canon S3 IS or Panasonic DMC-FZ50

I dunno about that, you can get noise free shots with a sub 5 megapixel camera at full size in my experience. Full screen might be different depending on your resolution but then they will just look pixelated rather than grainy. Pub photos I would agree with you because they always seem to come out grainy because of the dark parts of the image.

It's the sensor on the camera, its obviously not very good. Dunno how they got away with it if it's that bad to be honest. Style over substance yet again.

AmmoWaster · 31 Jan 2007 at 16:06

Well i've just returned it, time to find a decent camera this time.

Sol · 1 Feb 2007 at 07:08

If you're after the large zooms check out the cameras from Canon, Fuji, Nikon, Sony and Panasonic. All varying budgets and the Canon one S3 IS is pretty good do it all. Maybe over budget so you can try and find the S2 version which is not that much different. You'll struggle to find something small in that category though.

If you want to sacrifice the flexibility of the zoom and get a small compact that can take decent photos then check out the Canon Ixus 60 (small and sexy) and the Fuji Finepix F30 (excellent for speed in all lighting conditions).

Gregeff · 1 Feb 2007 at 09:35

Both the dual lens Kodak's have rubbish image quality, tiny lenses with rubbish sensors....

Stick to Canon and you won't go wrong. Personally I would go for an IXUS850 IS as it starts at 28mm and has image stabalisation.