Kodak EasyShare M580 Digital Camera Review

Using the Camera

The Kodak M580 has 14 megapixels of resolution, an 8x optical zoom, and a focal range of 28-224mm making it a very capable camera. Its large 1/2.3-inch CCD sensor help give excellent results. The color reproduction is accurate and highly saturated, but not overly so. Photos are crisp and clear. We found this camera a little more prone to blurriness from a shaky hand than others of this type, but not enough to be a detriment for the average user. The camera’s Face Recognition technology and Smart Capture mode make it a joy to use when you don’t want to play around with the settings. When you do, you have control over things like exposure compensation and ISO. Burst mode, a self-timer, and macro mode are available but there’s no manual control over shutter speed or aperture.

Like other cameras of this type there is noise at high ISOs, which generally appears in low light photos. With adequate light, however, we found the photos to be excellent. The auto-focus in the Macro mode, however was a little out-of-sync, especially for indoor shots. So if you are doing close-ups for something like an auction site, you might want to look at another camera

The three-inch LCD screen is clear and can be seen even in bright sunlight. The on-screen prompts are easy to understand and very helpful to get you used to how the camera works. An example of these prompts is shown in Figure 9.

Figure 9: On-screen prompts

This camera is ready to take its first picture less than four seconds after being turned on. Shutter lag is not a problem, especially if the camera is pre-focused. We did, however, have a bit of trouble with setting the pre-focus by pressing the shutter half way down. The problem is that it is more difficult to find the halfway point than in most other point-and-shoot cameras. Sometimes we took a picture when we just wanted to pre-focus. Although we did get more used to this as we used the camera, it was still a bit problematic.

The Scene modes feature 20 presets that include: portrait, landscape, close-up, night portrait, night landscape, snow, beach, text, fireworks, flower, museum/ manner, self-portrait, high-ISO, children, backlight, panning shots, candlelight, sunset, sport, and panorama.

In camera editing includes crop, copy, and date stamp. You can also tag people, view thumbnails, and create a multimedia slideshow in camera.

This camera captures video in HD at 720p. When attached to a HD television using the camera’s built-in HDMI connection, the videos looked very good. The microphone, however, seems to be overly sensitive. It sometimes picked up background noise in the video that was not terribly noticeable when taking the video. Although the specs don’t indicate this, we got the best video when using a Class 6 SDHC card, which is a little pricier than the older Class 4 cards. Like many other cameras of this type, the zoom is not available for use in the video mode.

The M580 has a 3.7 V, 740 mAh rechargeable Li-Ion battery. The battery charges in the camera. While this is a good thing for most users, it can be problematic for those who like to purchase a second battery and have it charging while the camera is in use. Kodak’s claims that you can capture 200 images on a single charge and our testing proved this to be accurate.

Our first and biggest complaint about this camera is the difficulty in using the buttons on the top of the camera. As already noted, this is a major complaint. In several weeks of using the camera, we were never over to overcome the problem that made it difficult to turn the camera on and off and to find the Flash and Menu buttons.