In summary
Dual lenses extend wide-angle capabilities for this pocketable digicam.Kodak’s new EasyShare V570 is remarkable for having two separate lenses, each linked to its own 5-megapixel CCD sensor. The top lens is the ‘ultra-wide’ one, while the 3x optical zoom sits below it. Neither extends beyond the camera body, thanks to a ‘folded optic’ design that tucks them in, one above the other, just below the flash assembly. Both are concealed behind a metal cover when power is off. . . [more]
Full review
Kodak’s new EasyShare V570 is remarkable for having two separate lenses, each linked to its own 5-megapixel CCD sensor. The top lens is the ‘ultra-wide’ one, while the 3x optical zoom sits below it. Neither extends beyond the camera body, thanks to a ‘folded optic’ design that tucks them in, one above the other, just below the flash assembly. Both are concealed behind a metal cover when power is off.
You can tell which lens you’re using by the bar line displayed on the LCD, which passes through a red zone when digital zoom is turned on or jumps from the UW to the W position if it’s turned off. The transition is, fortunately, quick and almost seamless, although you must press the zoom lever again to continue zooming.
The V570’s metal body is, in the main, solidly built, although the SD card slot cover is flimsy and may be easily detached. To the left of the top lens are three microphone holes above the AF assist/self timer/video recording lamp. A slim built-in flash occupies the top right corner with a lanyard loop mid-way along the left side.
Most of the back is covered by the 2.5-inch LCD, which is flanked by the flash, delete, menu, review and share buttons. Right of the LCD are the zoom rocker and joystick selector. The top panel carries the shutter release, power switch and buttons for the Scene, Video and Favourites modes.
A noteworthy scene mode is Panorama, which lets you capture a 180-degree panorama in three shots, from left to right or vice versa. After the first shot, the camera displays a small guide image to help you line up subsequent shots. The shots are stitched in the camera to produce a long, very narrow picture. Lining up shots in bright daylight is difficult and, for optimal results, you must keep the camera straight and level and rotate it around the optical axis.
Outdoor shots taken with the test camera were bright and colourful but exposures were biased towards shadow detail and highlights were often blown-out in brightly-lit subjects. We found some purple fringing in backlit pictures, especially near the edges of the frame. Imatest showed colour accuracy to be good, with slightly elevated saturation. White balance performance was also above average, even in auto mode.
Overall camera resolution was typical of many slimline 5-megapixel digicams, as can be seen in the Imatest graphs posted with this review. The ultra-wide lens on the test camera performed somewhat better than the zoom lens but both lenses suffered from moderate to severe chromatic aberration. Given the tiny size of these optics – and the sensor – these results are not surprising. Fortunately, we doubt many snapshooters (the target market for this camera) would notice them under normal usage conditions.
Using digital zoom caused picture quality to deteriorate with both lenses with the greatest loss near the top end of the wide lens’s digital zoom range, although quality was also relatively poor at the top of the zoom lens’s digital zoom range. JPEG and sharpening artefacts were also visible with digital zoom so we recommend it only be used when absolutely vital.
Low light performance was variable. The flash required ISO 200 to illuminate an average-sized room and noise was apparent in shots at ISO 400 and very obvious at ISO 800, where the resolution drops to 1.8M. For exposures from 0.5 to eight seconds, the ISO setting defaults to 64. Detail is sacrificed to noise suppression but noise is evident at exposures over 1.5 seconds). The camera took 1.8 seconds to power-up and shot-to-shot times were roughly one second. We measured an average capture lag of 1.2 seconds, which reduced with pre-focusing to 0.1 sec. for the ultra-wide lens and 0.2 sec. to 0.5 sec. for the zoom lens (depending on focal length). The burst mode recorded four shots at half-second intervals and it took roughly five seconds to process each image, regardless of resolution.
In use, the V570 has one irritating quirk: if you try to zoom straight after shooting, the preview prevents you from seeing how far. You can cancel the preview by tapping the shutter button but we feel the camera should do this as you initiate the zoom. [27]
Wide Lens Test Results
Zoom Lens Test Results
Specifications
Image sensor: Two 5.34 x 4.01 mm CCDs with 5.35 million photosites (5 megapixels effective)
Lens: Twin Schneider-Kreuznach lenses: 3.8mm (23mm equiv.) f/2.8 plus 6.4-19.2mm (39-117 mm equiv) f/3.9-f/4.4 3x optical zoom lens.
Zoom range: 5x optical (total), 4x digital
Dimensions (wxhxd): 101 x 49.8 x 20.4 mm
Weight: 125 g (without battery)
Image formats: Stills – JPEG (Exif 2.21); Movies – QuickTime (MPEG4); VGA/QVGA at 30 fps.
Shutter speed range: 8-1/1448 seconds
Focus system/range: TTL multi-zone/centre zone AF; range 80 cm to infinity; macro to 5 cm.
Exposure metering/control: TTL-AE with multi-pattern, centre-weighted, centre-spot modes; 21 Scene modes, 5 colour modes.
White balance: Auto, daylight, tungsten, fluorescent, open shade
Flash modes/range (ISO auto): Auto, off, fill, digital red-eye reduction; range 0.8-3.1 m.
ISO range: Auto (ISO 64-160), ISO 64, 100, 200, 400, 800 (manual)
Sequence shooting: 2.3 fps, maximum 4 images in any quality mode
Storage Media: 32 MB internal memory plus SD/MMC card slot; internal memory holds 17 high resolution images or up to 43 1.8 MP shots.
Viewfinder: n.a.
LCD monitor: 2.5-inch colour hybrid LCD (230,000 pixels)
Power supply: KLIC-7001 rechargeable lithium-ion battery
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Rating
Rating (out of 10):
- Build: 8
- Ease of use: 8.5
- Image quality: 8
- OVERALL: 8