Kodak EasyShare V570

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Features
Aimed at snapshooters who want versatility in addition to style, the Kodak EasyShare V570 offers scene modes galore, including Portrait, Panorama Stitch, Sport, Landscape, Close-up, Night Portrait, Night Landscape, Snow, Beach, Text, Fireworks, Flower, Museum, Self-Portrait, Party, Children, Backlight, Panning, Candlelight, Sunset, and a Custom option. That last mode saves the current settings when you turn the camera off, for later retrieval when you next use the Custom scene mode.

	Kodak plays a little fast and loose with the terminology here. The focal lengths noted are accurate, but the EasyShare V570 is not a true 5x zoom camera. There are no focal lengths available between 23mm and 39mm.

The ultrawide 23mm (35mm-camera equivalent) lens makes the panorama feature a blast to use. Select either left-to-right or right-to-left panorama scene mode and the camera shifts into 3.1-megapixel-per-shot resolution. As you work, an edge of the last shot taken appears at the side of the LCD, making it easy to line up the next image. When all three are exposed, the camera automatically assembles the photos into one 180-degree image, even if your alignment isn't perfect.

While exposure adjustments other than exposure compensation can't be set manually, you can choose from multipattern, center-weighted, and center-spot metering, as well as shift sensitivity from ISO 64 to ISO 400, plus ISO 800 when the camera is set for 1.8-megapixel resolution. In full Auto mode, the camera limits the ISO between 64 to 160. The EasyShare V570 combines a fixed F-stop (F2.8 for the ultrawide lens and F3.9 or F4.4 for the zoom lens) with shutter speeds from 8 seconds to 1/1,448 second. Experimenters will find buried in the menu system an option for manually set time exposures ranging from 0.5 to 8 seconds.

There's lots of flexibility built into the autofocus system, although no manual focus is available. You can choose multi- or center-zone autofocus, as well as switch between single autofocus (the camera locks focus when the shutter release is partially depressed) and continuous autofocus (the camera keeps changing focus as required when your framing or subject moves once the shutter release is pressed halfway). You can focus as close as 5cm with the zoom lens but no closer than 79cm with the ultrawide lens. That's a shame because we would have liked to turn off the barrel-distortion correction and try out some semi-fish-eye effects with the 23mm lens from a few inches away.

Movie buffs will love the 640 x 480-pixel, 30fps movie capabilities, with built-in digital image stabilization. You can edit or split your MPEG-4 videos in-camera, and each clip can be as long as 80 minutes. You can also extract individual frames as low-res stills or print them in 4-, 9-, or 16-up composites.

The EasyShare V570 comes with Kodak's Photo Frame Dock 2 for picture transfer, battery charging, and slide shows.

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