Customer review from the Amazon Vine Program Three stars stands for "It's Okay" in the Amazon review system.... Just "okay"
I must say, I'd love to see Kodak be the number one USA digital camera maker, they have been in the photo industry so very long and have been a respected camera company for decades.
Sticker on the bottom says this one is made in Indonesia.
I'll have to judge photo quality against our Canon Powershot A630 & A640 in the same price range, I use more expensive Canon cameras but unfair to compare to this price range.
Kodak must have designed the Z5010 to hit a price point I guess, since it's the latest 2011 release but is far less in the specifictions and features than their slightly more expensive (MSRP) Z990 MAX that came out earlier this year.
After a hundred test shots in various situations and lighting I find it will take decent photos when there is lots of nice bright sun, and will take some okay photos with the built in flash, but makes way too much noise if you use it for low light photography.
Most all the shots I've taken are pretty soft at all settings... All cameras have a "sweet" spot but so far I've not been able to find one with this camera. 14 whopping MP and you can't crop in more than a couple of steps before the shot turns to a mess. I don't want to post photos here since most any will look good at the greatly reduced display size showing on Amazon.
The Z5010 lists "IS" Image stabilization but I can't see that it works much or at all, so many motion blur shots without that much hand shake on my part. Same with the video IS
Start up times from off are pretty good at around 4 seconds
Controls are fast and easy to use
Fast one button press to go from camera to photo review and back again... very nice
Using AA batteries can be both good and bad depending on how you look at them. Lithium packs charge quicker, hold their charge longer when not in use and take more photos per charge, but AA cells are cheaper and can be upgraded as others come out with more capacity etc.
Once you are used to using a single Lithium pack it's hard to go back to messing with multiple cells, but otherwise they are no real problem. Max on the market as of this date is 2700mah but brands DO vary in quality and length of useful life.
A faster "smart" charger is needed along with a second set of cells to have with you if you plan to take lots of photos. Not a brand recommendation but as sample; Combo: Tenergy T-3150 Smart AA/AAA NiMH/NiCd Battery Charger + 4 Premium AA 2500mAh NiMH Rechargeable Batteries there are many brands and kits out there, just make sure it's "Smart" so it reads the cells and adjusts itself for best charge.
Internal memory is only 90mb so you don't get to save much without a SDHC card inserted.
No memory card supplied so be sure to purchase a good high speed card with lots of room if you plan to record HD video, for example;PNY Professional 16 GB Class 10 Hi-Speed SDHC 20MB/s 133x Flash Memory Card P-SDHC16G10-EF (Black)PNY Professional 8 GB Class 10 Hi-Speed SDHC 20MB/s 133x Flash Memory Card P-SDHC8G10-EF (Black) Internal memory is only 90mb so you don't get to save much without a card inserted. Prices of lower class 4 & 6 cards are not that much cheaper to not get a class 10.
25mm on the wide end is nice... but they dropped this one to f3.1 from the Z990s f2.8 spec
Way too much CA (Chromatic aberration) also
21x zoom magnification (25 525mm) is also down from what they already had in the 30X MAX
(the last 5x of zoom is digital so you might want to keep away from using that unless you really need to, see the bar graph on screen when zooming)
No manual focus so if it will not AF you are out of luck
LCD is lowered to 230K resolution
Kodak used a regular CCD not the BSI CMOS they already have on the market. Even a regular CMOS would be improvement.
Highest ISO is 1600 down from their best 3200 & 6400 on other model....although, the Z5010 does not do well with low light high ISO noise even at 1600 with this CCD
HD video is better quality for me than stills so far, except for the fact that it does not have optical zoom feature while you are taking videos... a pretty common desire for most people.
You still have 5X digital zoom to use, but quality drops the more you zoom out with digital rather than optical. Please note that I confirmed this lack of "optical" zoom in video mode with Kodak customer service directly and is not an opinion or mistake on my part.
Resolution is also down from full 1080 to 720 from the MAX z990
Video records fast and smooth at 720 HD when used with a good class 10 high speed card.
Even for rapid succession "burst" still shots, the link between memory card and camera has to be as fast as it can be in order to not get backed up and slowed down causing problems.
Please do yourself a favor if you are considering this Kodak camera and have a look at the full specs and features of their other new (Jan 2011) camera. Kodak EasyShare Max Z990 (New Model) I can't say it would please me for picture quality any more than the Z5010 but you will sure get more camera for the small price difference, and at times even less money than the Z5010.
UPDATE 11/2011; I found when taking videos with the Z5010... no matter what size memory card you use in it, in any one video you can only record 2 GB (about 10 minutes) of HD720p and only 2 GB (about 25 minutes) at lowest res VGA setting! Thought it was malfunction but found it listed in the manual.
Now at the 600 shot mark with this camera. The camera, even with a high speed memory card ,is pretty slow "processing" the more you use it in an outing and you can miss many shots waiting for the last photo to finish writing to memory card.
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