Kodak EasyShare Z950

Shooting Modes (16.50)

The Z950 has shooting modes to spare: as well as 18 scene modes, it includes a panorama mode, full auto, program, shutter priority, aperture priority and a full manual mode. That’s a very comprehensive mode list for a point and shoot camera, and it provides plenty of flexibility for the user.

The Z950 also includes a special mode on the mode dial for taking panoramas, where the camera takes 3 images and stitches them together to form a single panoramic image. It is nowhere near as flexible as the Sony HX1’s sweep panorama mode, but it seems to work in our tests.

Auto Mode Features

Focus – The Z950 uses a contrast detection focus system, with 5 focus points in a grid pattern around the center of the frame. This can be switched to a single focus point in the center of the frame, and there is also a macro and manual focus mode. The manual focus mode shows you an enlargement of the center of the frame when focusing. We did find that the auto focus was rather slow, especially in low light, where it often took 2to 3 seconds to find the right focus point. The focus assist light is also rather bright: it could easily temporarily blind someone in a darkened room.

A macro focus mode is also included, but it’s barely deserving of the name. At the widest zoom setting, the minimum focus distance for this camera is about 4 inches, which means that you cannot get in close. It’s fine for taking photos of larger objects like flowers, but there is no way it can take photos of smaller objects such as insects.

Face detection is also included, but the implementation is somewhat clumsy. When enabled, the camera tries to detect and focus and expose for faces, but it only works with straight on faces: those at an angle or profiles are not detected.

Exposure – Only basic exposure compensation features are available: you can add or subtract up to two stops of exposure compensation and one stop of flash exposure in one third of a stop steps. It is unusual to see flash compensation on a point and shoot, but it’s a good thing to have available if you are using the flash as a fill-in for existing light.

Metering – Options are offered for evaluative, center weighted and spot metering. In addition, the face detection mode will spot meter on the detected faces.

Self-Timer – The standard self-timer options of 2 and 10 second delays are on offer, plus an odd 2x mode that uses a 10 second delay, but then takes a second photo after another delay.

Picture Effects (2.00)

The only picture effects modes on offer are the color modes: High, Natural, Low, Black & White and Sepia. None of these effects can be adjusted: there is no way to tweak how much of the effect is applied. We generally recommend that people avoid using these effects; you can get better results with more control using an image editing application.

Picture Samples
High Color Normal Color Low Color Black & White Sepia More...

Manual Controls (6.64)

A decent selection of white balance presets are on offer: Daylight, Tungsten, Florescent and Open shade. There is also a full auto mode, but no evaluative mode.

The lens offers a decent aperture range: f/3.2 to f/8.0 at the widest setting, and f/4.8 to f/11.3 at the telephoto end.

In the auto and scene modes, the camera can set the shutter speed from 1/8 of a second down to 1/1250. In full manual mode, this range expands to 16 seconds down to 1/1000. That’s a little smaller than what we like to see; shutter speeds of 1/2000 of a second can help freeze sports and other fast-moving subjects.

Drive/Burst Mode (2.50)

The Z950 has a very limited burst mode that can only handle 3 shots. You can set this to either capture the first three shots or the last three after the shutter is pressed. The idea of the latter mode is that you hold down the shutter until you think you have got the shot and the camera captures the last three shots. Whichever mode you use, there is then about a 5 second delay while the camera writes the images out to the memory card. It works, but we would rather see a decent burst mode that can capture more images, and faster.

Shot to Shot (2.74)

We measured the time between shots of the Z950 at around 0.7 seconds, for a frame rate of about 1.5 frames per second (fps). That’s a little misleading, though, as the camera can only capture three shots at this speed.