Kodak EasyShare Z650

Manual Control Options
The EasyShare Z650 offers a level of manual control that's unusual in small, inexpensive cameras. Aperture, Shutter Speed, ISO, and white balance can all be set manually, though there is no provision for custom white balance. There are also settings for saturation and sharpening, metering controls, and autofocus controls, but no manual focus option.

Focus
Autofocus
The EasyShare Z650's autofocus system performed well in a relatively bright indoor setting. With limited opportunities to test its low-light capability, it struck us as an accurate but slow system. Autofocus can be set for either continuous or one-time focusing, and can be set to focus on either a wide area across the middle of the frame, or just on the middle. We didn't notice a change in focusing speed as we played with those variables.

Manual Focus
The EasyShare Z650 does not offer manual focus. Again, this is an unfortunate feature to lack since the viewfinder on the EasyShare Z650 is probably good enough to evaluate focus live. Typically, focus-by-wire systems in compact cameras have failed as features because the viewfinder is of poor resolution or the manual control over the lens is slow and unresponsive, or both. Still, manual focus is a creative option that users interested in experimenting should be able to have.

Metering
The EasyShare Z650 can be set to use one of three metering patterns: Multi-pattern takes several readings across the frame and compares them to establish an exposure; Center-weight takes a single reading that emphasizes the center of the frame, and Center-spot takes a reading of a small area at the center of the frame. Multi-pattern gives good results in automatic modes as well as manual mode, while the other two can be useful in manual shooting. We found that Multi-pattern handled backlighting well, though a too-bright background could defeat it.

Exposure
The EasyShare Z650 offers 2 stops of exposure compensation above and below the metered value, adjustable in 1/2-stop steps. While a 1/3-stop is a more common and more precise increment for compensation, Kodak generally goes with 1/2-stops; so this is typical of an EasyShare model.

Aperture priority, shutter priority, and full manual exposure modes are offered as well. However, it lacks a bracketing feature to vary exposure over a few images and find the best setting for a given scene.

White Balance
The EasyShare Z650 offers automatic white balance and 4 manual presets. They are: Daylight, Open shade, Tungsten and Fluorescent. In a big omission, Kodak left out the option of taking a light reading to set a custom white balance. In many situations, that's the only way to get good neutral color balance. In mixed tungsten lighting, the EasyShare Z650 delivered very good color, and its auto white balance mode works well. Though we feel saddened at the omission of a manual option, the full auto mode appears to be the best option on the camera, in many situations.

ISO
The EasyShare Z650's ISO range is 80, 100, 200 and 400, with an extended setting of 800 at reduced resolution. When ISO is set to auto, the rating is set from 80 to 160. Setting the ISO manually is just like setting the aperture or shutter speed – the ISO appears on the screen, and can be changed with the joystick.

Shutter Speed
The EasyShare Z650's shutter speeds range from 1/8 to 1/1700 in most automatic modes, and from 8 seconds to 1/2000 in manual mode. Fireworks and Night Scene modes shoot multi-second exposures as well. Shutter speeds are stepped in 1/3 EV increments.

Aperture
The EasyShare Z650's lens has a maximum aperture of f/2.8 at wide angle and f/3.7 at telephoto. Its minimum aperture is f/8 throughout the zoom range. It is typical of cameras with such short focal lengths – this lens is about a 6 to 60mm optic – to keep apertures no smaller than f/8, as the tiny size of the aperture begins to degrade the lens's performance below that setting.