My Most Recent Technology Purchase; The Kodak Z990

About a month ago my camera broke (it was a trusty Canon A590IS, which I had been using for a few years). I hadn’t really been looking for a camera because I hadn’t had any time, but a couple of weeks ago I did. I searched every technology website and retailer that I knew of in order to find the best thing that my money could buy. I didn’t want a DSLR, but I also didn’t want a compact camera. I was looking for bridge SLR-type camera. As I tend to do with all of my technology purchases, I spent about a week looking at different cameras, reading reviews, comparing specifications, and more. I finally narrowed my search down to three cameras; the Nikon Coolpix L120, The Fujifilm FinePix S4000, and the Kodak EasyShare MAX Z990. Now, you probably already know which one I ended up purchasing from looking at the title of this post, but I think that I’ll explain what I found in each of them anyway. 

First let’s start out with what I was looking for; my budget was anything under $300, but if I found something substantially better for a higher price, I would probably buy it. I wanted at least 20x optical zoom, at least 12 megapixels, a brand that I could trust, full manual controls, and a couple of other things. Now, onto my reasoning for each of the cameras. 

Let’s start out with the Nikon L120. It was priced at around $280 at most retailers. It has a great photo resolution at 14.1 megapixels, a 1/2.3 CCD sensor, 21x optical zoom, a 3 inch LCD display with anti-reflection coating (presumably to make up for the lack of a viewfinder) and a resolution of 921k dots, it supports SD/SDHC/SDXC memory cards, has ISO settings ranging from 80 to 6400, however ISO 3200 and ISO 6400 are only available at a 3 megapixel resolution (The whole idea behind reducing the resolution to is to reduce noise, which is usually seen at high ISO’s. This works be reducing heat from neighboring pixels in order to reduce noise.), it uses four AA batteries, has a combination of sensor-shift and electronic image stabilization, takes 720p video at 30fps with stereo audio, a large variety of scene modes, a pop-up flash with a range of 6m, continuous shooting at 0.7 fps, NO manual settings. I’m not going to get into the more technical specifications, but they were okay and similar to most of the other cameras which I was considering. Now, to analyze these specifications. The 14 megapixels was a big plus, and I didn’t have a preference over whether the sensor was CCD or CMOS, but let me explain the differences. 

CCD stands for charge coupled device, and CMOS stands for complementary metal oxide semiconductor. Each sensor type has its pros and cons, but neither is clearly superior. As light strikes a CCD sensor, it is held as a small electrical charge in each photo sensor, and then converted into voltage one pixel at a time. CMOS sensors have circuitry next to each photo sensor, which converts the light into voltage. These past two sentences may have been extremely confusing, and I don’t even know how to really explain how both types work. Some advantages of CCD sensors are they they create high quality images and generally have low noise, they have also been around much longer, so they are more mature. Some of their disadvantages are that they use much larger amount of power than CMOS sensors, and are therefore much less energy efficient. They are also slower, in most cases. Some advantages of CMOS sensors are that they consume less power and are cheaper, but some disadvantages are that since there is extra circuitry next to the sensors, they tend to be less sensitive to light and offer worse low-light performance. Overall, neither is superior. 

Back to the Nikon Coolpix L120, I was happy with the zoom, but when I compared it to that of the other two cameras, it was a con. I was also very happy with the display, and its high resolution. I was disappointed that there was no viewfinderon the Coolpix L120, however. The ISO settings were good, but I didn’t like that higher ISO setting could only be used in conjunction with lower resolutions. This wasn’t very problematic for me, however, because I tend not to use very high ISO’s because of their high amount of noise in non-DSLR cameras. The 720p video was also a plus, but when I compared it to the 1080p of the Kodak Z990, it failed to impress. I was happy with the stereo audio recording, which the Kodak EasyShare MAX Z990 had, but the Fujifilm S4000 did not. As for the scene modes, I don’t really tend to use them very much, but I do use manual a lot as I don’t really trust the automatic settings of most cameras. For this reason, the Coolpix L120 was a little bit disappointing. The continuous shootings modes were also fairly weak. I usually like to take a couple of photos of the subject which I am photographing so that I can choose the best one later. I also liked that it used SD memory, because I already have plenty of SD cards, and that it uses AA batteries, because I like being able to simply change the batteries once they run out and being able to resume shooting, instead of having to recharge batteries. 

I also read some reviews about the Nikon Coolpix L120, and the ratings were pretty good. They reported great image quality, a very good user interface, and the quality you would expect from a brand like Nikon. One of the only downsides of the reviews was that the L120 was a little short on features, and could not contend very well with some other bridge cameras, such as the ones mentioned in this post. 

In conclusion, the Nikon Coolpix L120 was a strong contender, but it lacked some important features for me such as manual settings, better zoom, and 1080p video.

Now, onto the Kodak EasyShare MAX Z990. It features a 12 megapixel resolution with a 1/2.33 BSI-CMOS sensor, optical image stabilization, a 3 inch display with a 460k dot resolution, an electronic viewfinder, full manual settings, and 8.9m pop-up flash, continuous shooting at 5.6 fps, 1080p video with stereo audio, SD/SDHC support, AA batteries, ISO settings ranging from 125 to 6400 (with no reduction in image resolution for higher ISO settings), 30x optical zoom, and I think that’s about it. I really liked the specifications of the Kodak Z990, they were (and still are) the best out of any of the cameras that I was considering. In case you don’t know what a BSI-CMOS sensor is, it is simply a back-lit CMOS sensor designed for amazing low light performance. The 1080p video with stereo audio was a big plus, as was the full manual option and the 30x zoom, a big improvement from the Coolpix L120’s 21x. True, the Z990 does have a smaller image resolution than the other two cameras, but the other features make up for it, in my opinion. The optical image stabilization was also a plus, because optical is always better than digital. The only doubt that I had about the Kodak Z990 is that I wasn’t familiar with the brand. My brother had a Kodak camera and said that it was great, but it was just a compact point and shoot, and was also a few years old, so I didn’t know if I could really trust Kodak based on one experience of a relative. 

I decided to read some reviews on the Kodak Z990, and they came out pretty good. Image quality was reported to be great in most of the reviews, as was everything else. this time the downside of the reviews was the ease-of-use. Some reviews reported the camera being a little slow and unresponsive at times, but I didn’t really think much of this at the time and thought it was reviewers simply being overcritical. In the end, it turned out that they were being modest. 

Now, onto the last camera that I was seriously considering; the Fujifilm FinePix S4000. This camera also had pretty good specifications. It has a 14 megapixel image resolution with a 1/2.3 CCD sensor, and ISO range of ISO 100 to ISO 6400 (with reduced resolution at ISO speeds of over 3200), sensor-shift image stabilization, 30x optical zoom, full manual settings, a 7m pop-up flash, 720p video with, sadly, only monaural sound, SD/SDHC memory, AA batteries, an electronic viewfinder, and a 3 inch display with a 460k dot resolution.

I really liked the features of the FinePix S4000; The 14 megapixel sensor was great, as well as the 30x zoom and full manual mode. My only problems with the specifications were the video; it was 720p (still okay), but the monaural sound was unacceptable for me. Overall, I was pretty happy with the specifications, but then I decided to read some reviews. 

All of the reviews said good things about the features, ease-of-use, and most other aspects of the Fujifilm Finepix S4000, but the one area in which it did not perform well was image quality, Reviews said that images looked painted and were not sharp. Since image quality is the main thing to look for in a camera, the FinePix S4000 was pretty much eliminated from the competition.

Now, to compare all three cameras, the Fujifilm Finepix S400 was out of the running because of the poor image quality reported in reviews. The choice after that was clear; the Kodak Z990 had only one specification that was worse than the Nikon L120; image resolution, and I was okay with 12 megapixels. The reviews were great, and the only thing that I was unsure about was the brand, so I bought it. 

The Kodak Z990 arrived after a couple of days, and I was excited. I un-boxed it and started using it, and it was great, but then I encountered a pretty big problem; the camera was slow. It turned on, you took a picture, and then you had to wait….and wait….and then wait some more, until you could take more pictures. I didn’t know why this was happening; maybe my memory card was slow, so I tried using the internal memory, but the same thing happened. I had no idea why, but this was a big problem. I couldn’t wait 10 seconds between each shot, it was simply unacceptable, I would miss so many good shots just waiting for my camera to get ready. Si, I thought, maybe my camera was just defective. I contacted Kodak and they said that other users hadn’t been having this problem, so I decided that maybe I had a defective unit. I asked them if I could exchange it, and they said that I could, but that it would take 10 days to get a new one sent out. I am a very impatient person and could not wait for this, so I decided to contact Amazon (where I purchased the camera). They had a much better policy and shipped out a new camera with one day shipping, and emailed me a UPS label to return the presumed defective camera. 

I received the new Kodak Z990 and hurriedly opened it, and guess what happened, it was still slow. At this point, I didn’t know what I wanted to do. I could return it for my money back, and try to buy a different camera, but I didn’t really like that option because there wasn’t a camera out there in the same price range with the same features, I was stuck, and I didn’t know what to do. So, I ended up not doing anything, and here we are. I still have the Z990, my return policy is still active and I have about 20 days left. I haven’t decided what to do, so, I guess what I am asking is that you, my readers, will help me decide what to do.