Kodak P712

Reviewed September 2006

Test Photos

STILL LIFE PHOTO

This subject is photographed in a room that has a mix of fluorescent and incandescent light, but which is not brightly lit. The camera's flash is used to add fill light. The backdrop is 1.95 m (6.5 ft) from the camera.

For this series of photos, the P712's RAW image format was used to ensure the highest image quality and avoid the inevitable loss of data associated with compression.

Images were then "developed" using the bundled software, and saved as TIFF, an uncompressed format, using the capture parameters recorded by the camera.

ZOOM PHOTO

Now we zoom in on the centre of the image above to gauge the sharpness of the image at the zoom's maximum setting. The camera remains at the same distance as in the preceding photo.

The power of the P712's optical zoom is well illustrated by this image. At 12X, equivalent to a 432 mm lens on a 35 mm camera, the camera captures a very narrow field of view with this subject, revealing details that cannot be perceived at this distance by the unaided eye. The printing screen used to create the grey shading on the envelope is clearly visible, as are the fibres of the old paper.

As with the wide angle photo, the colours the camera captures are accurate, and consistent.

CLOSE-UP PHOTO

Set to the Macro mode, the P712 is able to focus on a subject that is between 10 and 90 cm (3.9 to 35.4 inches) when the zoom is at the wide angle end, and from 90 cm to 2.0 m (35.4 inches to 6.6 ft) at the telephoto end.

At the closest distance at the wide angle end, the camera captures a field of view of 8.5 cm (3.4 inches), while at the telephoto end, the field of view is 9 cm (3.6 inches), making both settings approximately equivalent.

BUILDING PHOTO

This image is our outdoor test. The architecture of the building, in particular the angled girders, immediately show the presence of jaggies. The shadowed entrance can also often reveal the quality of the exposure.

Set to the Program mode, and to the default settings, the P712 produces very good results: colours look natural and are well saturated. Moreover, the Multi-zone metering is effective, and yields good exposures.

Still, inspecting the image at 100% on a monitor, a slight chromatic aberration can be detected.

ZOOM PHOTO

Zooming in on the entrance of the building, the shadowed entrance takes on a greater importance for the metering and can cause an overexposure of sections that are directly lit.

Zoomed in, the camera is able to capture a small portion of the building. No pincushion distortion is noticeable, nor is there any trace of a chromatic aberration. Similarly, the image is sharp from corner to corner, and this at the widest aperture of the lens.

As the camera is mounted on a tripod to capture this photo, the stabilization system is turned off to avoid any interference.

NIGHT PHOTO

Since this camera is capable of long exposures, a photo taken at night is included here.

The Night Scene mode of the P712 only allows a maximum exposure time of 2 seconds, which may be sufficient to capture a night scene in a well-lit street, but is insufficient to capture a subject as dim and distant as this one.

However, with the Manual or Shutter Priority modes, the P712 is capable of exposures as long as 16 seconds. And of these two modes, the use of the Manual mode is best suited, since in addition to offering control over the sensitivity and white balance, it also allows controlling the aperture.

Setting the sensitivity to the lowest possible, 64 ISO, avoids much of the noise that can be generated by a long exposure, and an aperture of f8 in combination with an exposure time of 16 seconds and a white balance set to incandescent to obtain colours as natural as possible, allows the camera to capture a excellent level of detail.

Worth noting, the noise reduction system of the P712 is quite effective and once processed by it, the images show very little residual noise, and if the widest angle of the zoom is avoided, very good sharpness.