Kodak M381 EASYSHARE 12 MP Digital Camera- [Review]

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I had the opportunity to review the ultracompact Kodak EASYSHARE M381 12 MP digital camera on our last trip to Walt Disney World. I find it helpful to do reviews on these trips because it is a trial by fire, so to speak. Within just a few days, you can put electronics through their paces in all kinds of circumstances. Indoor, outdoor, hot, cold, strangers taking the pictures, quick shots, evening, and morning. So it was no surprise that Kodak, who has a partnership with Disney, would do well in this regard.

Everyone knows that Kodak is a leader in photography. As I have written before, they seem to be focused on the delivery of products that consumers can easily use and whose precious memories will preserved by great results. That is clearly what sets Kodak apart from other manufacturers in this space.

The Specs

For the full list, you can check out the specs on Kodak’s site. I’ll give you the essentials:

1/2.3-inch CCD sensor w/12.7 MP (12.2 MP effective) resolution
5X optical zoom/5X continuous digital zoom (Optical Aspheric Lens with 35–175 mm (35mm equiv.) focal length and f/3.0–4.8 aperture)
Built-in mechanical lens cover
3.0-inch display (230K)
32MB internal memory with SD/SDHC card support
QuickTime video capture VGA (640×480) @30fps or QVGA (320×240) @30fps
Face detection (up to five faces)
Blur reduction technology
Multiple scene (19) and color modes (5)
SHARE Button (uploading of pictures and video directly to YouTube™ or KODAK Gallery)

First Impressions

Taking the camera out of the box, you notice that it has a pretty solid feel at 5.6 ounces (some reviews said otherwise, but I disagree), and is certainly thin enough to go in your jeans pocket. As you can see by the pictures, the buttons are clearly marked and are exactly where you would expect them.

The camera comes in Black Olive, Light Steel Blue, or Wine Red. We had the Light Steel Blue, and it was very nice… all three colors are perfectly masculine enough for dads. The chrome accents are nice, and the battery/SD slot door felt durable enough for frequent use.

After fully charging the battery, which can be done while in the camera with a USB cable into your pc or the wall charger, we threw in an SDHC card and were off to the races.

Performance

The camera is pretty fast, and driving the purposefully simple menus was easy. Start-up shoot time (power-on until shot) was quick, about 2-2.5 seconds. The Smart Capture Mode (fully automatic) setting will work for 95% of your shooting needs, but the custom scene selections seemed to help a lot in low-light, macro, or portrait situations indoors (like a birthday party or school play).

Your other choices off the top knob are: Program (Manual), Blur Reduction (electronic), Sport, Panorama (3 pictures), Scene (Situation photography), and Video. The flash seemed to have the best results from about 2-8 feet from shooting position. Anything more than that, you are going to want to adjust accordingly.

Additionally, one important test that I always do with any camera is to give it to the kids to take a few pictures. If they can figure out what knobs and buttons to press to get a good picture, then it is easy to use. The M381 passed that test.

The menus are basic, and could use a quick UI refresh, but are clear and easy to understand, plus there is an ‘info’ button that gives you more information should you need it. That is a really nice touch.

Pictures

Camera photo reviews are always a mixed bag, and are completely situational. Every camera in this class will have practically the same review results, but there are exceptions.

Overall the results were good, due to the quality of both the optics and the Perfect Touch system. Outdoor shots are where this camera really shines. Even well-lit shots at night were also very nice. But when you get above ISO 400 you start seeing some drop-off in picture quality. You can compensate with using things like using the custom scene modes, or a tripod, but it will only get you so far an ultra-compact 1/2.3 CCD.

There is an option between Continuous AF (camera is always focusing) and Single AF (focus when the shutter button is pressed halfway). My recommendation is to use Single AF. Not only does continuous use a lot more battery life, but it is noticeably noisy. Also, the preview of your picture on the back LCD is not the sharpest, and makes you think that your picture didn’t come out as well as it did. This can cause some retakes, even though the picture was perfect the first time.

Battery life was not bad, we got about 300 pictures and videos in before we needed to recharge, but having the in-camera USB charging made it handy when we got back to the hotel.

On a side note, I really liked the panorama option (3 pictures digitally stitched together), which I think only works in horizontal position. I could see using this a lot more, even though most consider it a niche format.

Video

The video results were OK for an ultracompact, but there seemed to be an overexposure in the automatic white balance settings (perhaps it is my issue) that made the video seem washed. Keep in mind that the video is 640×480 @30fps, so it is NOT HD video, but I did expect better video results for this model.

The movies are in Quicktime JPEG format, and I assume they did some tweaking to the encoding to make the uploading to YouTube™ faster. From what I understand, there is a 16 minute maximum clip time, but we never attempted to take movies longer than that. Audio quality was also good.

Final Thoughts

We enjoyed using this camera because it was an easy to use, all-purpose camera. The $129-169 price tag is VERY competitive for all of its features.

A few options that I would have liked to see:

720p video (as several competitors now do)
geo-tagging (which may be asking a lot for the price/size)
optical image stabilization (not electronic).

For an easy to use camera to use in bright conditions (or indoor with a flash), for around $130, you should consider the Kodak Easyshare M381 as a great option.