Kodak EasyShare V705

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By Damian Koh
Jan 11, 2007

The dual-lens EasyShare V570 was the first of its kind when Kodak announced it at the annual CES in January last year. Paper specifications looked interesting then, until we found the camera had a fixed 23mm focal length, along with a 3x optical 39mm-to-117mm zoom lens. Kodak claimed the camera produces a total of 5x optical zoom, though we felt it was more of a word play as the lens jumps from 23mm to 39mm without closing in optically, although you can turn on the digital zoom. All of the above holds true for the third iteration of dual-lens shooters--the EasyShare V705.

Design
What the company has introduced on the V705 is a higher 7.1-megapixel resolution while adding a few more features. The V705 doesn't look very much different from the earlier V570 or the 6-megapixel, 10x optical zoom V610, but we like the overall feel of the camera. Its stylish looks are a bonus.

Instead of the usual directional keypad on the back of the unit, Kodak replaces it with a joystick for menu navigation. Clumsy us, we attempted to hit the dial like we did for most other digicams. Other than that, the rest of the buttons on the V705 are actually well-labeled and provide tactile feedback

Features
With the snapshooters in mind, this Kodak comes with a barrage of built-in scene modes (22 to be exact) and manual controls for exposure compensation plus or minus 2EV in 0.3EV steps. There's VGA movie recording at 30 frames-per-second with sound for budding directors.

Other features include in-camera editing functions such as cropping and automatic adjustment of exposure which the company dubs Perfect Touch technology. You can preview the results alongside the original snap and choose to save it as a copy or override the current shot.

The high-sensitivity setting of ISO 1,000 looks promising, on paper that is. You can manually select the desired ISO between 50 and 1,000. More on that in our image quality review. There are five options for white balance--auto, daylight, tungsten, fluorescent and open shade. We'd have preferred to see a custom setting as well.

There's also a Panorama shooting mode, either from left to right or right to left, which covers a lot of ground with the wide 23mm lens. 32MB of onboard memory, though measly, is enough for 12 7.1-megapixel shots.

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