Overall I really like this camera. I am not a pro Photographer or any thing, but I will tell you what I see. The picture quality is great for a pocket camera. Not like my D80, but you can't compare the two. There are only three things that really bother me about the camera.

1. The LCD screen is hard to see through when you are outside. I think that it is because it's a touch screen.
2. The battery and memory card Door. When you are holding the camera the door would slide open. The door does not lock in place, it just kinda slides in place.
3. The battery only lasted for about 30 pics at 12mp and with 4 15-20 second videos. Maybe the battery wasn't charged all the way!

I purchased this camera primarily to upgrade to HD video capability from my current Casio EX850. Unfortunately, the Kodak camera lense periodically "clicks" as it tries to adjust for lighting changes, which shows up on the video. The quality of the video itself is much more detailed than my Casio, which only shoots video at 640 x 480 30 fps. However, the Kodak sound quality on videos is noticably poorer than the Casio. Another important note, my PC's Windows Media Player cannot read the Kodak video format and had to use Quicktime instead. Finally, the cameras battery compartment doesn't lock very well and easily slides open when handling the camera.

After a week of use I decided to return it. Although, this 2nd generation HD video capable V1073 is an improvement over the first generation V1053, its still not quite there yet in my book.

My zoom button broke in under a month of very minimal use. I think I only took 200 pictures. The camera repair service that they use is horrible and since I needed the camera right away for a trip I had to overnight it to the repair center....three weeks later still no camera back. So I called the repair service and they said they had to send it back to kodak since it couldn't be repaired. Trying to call in to either the Precision Camera(the repair place) or to call Kodak for an update was like pulling teeth. I was very nice to the tech guy at kodak and he literally almost wouldn't let me speak to a supervisor about anything. Very poor customer service all the way around. The camera is going to end up costing me 75 dollars extra because of the whole ordeal and I may have to end up buying a new camera and returning this one when it finally does arrive.

Functionally I like it ok. The software has frozen up a few times and I've had to power it off and back on to get it to work. It is also very hard to see the LCD when outdoors. The battery bay latch also very easily comes unhooked and it's so fragile I'm afraid it will break off when it does.

Don't buy this camera to use for video unless you don't mind it looking worse than what you'll find on You Tube. The video playback is horrible on a Pentium IV 3.0GhZ, 2GB RAM, 256MB ATI Radeon, 120 GB Sata-150 hard drive. Why? The Quick Time hardware CODEC used by Kodak is incompatible with the software CODEC provided by Apple.

I bought this camera because of the advertised HD video recording capability. I wanted a small device to carry with me to "capture those special moments (c; Maybe even velcro it to the inside of my motorcycle helmet for some "stock footage" (-:

The video records just fine, and plays back on the camera's screen without a hitch. Copy the video (Quick Time MP4) to a relatively fast PC (with QT 7.4 Pro installed) and the video stalls, stutters, and rarely synchs with the audio. Heck, I could have taken still photos with my Rebel XT, taped the audio with my ZEN MP3 player, used Microsoft Movie maker, and ended up with a better result!

I traded a half dozen emails with Kodak's technical team. They seem very talented at providing a canned-response: "Please try our automated troubleshooting web site for this product". Sorry, that web site has a long way to go before it's ready for prime-time. Besides, it doesn't include the option of troubleshooting video recording or playback. Oops. I guess the web development team forgot about that part )-:

Piecing together other customer's reviews both at Amazon and other sites, it seems that the HD video recorded with this camera can only be played back on either 1) the camera itself or 2) using a Kodak HDTV docking station. This either gives me the joy of watching HD video on a 3 inch screen, or paying an extra $80-$100 to watch it on my plasma screen.

Or, I can use QuickTime Pro (or other video-rendering software) to re-encode the video so that it plays back with a software codec. It only takes about an hour to re-encode five minutes of video. The file size more than quadruples, but at least I can watch it without grimacing.

Reading the feedback of other Kodak customers, this seems to be indicative of Kodak development and marketing ploy: use a relatively inexpensive camera to bait the customer, then hook them into buying either extra services and/or accessories just to meet basic expectations.

Please be smarter than I was. Buy a decent camera for photos and a separate small format camcorder for home-movies. Don't try to buy something that does both (at least until the bugs are worked out).

The camera is one of it's kind. I was scared when I first read the reviews but all that is gone now as I am enjoying the camera. It makes me stand out wherever I go. The earlier reviews, about the battery cover flipping open occasionally, is one giant lie. The battery lid slides neatly in.

The touch screen is another fantastic quality it has. It makes it look more like a mini computer than a camera! An almost buttonless wizard! Men, you cant believe the level this camera can give you, when you go to an occasion and as other people bring out their "camera", you bring out this "near buttonless wizard!"

We bought this camera for our 17 yr. old daughter who is a picture-taking fanatic. She had an older Kodak Easy Share and was ready for a new one. She is having a blast with this new camera. It's easy to use, she loves the touch screen. The pictures are so clear and vibrant. It's a fun camera for any age. We have a Kodak all in one printer and the pictures print out better than the ones we had done at a store Kiosk.

We haven't had a problem with the battery compartment sliding open like other people have stated. This camera was purchased primarily for pictures not for the video feature, so I can't say anything about that.

All in all, I would say if you're an amateur camera buff, this camera should work just fine for you.

In a few words, this is THE BEST digital camera I have ever used/owned. In the time we have owned the camera, the pictures, video, and ease of use have been incredible. It is really easy to use, has many features which make it VERY simple to use - which is what a point and shoot camera should be. I've used an SLR, but needed a simple camera to just take great shots w/o effort. It only has three buttons - one of which is an info button - providing answers to questions about whatever is on the current screen. I didn't buy it for the touch screen, but it is great for flipping through photos for the one you want.

If your comparing with a Canon you should check the Kodak V1073 out first. I can't really speak for other Kodak cameras. I tried using one other Kodak model, and it seemed study, yet compared about the same as the other digital cameras around. The V1073 seems to be an (successful) experiment in breaking away from the typical Kodak camera, so I would limit my recommendation to only this camera.

CANON: The main reason I switched from Canon was the photo quality. I don't know if it's the technology or the internal software, but indoor pictures were inconsistent, and poor quality. The same picture taken seconds later at the same object, place, etc would look different. It would use the flash the first time, and not the second time?? I read books, blogs, everything. Changed the ISO until it quality broke down, nothing. Overall, pictures mostly turn out very dark or too bright with a flash. I did discover that this seems to be a recurring issue with canon point and shoot cameras as I found on amazon comments. Tired of owners manuals, ISO settings, etc, I began searching for a new camera, and accidentally ran into this camera in a store. I finally gave a U.S. camera company a chance, and it was worth it.

Background: I've owned about 4/5 digital cameras, and have experimented with many more. For the most part, I have bought the Canon series because of the look, weight, fairly ease of use, and very sturdy construction. However, as with most digital cameras (and technology as a whole) they have way to many features and little clear explanation of proper use.

Comment on previous comments about this camera:
-"the Kodak camera lense periodically "clicks" as it tries to adjust for lighting changes" I have not had this issue during the video mode. The camera will allow you to lock the focus if is an issue.
-"The battery and memory card Door [poor quality]" I will admit, this is the one thing I dislike about the camera. However, my last $350 canon battery door was no better. I've had no problems, and really don't expect I will.
-"The battery only lasted for about 30 minutes" My wife took over 100 10mp photos and uploaded it to our MacBook Pro with another day or two of power left over. Holds a great charge
"battery bay latch also very easily comes unhooked" Never happened once in the time I've owned it
-"horrible video HD playback on PC" HD playback is INCREDIBLE! However, you do need software (just like you need the right TV and DVD Player) to effectively play HD. If you have a Mac, you will love this camera and the HD video as the camera video is formated for quicktime. It also works flawlessly with iPhoto and iMovie. PC owners - you have an inferior machine which will continue to become more and more inferior as technology moves forward. That said, I've played the video on my old PC laptop (with a free pc version of quicktime) with equal quality (I was a pc owner for 20 years - and switched to Apple in 2007). However, I doubt you will not have any problem with this camera and a PC. I bought this camera instead of an $800 video camera to take extended videos of our first 3 month old son - and it works great. Video and photos in one easy to use package. Not sure why people still buy a camera for photos and a video camera for video. So many people I talk to still don't realize you can take video on most of todays cameras.

Pros: Really easy to use/great pictures - clear, well lit/great functionality/HD video/Clear settings/Touchscreen/info button explains how to setup for 4x6 photos, or whatever you want/very good light adjustment/Apple compatible/delete button offered on the screen right after you take the photo (if it's just a bad shot you don't want)/switches from view photos to take pictures simply by pressing the snapshot button halfway down - so simple!/solid feeling gunmetal construction/many other well thought out features

Cons:Battery door not the best construction/Battery must be charged while in the camera - no separate charger/camera has locked up twice - just remove battery for a sec and replace it - no photos lost - no big deal/only 3x's zoom - i have found it works fine for overall use.

Hope this helps...

It's hard to choose a Kodak subcompact today when Canon remains the standard, with consistent quality through the years. If a particular Canon model is not the leader in it's class it's always a solid 2nd or 3rd, and no company has maintained such consistent standards in this catagory over the years. With such a time-tested pedigree why would anyone choose to NOT buy a Canon? Kodak, by comparison, has nearly vanished from the high end, with the majority of its models sub 100$ generic mediocrities.

In this context, i purchased the v1273 (the 12 megapixel version of this camera), the second most expensive camera offered on the market by Kodak today. So how does it fare?

Suprisingly well, in fact, but with some significant drawbacks.

For the 12mp, the HD quality on my 42" TV is stunningly acceptable (which creates a zoomed in, 16:9 9mp image). Kodak's secret is it's "Smart Capture" function which automatically applies Kodak's "Perfect Touch" technology. Which is, in a nutshell, automatic post-processing. It increase saturation, contrast, and other similar values automatically, creating stunning first-time photos without tedius work on the computer after the shoot. It also retains full access to most manual functions, although this requires a bit of hunting and pecking because these functions are not explained in the manual.

And that manual functions are not explained is just the beginning to this camera's drawbacks. There is no battery meter! You have to guess about how much charge it has; and this is important, as the touchscreen devours energy. The screen is completely illegible in bright sunlight - not sort of/kind of dark but completely washed out (98%-99% washed out). You cannot preview your photos without turning on the lens, and it remains on. It takes dissapointingly average "HD" video, which is all but the exact same as a 4 year old Casio Exilim, only larger. A camera with better lenses and image stabilization, like the Panasonic FZ-18k, takes vastly better videos, despite the megapixel gap.

Perhaps the biggest drawback is with it's very halmark. The Perfect Touch pseudo-postprocessing technology does well in bright sunny days with blue skies and green plants - but it tends not to choose the correct settings in early or late hours, or at night. The rich colors of sunsets tend to be washed out as it attempts to brighten the whole scene and make everything equally visible, blue-ify the sky and green-ify the trees around with somewhat oversaturated "Kodak" colors. Sadly getting pictures to look half as good with manual settings is nigh impossible and often the result is comically bad, like some polarized nightmare.

Still, with all that said... out of the box, on full auto, it took a better landscape picture on automatic than a full 1000$ Canon Eos 40D on auto (we compared). If you're an obsessive control freak about RAW data, ect., this camera will not make you happy. If you want beautiful pictures, on full auto, to show on your 1080p HD TV that make non-photophilles go "wow! ooh, ahh!", without any post-processing effort, this, or it's cousin the v1253, which doesn't have a horrible touchscreen, might be the camera for you.

Just be sure to bring an extra battery.

This is THE BEST digital camera I have ever used/owned. In the time we have owned the camera, the pictures, video, and ease of use have been incredible. It is really easy to use, has many features which make it VERY simple to use - which is what a point and shoot camera should be. I've used an SLR, but needed a simple camera to just take great shots w/o effort. It only has three buttons - one of which is an info button - providing answers to questions about whatever is on the current screen. I didn't buy it for the touch screen, but it is great for flipping through photos for the one you want.

If your comparing with a Canon you should check the Kodak V1073 out first. I tried using one other Kodak model, and it seemed study, yet compared about the same as the other digital cameras around. The V1073 seems to be an (successful) experiment in breaking away from the typical Kodak camera, so I would limit my recommendation to only this camera.

CANON: The main reason I switched from Canon was the photo quality. I don't know if it's the technology or the internal software, but indoor pictures were inconsistent, and poor quality. The same picture taken seconds later at the same object, place, etc would look different. It would use the flash the first time, and not the second time?? I read books, blogs, everything. Changed the ISO until the quality broke down, nothing. Overall, pictures mostly turn out very dark or too bright with a flash. I did discover that this seems to be a recurring issue with canon point and shoot cameras as I found on amazon comments. Tired of owners manuals, ISO settings, etc, I began searching for a new camera, and accidentally ran into this camera in a store. I finally gave a U.S. camera company a chance, and it was worth it.

Background: I've owned about 4/5 digital cameras, and have experimented with many more. For the most part, I have bought the Canon series because of the look, weight, fairly ease of use, and very sturdy construction. However, as with most digital cameras (and technology as a whole) they have way to many features and little clear explanation of proper use.

Comment on previous comments about this camera:
-"the Kodak camera lense periodically "clicks" as it tries to adjust for lighting changes" I have not had this issue during the video mode. The camera will allow you to lock the focus if is an issue.
-"The battery and memory card Door [poor quality]" I will admit, this is the one thing I dislike about the camera. However, my last $350 canon battery door was no better. I've had no problems, and really don't expect I will.
-"The battery only lasted for about 30 minutes" My wife took over 100 10mp photos and uploaded it to our MacBook Pro with another day or two of power left over. Holds a good charge.
"battery bay latch also very easily comes unhooked" Never happened once in the time I've owned it
-"horrible video HD playback on PC" HD playback is INCREDIBLE. However, you do need software (just like you need the right TV and DVD Player) to effectively play HD. If you have a Mac, you will love this camera and the HD video as the camera video is formated for quicktime. It also works flawlessly with iPhoto and iMovie. PC owners - you have an inferior machine which will continue to become more and more inferior as technology moves forward. That said, I've played the video on my old PC laptop (with a free pc version of quicktime) with equal quality (pc owner for 20 years - recently switched to Apple). However, I doubt you will have any problem with this camera and a PC. I bought this camera instead of an $800 video camera to take extended videos of our first 3 month old son - and it works great. Video and photos in one easy to use package. Not sure why people still buy a camera for photos and a video camera for video. So many people I talk to still don't realize you can take video on most of todays cameras.

Pros: Work right out of the box/great pictures - clear, well lit - Kodak's PerfectTouch does a surprisingly good job of instantly fixing the photo after taken/great functionality/HD video/Clear settings/Touchscreen/info button explains how to setup for 4x6 photos, or whatever you want/very good light adjustment/Apple compatible/delete button offered on the screen right after you take the photo (if it's just a bad shot you don't want)/switches from view photos to take pictures simply by pressing the snapshot button halfway down - so simple!/solid feeling gunmetal construction/many other well thought out features

Cons:Battery door not the best construction/Battery must be charged while in the camera - no separate charger/camera has locked up twice - just remove battery for a sec and replace it - no photos lost - no big deal/only 3x's zoom - i have found it works fine for overall use.

Hope this helps...

I bought this camera and tried for a week. Do not buy this camera if you gonna use it outdoors. It's almost impossible to see anything on the big lcd screen on a bright day. For indoors low light situations is a okay camera. Movie mode: I can't say I recorded in HD quality because you need the camera dock to view it in your TV. But when transferred the movies to the computer, the quality is not that great and it skips when played back, and I used a 8gb 150x card. The movies in "HD" are limited to 29 minutes and a 8gb card can record about 80 minutes of movie only. After recording a movie 29 minutes non-stop the camera took forever to "process" the information, that's terrible. I returned this piece of junk without hesitation. Do yourself a favor and save your money for better cameras out there.

The 4 stars are relative. Obviously there are better cameras available, but the price is right for the features this camera has. The lack of protruding buttons (other than the zoom) makes the design ideal for pocket or bag. I also like the under-designed body. That's a big change for Kodak towards better products.

The image quality is quite good - especially if your main photography goal is convenience. Low light performance is also good thanks to a larger chip than most compact cameras have (7.40 x 5.55 mm instead of the typical 5.75 x 4.31 mm). This lowers the pixel density allowing for greater light capture where many other cameras run the needless megapixel race resulting in grainy photos.

The 720p video is perhaps the main reason to choose the V1073. So far I've had good results with the possible exception of the metering going between warm and cool hue shifts when shooting indoors. There is also the purple vertical line problem in small, extremely bright areas that practically all HD compact cameras have.

The battery door problems that others have mentioned has not happened to mine, but I never open it instead using the cable to transfer files and charge.

I bought this camera, the Kodak Easyshare V1073, to replace my old digital Polaroid, yes Polaroid, camera. I wanted something made in this century and a major upgrade, and I think I got both. The touch screen definitely makes using this camera so much easier then having to press a million buttons to do anything like most of the standards on the market.

Pros: Touchscreen makes everything easier, explanations for the different modes are in camera, smart capture takes out the guess work, great macro shots, image stabilization works like a dream; your subject could spin like a Tazmanian devil, and it still takes a great still shot.

Cons: Touch screen is practically INVISIBLE in sunlight. You have to hold your hand over the screen to make it out. The battery door is flimsy. Lense stays out every time your turn the camera on. Must charge battery in camera.

Buy this camera if you are a point and shoot fan, and you want something a little fancier then what's currently out.

I've had this camera for almost a year. Not only has it broken twice (the automatic shutter does not open and close fully) but it takes terrible pictures. It's so rare that I get a decent photo, I have gone back to using my old-school clunky Sony with a 16mb memory card. I'm tossing this Kodak and replacing it with another Sony.