Original URL: http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/05/01/review_kodak_easyshare_m893_is/
Review Kodak founder George Eastman coined the phrase 'You press the button, we do the rest', and his slogan remains spot on when it comes to digital cameras like the Kodak EasyShare M893 IS.
Like many compacts, the M893 offers lots of automatic features with some semi-manual settings thrown in for good measure. Our first impressions of the M893 were good. It’s a slender model measuring just 92 x 56 x 22.7mm and weighing 109g without battery or memory card.
Kodak's EasyShare M893 IS: offers a reasonable array of features
It’s a highly pocketable product. Our version came in a smart black finish - and with a thick instruction manual, which impressed us until we discovered that only the first 26 pages are in English and they only cover the basic functions. If you want more information you have to log onto Kodak’s site to view or download a meaty PDF instruction book, which is even worse than providing an electronic file on CD.
Leaving aside this small grumble, the M893 offers a reasonable set of features. It has a 1/2.5in CCD with 8.1 million pixels; a 3x optical zoom equivalent to 34-102mm on a 35mm camera; image stabilisation; face detection; and 32MB of internal storage. It also records onto SD/SDHC cards. At the front are the lens and flash, while on top you’ll find the power, shutter and flash on/off buttons.
The back of the camera features the 2.7in LCD screen; a zoom rocker control; a dial for selecting any of the various modes, including auto, macro, scene, ISO and movie; a delete button; a Menu button plus a five-way navigation control; a playback button and a tiny red Share button. The latter can be used with Kodak’s EasyShare software for tagging images for printing or emailing. At the bottom is a cover for the battery/memory card.
Using the M893 is quite straightforward. There’s plenty of on-screen help in the form of short text descriptions which inform you about the function you’ve selected. Press the Menu button and you can select a few settings, including image size, which runs from 8.1 megapixels in 4:3 format down to 1.2 megapixels in 4:3 format.
The 2.7in LCD isn't made for bright light conditions
There are also two 16:9 formats for displaying images on a widescreen monitor or HDTV screen with image sizes of 6.1 megapixels and 2.1 megapixels. You can also set the time exposure from zero to 4.0 seconds; the colour mode; white balance; autofocus zone; and ISO speed: auto, 80, 100, 200, 400, 800 and 1600. In auto mode, the ISO runs from 80 to 400. The movie options are 640 x 480 (VGA) at 15 f/s, and 320 x 240 (QVGA) at 30 f/s. The scene or programme settings are displayed as a series of icons which you scroll across – as you do this a short text description is displayed. The 18 scene selections include portrait, sports, landscape, sunset and panorama.
Switch-on is smooth and slick, and the M893 is ready to go in just a few seconds. Follow the late Mr Eastman’s advice and you can’t go wrong, but there were a number of small things that made the user experience less than perfect. This is not the fastest camera around, and the auto focus system can take a while to settle down.
Then there’s the flash control button on the top of the camera. On the face of it, this is a more convenient location than the back of the camera, which is where most manufacturers place the flash control. But it proved all too easy to inadvertently switch it on or off when pressing the shutter button. The camera mode dial moves freely - rather too freely for our liking, because we found that if you whipped the camera out of your pocket you had to check that the dial hadn’t been inadvertently moved. In one case, we fired off a set of shots only to find that we were now in the High ISO mode.
But the biggest problem was the LCD screen, which was one of the worst we’ve used when shooting in bright light. All too often it was a struggle to find the subject, and the lack of a viewfinder didn’t help things. On a brighter note, we did like the image delete system, which includes a snazzy blue scrolling pixellated display as the image is being deleted - and the option of undeleting if you accidentally wipe the wrong one. There’s also Kodak’s Perfect Touch technology, which lets you tweak the picture brightness, plus a facility to crop images.
When it comes to performance, the M893 isn’t bad, but it’s not the best we’ve seen even at this price point. The main problem was colour reproduction, which was rather bland. Close-up shooting was on the temperamental side and the camera often struggled to focus on a subject. But when it did, the results were pleasing.
Sample shots
Click for full-size images
(http://regmedia.co.uk/2008/05/01/rape_seed_big.jpg)
We were disappointed with the colour reproduction - this field of rape was much more vivid in reality
(http://regmedia.co.uk/2008/05/01/without_with_perfect_touch_big.jpg)
With the Perfect Touch feature on (right) and without (left)
(http://regmedia.co.uk/2008/05/01/close_up_big.jpg)
It takes a while for the camera to settle down and focus on a close-up image even when using the macro mode
Sample shots
(http://regmedia.co.uk/2008/05/01/panorama_big.jpg)
You can stitch two or three images together and it’s all done in-camera
(http://regmedia.co.uk/2008/05/01/buildings_big2.jpg)
Under the right conditions, the M893 can produce some impressive shots
The Panaorama mode works well and you have a choice of combining two or three images. If you opt for three, the M893 automatically stitches the images together. The only downside was that using this effect involves lining up a thin strip of the previous image with your next shot, and that wasn’t easy with the camera’s LCD screen.
We were quite intrigued by a Museum/Manners mode, which is basically designed to let you use the M893 unobtrusively. The instruction manual talks about using it in a lecture and so we took the camera along to one, and the results were disappointing. Essentially, the M893 disables the flash, switches off any sound effects and bumps up the ISO speed to compensate for the lack of flash. Inevitably, the result is a noisy picture. The image stabilisation system, however, was useful when shooting at the longer focal length.
At around £110 the M893 isn’t bad value for money. You get a highly portable camera with a fair sprinkling of features - although not too much on the manual side - and a reasonable performance, with a few caveats. The M893 is not bad, but it will hardly get your pulse racing when you use it.
 | Kodak EasyShare M893 IS |
| Summary | It’s small, cheap and has a few handy features. However, sluggish focusing speed and colour reproduction let it down. |
|---|---|
| Rating | 65% |
| Price | £110 |
| More info | The M893 page on Kodak's website (http://www.kodak.com/eknec/PageQuerier.jhtml?ncc=uk&lcc=&pq-path=12410&pq-locale=en_GB) |
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