Kodak Easyshare M590 review

A small and neat compact that could improve your social standing

The Kodak EasyShare M590 is toted as the ‘world’s thinnest 5x optical zoom digital camera’. Quite a specific claim but it has to be – without a zoom lens, a camera could be made slimmer. Still, at just 16mm thick this is slim, although still chunky next to an 9.3mm iPhone 4 (‘the world’s slimmest smart phone’). And with a weight of just 129 grams, it’s a compact you could comfortably carry in your pocket or handbag.

It’s a neatly styled camera, too. The front face is quite bare, with the lens tucked at the top corner and the flash next to it, while the rest of the panel is smooth aluminium. The edges of the body have a tactile, concave soft-touch finish which is pleasant to hold; the shutter and power button on the top plate are similarly coated.

The back of the camera is dominated by a large and clear LCD; to the right of this is a vertical row of five buttons. Now, these are marked with icons but their functions aren’t immediately obvious and they’re not that easy to see; once you’ve got used to the camera, though, they’re acceptable. Further to the right is a joystick controller for scrolling through menu items and below this is a small (and also fiddly) Mode button and a red Share button (more of which anon).

The camera powers up smartly and you then press the Mode button and use the joystick to scroll through the shooting modes. Smart Capture automatically chooses the best setting for the subject, and there are the usual Program and Scene modes, all of which are described with on-screen annotations. The autofocus is quick and accurate, and taking a photo is fuss-free. We have two gripes, though. First, the shutter and power buttons are right next to each other so it’s easy to switch off the camera instead of firing the shutter. Even more annoying is the zoom controller on the back of the camera; using your thumb, you push this up to zoom in and pull it down to zoom out. For the former, in particular, you have to hold the camera against this upwards movement and, if you’re not careful, you’ll end up firing the shutter as you do this. Zoom levers work better if they move from side to side, not up and down.

 Speaking of the zoom lens, only optical zoom is available in Smart Capture mode, which seems an oversight, as that’s what most people will be using most of the time. That said, once you do hit the digital range it’s astonishingly slow to zoom, so you’re not going to want to bother with it much.

When it comes to picture quality, the M590 gave accurate exposures over a range of subjects. However, we were disappointed by the amount of noise in the images, even in bright conditions and at low ISOs. Colours and contrast, too, were artificially boosted.

Still, at the end of the day, perhaps ultimate image quality isn’t an issue, as the camera’s big selling point – as well as its size – is, as its name suggests, its ability to share photos on social network sites or designated email addresses, and if you’re only viewing the images onscreen, then the quality is fine.

To do this, you bring up the photo or video you wish to distribute and press the red Share button. The screen then gives you a choice of destinations – YouTube, Facebook, Orkut, Flickr, Kodak’s own gallery, or an email address you’ve previously entered (using a clumsy onscreen entry). When you then connect your camera to a Mac or PC (which has to have the correct Kodak software installed) the image is then automatically sent to the correct place.

We’re not sure about this. First, we don’t like to be forced to use Kodak’s software for importing images, preferring Apple’s iPhoto (you can use other software but sharing is disabled). Second, seeing that you have to link to a computer anywhere, it’s actually quicker to select the images you want to share after they’ve been imported, rather than messing around doing it in-camera. We can’t help feeling it’s little more than a gimmick to try to gain sales on the back of the social network bandwagon.

Take the sharing out of the equation and you’re left with a good-looking, solid-feeling and neat compact camera.