Kodak EasyShare Sport C123 12 MP Waterproof Digital Camera Review
Pros
- Tough
- Can be used underwater
- Right price
Cons
- Very slow between shots
- Small, dull LCD screen
- Terrible battery life
The Kodak EasyShare Sport C123 is not really expected to amaze performance-wise. It’s a low-budget, rough-and-tumble point-and-shoot, with underwater capability as its main highlight and selling point. This hunk of camera is designed to take a trip down the river and like it.
Kodak perfectly outlines the role that the C123 is destined to play in advertisements on the camera’s product page: a mud-splattered EasyShare Sport is dipped into the water, with the “waterproof 3.0 meters” emblazoned around its lens clearly shining through the grime.
The Sport has brawn but little finesse, and there’s not much to the shooter when one looks past its underwater capabilities. Kodak has integrated its “Share” button onto the device, a proprietary feature making its way to many of the company’s lower level consumer cameras. Outside of toughness, submarine performance, and this share button, the C123 has little to boast about. Are these features enough to make the camera a good choice for anyone? Read on as we push the EasyShare Sport C123 to its limits.
Build And Design
The C123 is a brick. At least that’s how it felt to me after many years without having to carry a camera that runs on AA batteries. At 6.2 ounces, the C123 is an acceptable weight for a camera in its class, but it still felt like it weighed me down when I took it into the great outdoors.
The body of the C123 is made, for the most part, out of grey and black plastic. The entire front of the camera is grey, while the back has the black panel. In between the two parts is a red rubber seal that runs along a little more than three quarters of the camera, and presumably contributes to the C123’s resistance to water. Aside from the grey color option (featured on our review unit), the C123 is also available in the more colorful shades of blue or red, however the back panel is black on all of the models.
Ergonomics and Controls
The C123’s power button is a bit too far to the left for my tastes, making it difficult to turn the camera on with only one hand. The shutter button is well positioned, however, and once the C123 is on it’s quite easy to use in one handed operation. The top of the C123 features, in addition to the power and shutter buttons, a button to adjust flash, and one to change the capture mode (more on that in the menus and modes section).
The remainder of the buttons not featured on top of the C123 can be found on the right side of the back of the device, next to the LCD. Since the C123 does not have a touchscreen, all of the necessary function keys can be found here. From top to bottom, the C123 has a zoom button, a menu button (next to which is the delete image button), a navigational set of arrow keys, the playback button (next to which is a button that toggles information on and off when in review mode, and can be used to adjust the self-timer and exposure in shooting mode) and, at the very bottom, Kodak’s Share button.
Menus and Modes
The C123’s menus are simple enough, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that they are intuitive. As opposed to having a comprehensive main menu, Kodak has scattered options about the camera, and many actions and modes take several clicks to initiate.
Display/Viewfinder
The C123’s display is one of its weakest points. The LCD screen is simply not attractive; the colors are flat, it sometimes lags while rendering the scene in front of it (not so terribly as to hinder use, but noticeably enough to register as a con), and it feels cramped in most cases. The EasyShare Sport’s screen registered a relatively low 293 nit peak brightness in our lab test and an overall contrast ratio of 488:1. The back of the C123 features a good amount on unutilized space, and it would have been very much appreciated if this had been used to expand the 2.4-inch LCD screen.
Perfomance
The Kodak EasyShare Sport C123’s general performance ranged from incredibly average to poor, with the photo quality one would expect from an $80 rugged camera. Pictures were never particularly vibrant or stunning, and I found I had difficulty capturing sharply focused images with the point and shoot. Also, the exceptionally poor battery life of the device meant that when I went out on an excursion, I would not find myself shooting for very long.
Video Quality
The EasyShare Sport takes VGA video at a 640×480 resolution, and really doesn’t offer much in the way of options or modes. Video can either be taken in normal mode or underwater mode, and both were acceptable. The above and underwater filming experience was uneventful and sufficient.
Image Quality
The EasyShare Sport performed well on the one sunny Boston day we’ve had over my review period. In low-light settings it had some trouble picking up colors, and in indoor situations some images came out grainy. I hate to harp on the subject, but the C123’s comparitively long close-focusing distance is really a big drawback. The Sport offers an acceptable flash, which had an auto mode, always on, always off, and red-eye pre-flash mode.
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