The Kodak EasyShare C1530 is a bargain-priced 14-megapixel camera ($79.95 direct) with a nice 3-inch LCD. Its EasyShare button makes it, well, easy to email photos and share them on social networks when the camera is plugged into your PC. The camera is not without its faults—its 3x zoom is just ok, images are noisy at almost every ISO setting, performance is rather sluggish, and the AA batteries that power the camera don’t keep it shooting for long. While it’s hard to argue with the camera’s $80 price, you can do better if you spend a little bit more—the Samsung ES80 ($99.99, 3 stars), for one, offers a longer zoom range and better low-light performance.

Design and Features

Available in black, red, or white, the C1530 is a little on the bulky side, measuring 2.5 by 3.8 by 1.2 inches and weighing in at 6.3 ounces. The Nikon Coolpix L24 ($119.95, 2 stars), another budget camera with a large LCD, is almost identical in size and weight. The Kodak’s lens covers a 32-96mm (35mm equivalent) field of view, a 3x range that is par for the course on a camera in this price range. Our Editors’ Choice for budget cameras, the Panasonic Lumix DMC-S3 ($129.99, 4 stars), delivers a 5x zoom range that covers a 28-112mm range.

Zoom control is integrated with the shutter release, making it possible to adjust framing and fire the shutter with one finger. To its left are buttons to control the flash, adjust the shooting mode, and turn the camera on and off. The camera’s rear controls allow you to delete images, launch and navigate the menu, switch to Playback mode, and share photos. The rear 3-inch LCD packs 230k dots, which creates a clear, albeit slightly pixelated, look. It is bright enough to use outdoors on a bright day, and delivers a good viewing angle so you can look at it from various perspectives to help avoid glare when framing photos.

The camera uses a digital image stabilization system to help reduce motion blur, although this type of system doesn’t do as good a job as the optical stabilization found in the Samsung ES80 and Panasonic S3.

You get Kodak’s EasyShare software here, which simplifies sharing photos online. You can tag images as you take them, selecting which services to which to post them and to whom you’d like them emailed. When you plug the camera into your computer, the EasyShare software automatically launches and shares the images as you have requested. It supports many popular social networking sites, including Twitter and Facebook. The in-camera menu system is easy to use, and you can choose to display only the sharing services that you use. There's also an in-camera address book that lets you choose email recipients for your photos.

Performance and Conclusions

When it comes to speed, the EasyShare C1530 isn't going to win any medals. The camera needs about 2.9 seconds to start up and take its first photo. It requires about 2.5 seconds of time between shots and there is a 0.3-second lag between shutter press and image capture. These numbers are comparable to the similarly priced Canon PowerShot A800 ($89.99, 3 stars), which boots in 2.4 seconds, requires 3.4 seconds of recycle time, and offers a 0.6-second shutter lag. Our Editors’ Choice Panaosnic Lumix S3 performs better, which requires 1.8 seconds for both start up and recycle time, and average a 0.4-second shutter lag. Also problematic when you're trying to take a quick picture: The camera defaults to the automatic Smart Capture mode when you turn it on. You can only adjust the self-timer and flash setting in this mode, all other settings are controlled automatically. You can switch to Program mode, which gives you more control over settings, but the camera will always return to Smart Capture after powering down.

I use the Imatest software suite to measure the sharpness and noise in images. A center-weighted algorithm is used to measure sharpness, which is expressed in lines per picture height. A score of 1,800 is considered to be acceptably sharp, and the C1530 does very well here. It scores an impressive 2,546 lines, edging out the Canon A800, which recorded 2,176 lines. The Panasonic Lumix S3 scored a bit lower here, capturing only 1,614 lines.

The C1530 might excel in sharpness, but it fares poorly when it comes to image noise. An image with less than 1.5 percent noise is considered to be acceptable, and the C1530 can only manage that standard at ISO 64, which is a setting that the camera will default to only in very bright light. In any indoor situation, or even on an overcast day, you can expect the camera to produce images that are very grainy. Noise is more than 2.6 percent at ISO 400, which is the highest setting at which the Samsung ES80 can produce clean images. The Olympus T-100 ($89.99, 2 stars) is another budget camera with serious noise issues, as it was over 1.5 percent at every ISO setting, even its lowest. The Lumix S3 is the winner by this metric—it can go up to ISO 800 and capture low-noise images.

Video quality leaves a lot to be desired. The 640-by-480 video files don’t look very good, and the camera is unable to refocus while recording. This is especially problematic when tracking a moving subject. If you need to zoom while recording, it's digital, not optical, and the video quality drops very quickly. Nikon uses a similar system in its Coolpix L24, which manages to zoom digitally without sacrificing video quality.

Instead of a rechargeable cell, the C1530 uses two AA batteries. I burned through the set of alkaline cells after taking only a few dozen photos, which does not speak well of its battery life. Lithium or rechargeable NiMH batteries will give you better performance, but also add to the cost of operating the camera as you'll have to buy a charger for NiMH batteries, and Lithium AAs are much more expensive than their alkaline counterparts. The camera uses a standard micro USB port to connect to a computer and records files to SD or SDHC memory cards.

The Kodak EasyShare C1530 is one of the least expensive digital cameras you can buy, and it can produce some very sharp images at its lowest ISO setting, which is something. But image noise kills the quality of its photos in all but the brightest light. Our budget Editors’ Choice, the Panasonic Lumix S3, is priced $50 higher than the C1530, but gives you much better high ISO performance, a wider zoom range, optical image stabilization, and a rechargeable battery. If you’re on a tighter budget, consider the $100 Samsung ES80 or the $90 Canon PowerShot A800, either of which can produce clean images through ISO 400.

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