Kodak's 8-megapixel EasyShare C875 is by no means your average point-and-shoot. This talented camera has a ton of scene modes—21, to be exact. But that's not what captured my attention. What piqued my interest is the EasyShare's "smart" auto mode. In essence, the C875 has the ability to "guess" which scene mode you may want to use, based on what the camera sees.

Scene modes have been around for a long time, and they've been included on just about every type of digital camera, including D-SLRs. In short, they're specialized auto modes, in which the camera alters the exposure settings to capture a more accurate image. So, for example, in a museum scene mode, a camera will turn off both the flash (since a strobe can ruin a Raphael or Rembrandt) and any camera sounds (so as to not annoy patrons of the arts). For a portrait, the camera would limit the depth of field to avoid distracting backgrounds.

From my testing, it appears that Kodak's smart mode works pretty well, but in a limited way. The camera essentially guesses which scene mode you're likely to choose based on what it reads through its sensors. (This works only for still pictures, not for video). Place a person in front of the C875, press the shutter button halfway down, and the Portrait scene-mode icon appears. Point it at an open football field, and the landscape-mode icon becomes visible. Frame a piece of paper with text on it, and up pops the copy-mode icon.

Still, there are some problems with this fancy feature. Although Kodak's literature suggests that the camera is choosing from all 21 scene modes, in my experience it tossed up only five: standard auto, portrait, landscape, close-up, and copy. I'm not sure how the C875 would know I wanted to do a panorama shot; the camera never chose that option. Despite all this, I think the smart scene technology is a brilliant one to include in point-and-shoot cameras. And as this ability is still in its infancy, I think we'll be seeing more sophisticated versions in the coming years.

The C875 has a very nice 5X optical-zoom lens that runs from 37mm to 185mm (with corresponding maximum f-stops of f/2.8 to f/4.4); I just wish Kodak had given the camera a slightly wider-angle lens. The menus were created to be very simple and clear. I especially like Kodak's attempt to explain terms and features by including an "i" button that you press for more info. Explanations are then displayed on the camera's 2.5-inch LCD.

Another feature that I really enjoy is the Panorama-left and Panorama-right capabilities found on other recent Kodak digital cameras, including the EasyShare V705. This gives you the ability to stitch panoramas together in the camera from either angle. The camera also runs on two AA batteries, which is especially convenient if you run out of power and don't have the battery recharger handy.

Video clips can be shot and stored as VGA (640-by-480) at 30 frames per second up to 80 minutes in length. These are saved as QuickTime MOV files and are encoded in compact MPEG-4, allowing you to shoot and store more video on the same memory card. You can also use the zoom while shooting video, since the digital zoom is disengaged during video filming. But the camera's mic will pick up the grinding sound it makes as you zoom.

Where the C875 does need help, though, is with its autofocusing function. During testing, the camera sometimes didn't get in focus quickly enough. I'm also not crazy about the results of my flash test shots; the flash was just too weak. And in my real-world test shots, such as shooting tree branches against a bright sky, there was some pretty noticeable purple fringing throughout the photos.

I'm pretty happy with the results gleaned in my lab test shots. Daylight shots revealed little to no noise and were well exposed and sharp. I'm really impressed with the color, too, especially in my daylight shots. In the lab photos, there was little fringing, but some of my outdoor test shots had some noticeable fringing.

I'm not as pleased with the flash shots. My lab flash test shot was underexposed and not evenly lit. There was also some colored noise, which I've found can obscure essential details such as features on a person's face.

In my experience, Kodak has consistently offered well-performing point-and-shoot devices, and I was happy to see very little noticeable shutter lag in the C875. Resolution averaged 1,850 lines, which is excellent for an 8MP camera. The bootup time was a respectable 3 seconds, and the 1.7-second recycle time was excellent. There was no pincushion distortion in my test shot, but there was a little more barrel distortion than I'd like to see, especially with just a 37mm wide-angle end of the zoom.

All in all, the Kodak EasyShare C875 is quite a good camera, but at $299.95 (direct), it's a bit pricey for a point-and-shoot. Moreover, I believe Canon's PowerShot A630 still has an edge, in both image quality and features.

Benchmark Test Results
Check out the EasyShare C875's test scores.

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