Good choice for an experienced user looking for a bridge camera

The Kodak P880, 24mm-140mm manual zoom camera is a product which produces excellent results, especially at the lower ISO (up to 200) settings.

It is not a small camera, and has the feel of a more substantial film camera for handling. It will appeal most to people who are interested in scenery photography, as it is somewhat slower to focus and definitely slower to write to memory than other cameras of the same class. However, this is more than made up for by the high quality of the image. Also, a firmware update from Kodak goes a long way toward correcting this problem, and I recommend downloading it before even using the camera.

One of the many advantages to this camera is that it offers a true wide angle lens, with a respectable zoom capability — and without having to cart around extra lenses such as for an SLR. Furthermore, because of this "one piece" construction, dust on the sensor — a chronic problem with D-SLRs — is avoided.

There is some barrel distortion at the wide end of the zoom, which is virtually unavoidable with such a wide angle lens on a non-SLR camera. Pincushion distortion at the long end of the zoom is not noticeable.

A full range of manual settings is available, and the auto mode does an excellent job as well.

The white balance offers several choices, with the outdoor options yielding the best results for specific selection. Auto white balance is the next best choice for outdoor photography, and the only real choice for indoor usage. This is because the incandescent and fluorescent settings really do not measure up to par, and frankly, indoors, far better results are obtained by using the auto white balance mode.

There is, of course, the option of shooting in RAW format, which allows all white balance adjustments to be managed with software later. This is a good choice for the experienced user, and/or the user who is prepared to spend some time tweaking the photos later.

On the whole, this camera will appeal most to users with experience in setting a camera to specific requirements, such as speed, depth of field and exposure compensation.

This being said, the auto mode produces very even quality, which is reduced only in darker settings at higher (auto choice) ISO outputs.

Nonetheless, those who are more comfortable with a "point and shoot" auto-everything camera will find the Kodak P880 to be a lot to handle without some serious practice, and a fairly major investment of time. Said practice, however, will show benefits in the results produced.

For a person who is not comfortable setting the camera, I would recommend something like the Vivitar 8300S or the Canon A620, both of which I have had experience using. While they too can be set for almost any manual choice, the principle behind the design is more oriented toward the "point and shoot" user.