Kodak EasyShare Z 8612 Digitalkamera

I made the mistake of buying this camera sight unseen and without reading the reviews.

First, the good: takes wonderful pictures. I had an olympus 3.2mp 10x optical zoom camera. this one beats it in all modes I've tried including the super macro setting for ultra close ups.

Having said that, the engineers who designed this screwed the pooch so badly they need to be shot, hung, drawn and quartered, and their heads put on a pike. Same goes for the marketing morons who specified this product.

It takes 2 AA batteries. It eats them. Nope, rechargeable Nimh won't work. Not even the high capacity ones; too much power draw. You MUST use the lithium ion ones. Yeah, the $2 each AA lithium battery. Stupid engineers.

The reason it eats them is the large LCD display on the back is the ONLY way to take a picture; there is no viewfinder. Stupid engineers. The LCD washes out easily.

Second, the delay time to store the picture is ridiculous. I ve tried faster SD cards to no avail. If you want to take more than 3 pictures within 10 seconds (count to 10; it s a long time ), this is not your camera.

And the lens cap always comes off. WTF?? I ve owned a number of cameras; expensive, cheap, and moderate, and never been so disgusted with their inability to execute on this simple thing. It s like they put their worst guys on this camera. Really, how hard is it to make a camera and lens cap that stays on? If Boeing designed things this poorly, planes would be falling out of the sky. The lens is one of the most important parts of the camera and it s at high risk of getting scratched with no lens cap.. Stupid engineers.

There are other issues with this camera, but those are the biggies.

Don't buy this camera. There are other cameras out there where you don't have to make the tradeoffs this one requires of you.