The Kodak EasyShare Z7590 looks great on paper: it has a 10X optical zoom, a 5-megapixel resolution, an SLR-like electronic viewfinder, and manual exposure controls. Unfortunately, its photos tell a different story. A variety of artifacts, including purple fringing around highlights and noise at higher ISO settings, drop this camera’s desirability a few notches. Still, niceties such as an action-ready burst mode and a standard PC (Prontor-Compur, not personal computer) connection for an external flash will appeal to photographers who love to play with a full set of features.
Photo quality is acceptable if you don’t plan on making enlargements. Colors were bright and saturated and exposures generally good, although we noticed a bluish cast in many daylight photos and a bit of a warm tone in photos shot under incandescent light, even when using a white-balance preset; there is no custom white-balance capability. The dynamic range is squeezed toward the middle–photos lack detail in dark areas and tend to wash out highlights. But the worst defect was pronounced purple fringing, most noticeably around backlit objects. JPEG artifacts also appeared that tended to reduce the detail of the image somewhat. Noise was a problem at higher ISO settings; ISO 800 is available at only the lowest-quality 1.8-megapixel setting, so you probably won’t be using that option except as a last resort.