Kodak PIXPRO Astro Zoom AZ652-BK 20MP Digital Camera with 65X Optical Zoom and 3" LCD (Black)

I have had this camera for several years now and am very pleased with it. I was leery about buying it because it was priced lower than other cameras with the same features, but I have traveled with it overseas and used it around home and it has withstood all my use. The telephoto lens is wonderful for nature photography. I have filmed robins hatching from their nest and castles boating down the Rhine River, all with clarity and close up detail. I find myself using the viewfinder and the large screen in equal amounts and like them both.I still use my phone's camera for quick simple shots, and don't carry this large camera with me everywhere I go, but when I have something special happening, I grab it and take it along.

I used to have a Sony compact digital camera years ago. Loved how beautiful the pictures came out. It broke after years of use. Then I got used to using my cellphone for pictures, and video. After looking and comparing the quality of both. I decided I needed a new camera, that is meant for taking serious photos.I looked around and thought this would be the best one on my budget. It's not too expensive, and not too cheap. I love the WiFi sync through the phone. It has all the controls that more expensive camera have.The zoom is amazing.Pictures are great. Video is also beautiful. Just that it makes noise when zooming while shooting video.I plan on getting filters that can be mounted on lens.WiFi connection is great for on the road downloading. It can give a WiFi signal that your phone connects to to download files to share via phone tablet, or computer. Just need app installed.Because of lock down here in California. I haven't used it as much as I would like to. The moon photos were taken free hand. I plan on getting tripod with longer exposure time to make photos even clearer.I am very happy with purchase.Update: I've had this camera for over 3 months now. I got a tripod for stills, and moon shots. Such a huge difference. I also purchased density, and polarized lenses. I'll include new shots in. I'm still learning slot on how to utilize this camera to it's fullest. First 2 shots of moon were hand held, ones after was tripod. Foliage shots were shot with bokeh effect in the background depending where you focused at. I focused on gate ball, then focused on tree leaves the make fence blur.Also the zoom in camera doesn't stop at 65. Digital zoom goes to 260. And 256GB mirco memory card w/adapter from Samsung works fine. I want to try 512GB card later.

This camera is an amazing value in many ways. It has an incredible zoom, 65x, and its image stabilization works beautifully to give you non-blurred images for hand held telephoto and low-light shots. I've never experienced image stabilization like that before. It has a very nice tilting LCD and of course an eyepiece viewfinder as well. I appreciated its light weight and the ability to take macro photos at very close range. I did not shoot video at all, so this review is based only on still shooting.There are a couple of bugs that do tend to get in the way of a fully enjoyable experience. The principal one I kept running into was the camera unfocusing at moderate zoom levels. It would focus and then unfocus. The only way to get it to focus was to change the zoom level up or down, and by that time you may have lost your photo opportunity. I also had the camera freeze a couple of times, and had to pop out the battery and push it back in to reset the camera. This was in cold weather, so perhaps that was related, as my iPhone will sometimes do the same in the cold, when the battery cannot provide the necessary power. The difference is that the iPhone shuts off, whereas this camera froze.The image sensor may be what is expected from a "bridge camera" such as this, but unfortunately I cannot honestly say "this camera takes really good pictures." The sense I get from my iPhone 6 photos is that they are better in general. A lot of that has to do I think with this camera's very limited "dynamic range", which essentially means the ability to handle scenes containing both bright and dark areas, which in my experience occurs frequently. With this camera, the whites are often washed out. The iPhone has an auto-HDR mode to handle this, and it is true that this camera also has HDR (which takes 3 shots and combines them), but you have to go through the menus every time you turn on the camera to enable HDR, and then taking photos becomes slower and uses the battery more quickly. The camera has another mode called WDR, but I didn't find it helpful. I think that mode is really intended for video scenes. But even without HDR processing, a good camera ought to be able to produce decent images for high contrast scenes, and this camera really does not make the grade.

Okay, I bought this camera as a secondary camera because I need something smaller than less equipment to carry around. I have A DSLR Canon but I am getting tired of carrying all gears around. I took the Kodak AZ652 with me on my trip to Yellowstone, and I was glad I did. The 65x zoom is incredible! The only small issue I had was getting the focus on the subject when zooming in close, you might need to play around with it and get used to it. See my photos for more info. (PS. I didn't get the blue skies because the northern California Wildfire blew smoke over the area.)