RCA Small Wonder Traveler EZ210 Camcorder Reviewby Kaitlyn ChantryPublished on Oct 30, 2008 3:00 PM
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Still Features (3.0)
Of the ultra-compact YouTube camcorders, only the RCA EZ210 and the Kodak Zi6 capture still photographs. The EZ210 captures JPEG stills in one size (1280 x 960) and two different qualities: HQ and webQ. Both are available for still photography, but using the webQ setting will not save much space and produces abysmal stills. The Kodak Zi6 only captures stills in one size and one quality, but the resulting image is a larger 3-megapixel still. On the Traveler, photographs, like video clips, are saved to the removable SD/SDHC memory card. During playback, they are integrated into the stream of your regular video clips. Cycling between clips could mean going from a video to a couple stills, then on to another video.
As with video recording on the Traveler, there is no menu and no access to any kind of manual controls—except for the 2x digital zoom.
Still Performance (4.38)
Still performance is tested by shooting an X-Rite color chart at an even, bright light, then running the stills through Imatest imaging software. The software allows us to determine color accuracy, noise, and saturation. With traditional camcorders, we shoot several different exposure settings and use the data from the setting that performs best. On the Traveler, there's no way to alter exposure (or any other manual setting), so we just took a few stills in the camcorder's natural auto mode.
Overall, the still performance was better than we expected. Saturation was too high (115%), but not as high as the saturation on the Kodak Zi6. The Traveler also scored better in color error and noise than the Zi6, with a color error of 13.7 and noise of 0.5725%. Though the scores are fairly good, the quality of the photographs will not measure up the 3-megapixel stills produced by the Kodak. And, in fact, it's important to remember that these camcorders may function as cameras, but their results are horrible compared to even a cheap point-and-shoot digital camera. They're also worse than many traditional camcorders and only a little better than the cameras on some cell phones.
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| The RCA EZ210 "Web Photo" doesn't look bad when it's shrunk down and compressed. | The Kodak Zi6, though, looks better. |
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| At 100% crop, the RCA EZ210 really shows its weaknesses. |
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| The Kodak Zi6 fares much better. |
Still Resolution (2.13)
Still resolution is tested by shooting an Applied Image ISO 12233 resolution chart at an even, bright light. We run these stills through Imatest imaging software to determining horizontal and vertical resolution, measured in line widths per picture height (lw/ph). As explained above, we ordinarily shoot stills at several different exposures so that we can select the best performance; in the case of the RCA EZ210, we were stuck with the automatic settings.
The RCA EZ210 produced a horizontal resolution of 399.3 lw/ph, with an oversharpening of 6.41%. Vertical resolution measured 384.7 lw/ph with an oversharpening of 4.07%. These are not good scores, even for a camcorder, but they are better than the results from the Kodak Zi6. Again, numbers don't tell the whole story. As seen in the example photographs above, you get larger, higher quality image overall when you shoot stills with the Kodak Zi6. The Traveler, on the other hand, is a very poor still camera indeed.
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