Labs

Kodak's Z740 is anything but dainty. It's the bulkiest camera on test and at a fairly hefty 287g, the heaviest too.

Fortunately, there is payback and it comes in the form of the Kodak's whopping 10x zoom, equivalent to a 38 to 380mm lens on a 35mm camera. It's double the focal range of all the other cameras, bar the Panasonic DMC-LZ2.

The Z740 is also well-designed. Pop the camera in auto mode and there are very few options to worry about. Just choose the resolution you want and off you go. The Z740's ease of use doesn't mean that you have to sacrifice control - far from it!

There's

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a large selection of pre-programmed modes that cater for every situation you can think of, from action photography to party mode. The Z740 also offers a full range of manual and semi-automatic control modes.

Unfortunately, it's also easy to see where Kodak has cut back. The plastic body, while it feels well made, isn't quite as classy as the Fujifilm FinePix F10's metal body. The screen isn't great either - it's small and slow to refresh. The electronic viewfinder isn't much better, but does make it easier to frame shots in bright light conditions.

Image quality is excellent. In a straight fight with the more expensive FinePix F10, the Z740 only just loses out. There is a little more visible purple fringing and slightly more noticeable compression artifacts under close examination. This means some of the details the F10 captures are lost, but the differences are marginal.

Whether you choose the Z740 over the FinePix F10 will, ultimately, come down to what you value more - a big zoom lens and manual controls, or great low-light performance and slightly better picture quality.

We eventually came down on the side of the F10, but it was a close-run thing.