Kodak PixPro C1 Review

The C1 exists because teenagers went looking for a camera that is not a phone, and Kodak licensed its name to something cheap enough to be an impulse buy. There is no optical zoom, only a 4x digital crop, and the 26mm equivalent f/2 lens is a fixed focal length rather than a fixed focus: single point TTL autofocus covers 60 centimetres to infinity, or 8 centimetres in macro, and it slows down and misses as the light drops.

The 2.8 inch screen flips up through 180 degrees for selfies and talking pieces, video runs to 1080p at 60 frames, the battery is sealed and charges over USB-C, and the whole camera weighs 115 grams.

Pictures off the 1/3 inch sensor are soft, noisy in anything dimmer than a bright room, and processed with a heavy hand. Anyone holding them next to a modern phone will be disappointed. Anyone holding them next to what a point and shoot produced in 2008 will not care, because the appeal is the deliberate act of carrying a camera and the slightly wrong colour that comes back. The grip is poor, the card slot tops out at 32 gigabytes, and there is nothing here for a photographer. As a first camera or a night out camera at 99 dollars, it does the job it was built for.