Kodak PixPro FZ55 Review

The FZ55 has been a fixture of the Amazon camera chart for three years, which says more about what people want than about the camera. It is a 1/2.3 inch sensor, the size compacts used before phones took the category apart, behind a five times zoom covering 28 to 140mm equivalent at f/3.9 to f/6.3. The screen is 2.7 inches, video tops out at 1080p, the battery is a rechargeable lithium ion pack rather than a pair of AAs, and the body is 106 grams and thin enough to vanish in a coat pocket.

In daylight it makes perfectly usable pictures with more sharpness than the price suggests. Indoors or after sunset the sensor runs out of light, noise reduction smears away detail, and the slow lens at the long end makes it worse. Autofocus hunts. There is no stabilisation worth the name.

None of that is a surprise at 160 dollars, and none of it explains the sales. What explains the sales is that this is a real camera from a name people recognise, it costs less than a pair of headphones, and it returns pictures that look like the ones in their parents' albums. On those terms it delivers.