The new Kodak almost went unnoticed at Photokina 2014

Sep 23, 2014 07:07 GMT  ·  By

At Photokina some cameras took central stage and drew the attention of everybody present on the spot, like the Canon EOS 7D Mark II DSLR which was widely anticipated.

Anyway, other companies preferred the quitter approach when it came to unveiling new products. It’s the case of Kodak, that rolled out its newest superzoom lens the PixPro FZ201 without much fuss.

A new Kodak camera hopes to keep you interested

Kodak has been desperately trying to maintain its business afloat. The company was threatened with bankruptcy a while ago, but was saved at the last moment by JK imaging. Since then Kodak has been revising its strategy trying to understand what consumers want and need.

Kodak appears to believe that a new compact shooter with extended zoom lens will help it rise up in customers’ graces. To that end, the company unveiled the PixPro FZ201.

Even if Kodak didn’t make a big deal out of launching the camera (which is a real shame), word of its arrival on the market will spread some way or another.

Anyway, let’s dig into the camera’s specifications. For starters, the PixPro FZ201 arrives with a new 16.15MP sensor with 1/ 2.3-inch type CCD image sensor.

The superzoom takes advantage of a 20x optical zoom lens, which is a 35mm equivalent of 25-500mm. The max aperture ranges between f/3.5-4.9 and depends on which focal length users select.

The new Kodak has built-in optical image stabilization, so in theory your shoots should be affected by any hand or camera shakes, but we are yet to see how the system really performs in real life.

Moving along, the shutter speeds range between 1/2000th of a second and 30 seconds when using manual mode. In the ISO department, things can be bumped up from 80 all the way to 1600.

The PixPro FZ201 has some important limitations

On the back of the shooter lives a 3-inch 230K-dot LCD screen, but the display is not of the tiltable variety nor does it support touchscreen. On top of that, the FZ201 does not have a viewfinder, so you’ll have to rely solely on the LCD to compose the shots, an aspect that might not agree with everyone.

Another downside to the new Kodak is that it is not capable of capturing RAW photos. On top of that, its camera can only record videos at 720p resolution and 30fps.

On the bright side of things, the PixPro is very light, weighing just 202 g / 0.4 lbs. Videos and images will be stored either on an SD/SDHC/SDXC card or on an a Eye-Fi card.

Users of the new FZ201 will be able to snap up to 210 shots on a single charge, but these numbers drop in case the built-in-flash is brought into equation.

For the time being, Kodak hasn’t said anything about pricing and availability, but they will probably be revealed soon.