Samsung ES55

If you’re style conscious and looking for a camera that doesn’t burn a hole in your wallet, then the Samsung ES55 might just be a worthy contender. Let’s find out…

The ES55 is sleek and small at just 90 x 59 x 22 mm in size, and weighs just 116 g. The body features straight lines, curved edges and a compact frame, giving it a petite but industrial look that’s enhanced by its dark gray powder coated paint job. The camera’s also available in silver and pink.

The button placement’s convenient. The shutter release and power buttons are on top, but there’s no zoom toggle ring around the shutter release. Instead, the zoom toggle’s at the back of the camera, under which are the menu button, navigation pad, the preview button and the function key. Besides these there’s a 2.5-inch 230,000 pixel LCD screens.

At one glance, you can tell that the ES55 is built for portability and good looks. The frame’s sturdy and not cheap looking like many other budget cameras, and the LCD performed well even outdoors. Where build quality’s concerned, the ES55 gave us nothing to complain about.
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The Samsung ES55 features a CCD sensor that’s capable of going up to 10.2 megapixel, and a lens that’s capable of 3x zoom. The image quality isn’t too great - edges are not too well defined and saturated colors leave artifacts (which aren’t too evident though). The camera’s color reproduction on the other hand, is brilliant and so its auto-white balance is spot on.

Where ISO performance is concerned, the ES55 was quite impressive since it gave us more than usable shots up to 400 ISO. The cameras ISO sensitivity starts off at 80 and goes up to 1600.

Like most Samsung cameras, the ES55’s Night Performance was pretty good. Details were a little lost in some areas of our test shots though, and brightly lit areas were overcompensated for and burnt out.

Where modes are concerned, this one’s got all a basic user would need, with a few extras. It has Auto, Program, Digital Image Stabilization (for those extra shaky shots), Scene and Movie modes. What I loved was its extremely easy to use interface and a photo help guide to show you the ropes when it comes to taking great pictures. The camera’s macro performance wasn’t the best and it couldn’t focus on objects closer than 4-inches.

To sum up, at Rs. 7,990 the Samsung ES55 offers good value for money, but don’t expect it to excel too much where image quality’s concerned. It has all the features you’d expect from a budget compact (with a few bonuses such as a decent program mode), and offers average performance in most areas. If you’re looking for a cheap, stylish compact, don’t dismiss this one!