Kodak Charmera and Their Ilk

There's an interesting thing happening in the digital photography space, which are new digital camera products that promise a "film-like" experience. You may have seen these products being advertised, with names like Camp Snap or the now popular Kodak Charmera.

What these have in common is they use a very low-quality, color, 4:3 aspect ratio, tiny digital sensor, the kind originally intended for robotic machine tool vision, used in factories to guide manufacturing robotics.



I was recently given a Kodak Charmera, so I have some actual experience with these devices. First, the Charmera has six or seven different colors to the tiny camera, but you don't know which color you're getting when you buy it. The thing is tiny, maybe 1/2 inch square by several inches long, a tiny fixed plastic lens on the front and a peepsight viewfinder in the left corner. It uses a micro-SD card and has an internal battery that gets recharged via USB-C.

I'm old enough to remember cheap point-and-shoot film cameras. My first one was a Vivitar 110 camera. I still have some of those prints from way back in the early 1970s. This was the camera we (my middle brother) and I used to make a fake UFO photo.


The fake UFO picture -- or is it?

The thing about these small-format color prints is, despite the limitations of the format, the prints weren't all that bad, considering the size -- they weren't being blown up to poster-size, just snapshots that you'd get back from the drug store and hold in your hand and ponder just how close or far you were from being a real photographer with real talent, not just a geeky kid with a cheap Kodak.

What made those old point-and-shoot photos possible was the fact that film emulsions, even small-formats like 110, have decent dynamic range, which is the ratio of how dark the shadows are to how light the highlights are that can both be rendered with detail in the same photo.

Back to the present day and these new "film-like" digital cameras, they advertise resolutions of so-and-so megapickles, but their resolution is almost irrelevant ... their biggest limitation is that their dynamic range is bad. Really bad. As in, bad enough so as to make those old 110 snapshots from my childhood look really good.

Several months ago I went on my daily morning walk with the Charmera, and collected a number of images I'll share here with you.



First of all, in the typical bright light of New Mexico, the dynamic range of the scene overwhelms the camera's ability to record both sky detail and shadows. Even on cloudy days, which I found were better for the process than sunny, the image quality was better but not great.



Another limitation to the Charmera (and I'm assuming the Camp Snap too) is the focus is fixed. Yes, the lens aperture is tiny, hence there is SOME depth of focus, but it's all biased toward the distant scenery. Don't expect great result trying to take close-ups of friends.

I've also tried to play around with sticking other lenses in front, but it doesn't work well. There are some people who have hacked their Charmera to use lenses intended for 16mm film cameras, but for my money I'd rather not bother, the poor dynamic range isn't going to make the improved focus look much better.

Another lo-fi digital camera that I tried was the Paper Shoot. This one is a circuit board camera enclosed in a cardboard sleeve, with an assortment of sleeves available in various colors and designs. The viewfinder is just a rectangular viewing window through the circuit board.


Paper Shoot image converted to black and white

Comparing images from both the Paper Shoot and Kodak Charmera, the Paper Shoot's had noticeably better resolution and, more importantly, wider dynamic range. The difference is big enough that on many outdoor images I'd be hard pressed to pick the Paper Shoot images from a "somewhat better" digital camera. Conversely, the Charmera images are crappy enough so as to be immediately obvious.

But I'm not totally rejecting outright these cheap little cameras. The images they make have a kind of low-fidelity vibe going, enhanced even more if you convert the files to monochrome, in my opinion. If you print them two to a 4-by-6 print on, say, a Canon Selphie CP1500 dye sublimation printer, they aren't too bad for little wallet-sized snapshots.

I find carrying the Charmera on my neck with a lanyard makes for some convenient snapshooting, and later I'm sometimes surprised, but more often a bit disappointed, by the results. But even so, there's no additional cost to keep using the tiny thing, and who knows, maybe one of these days I'll get some images that I actually like. The Paper Shoot was a loaner from a friend, hence why I no longer have it, and it's noticeably larger, about wallet-sized, not something you'd take with you on a lark like with the Charmera. But if you could find reason to carry it, I'd recommend it above the Charmera. Also, given the wide selection of "skins" available for the Paper Shoot, I'm certain I could find one with just the right aesthetic for me to enjoy using.