Life's Lemons and a Minicam
Life gave me lemons. To be fair, I kind of asked for it.
Some months ago, the KODAK Charmera, a digital keychain camera with built-in retro filters, was released. It was so popular that it sold out in a day. I love the idea of the multiple surprise designs and the small size. My brother loves applying these retro filters to pictures he takes during vacations, so I figured it could be a great gift, but also get me into the hobby if it is cool and inexpensive.
I was delighted when I found a (in hindsight quite shady) website that claimed that it still had some in stock. I ordered one for 30€, and it arrived within a month. Upon unpacking, this was what I got:
Clearly, this is not a KODAK Charmera. I decided to give it a try anyway. How bad could it be?
As it turns out, it's quite bad. I definitely got scammed. The resolution is so low that there seems to be some kind of built-in filter that just blots out everything so it does not look even worse. In the process, you get some pretty artsy results. Funny to snap a pic here and there, nothing I will be using in my day-to-day, though.
To make it worse, it plays a jingle over the small loudspeaker in the front when it is turned on or off, and makes a shutter sound when taking pictures. Guaranteed to turn heads when you try to take pictures outside (albeit not in a good way).
I tried to find the specific model on Chinese websites like AliExpress to be able to provide more information in this blog post, but was unable to. All that is left is giving you the chance to judge the results by yourself.
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