Continuing my adventures with lowfi photography I have a new camera.
I was inspired by Karin Majoka and her YouTube video How a TOY CAMERA Made Me Fall in Love with Photography (again). Watching it had me almost convinced. What did it was the fact the algorithm then threw another four or five videos about the same toy at me, all from professional or highly capable photographers.
It's also dirt cheap.
Now this isn't some wonder-camera. The lens is a tiny plastic lens, the quality is... dire.
This is, in theory, a 20MP image. The details are soft, the colours are definitely wrong. So why is this such a good camera? Well it comes with a printer built in. And not an Instax style printer. It's a thermal printer like the ones used to print your receipts when you go shopping. The quality is... dire.
But the print is almost instant and it costs next to nothing. Something about this quality of producing a tangible product, feeling like an old instant camera, while being eminently affordable makes it a joy to use.
Also it gives me this nostalgic feeling like I'm using a GameBoy camera all over again.
And in case you're wondering whether I can load up a quality photograph shot in a studio on a real SLR then print it on the same garbage printer? I've got good news...
It's the photographic equivalent of an 8-Bit demake video game. Or deliberately adding scanlines to emulated ROMs.
I love it.