Break A Few Rules

Monochromatic - well, this one isn’t. Horror of horrors it has some colour in it. Not very saturated because it is from the Kodak Charmera.

First, I asked Nick which action camera he used to video his trips and he uses the Osmo Action 5. That was a little while ago, and I put the whole thing on the back burner while other things in life came along.

Then a couple of days ago I watched a YouTube Video from Jake Sloan who is the most well ordered, well articulated, and best-considered person I have come across on the matter of action camera recommendations.

Recommendations

I am not interested in grading and just want to use the standard setting. And I don’t want to video myself - just the scene. And I only envisage shooting in reasonable light. And I also want to shoot stills. So I asked Jake whether the 6 a worthwhile upgrade from the 5? And I dropped in whether he thought the Ace Pro 2 was in the running (because I had just watched his video review of that camera.

He said, in that scenario he’d go with the 5.

I could have just taken Nick’s advice.

So that’s what I’ll do.

Or the 6.

Kodak Charmera

Meanwhile I bought a Kodak Chamera, which is tiny as you can see on this shot of it perched on a 35mm film canister.

The keychain comes with the camera. And to add a little piquancy to the buying experience, you only find out the particular camera style you get, after you open the box. There are seven (I think) styles with one of them being see-through.

As you may just be able to see, the camera has a tiny viewfinder at top left and the whole thing is about as long as my little finger - and shoots crappy jpegs and video. But at 30g it is super easy to have it with me so I can take crappy jpegs.

The sensor is 1.6MP.

I wonder how many Kodak have sold? The camera is very cheap and maybe it hits the sweet spot of not being your phone.

One odd note is that the micro SD card that the images write to, is described in the manual as a TF Card and I wondered how, if at all, it differs from a microSD card?

And the answer is that a TF card, short for TransFlash card, is the original name for the microSD card. SanDisk introduced the format, and it was later standardised as microSD by the SD Association.

Perhaps you already knew that.

Here is a jpeg from the camera. I doubt I am going to use the camera much, as cheap as it was because I have a little point and shoot that is not that much bigger and takes much better shots. Ignore the date that I didn’t set, so it has chosen its own date - maybe when it rolled off the assembly line.

Easy To Have With Me

That ‘easy to have with me’ is why I have the Ricoh GRIII. And I noticed that Nick has the GRIIIx - which I am tempted to buy.

I recall there was a Leica triplex lens years and years ago - not a zoom but three specific focal lengths in one lens. Maybe Ricoh could do that? And a viewfinder, haha.

Or the Sony RX100.

This shot of a cat is from the RX100 MK3. I should have kept the camera. I remember why I sold it. It couldn’t keep up shooting big animals in South Africa when I wasn’t using the Nikon D500. I must have been crazy to even think that was a fair test of the little Sony.

Basically, everything looks better close to the camera - any camera - with the exception of the Kodak Charmera. Never have I so quickly fallen out of love with a camera.