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[OM] Funky little cameras [was Back to film!]

Subject: [OM] Funky little cameras [was Back to film!]
From: Moose <olymoose@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 04 Aug 2008 22:31:11 -0700
Jez Cunningham wrote:
> http://www.luminous-landscape.com/essays/funkeycam.shtml
>   
I think the analogy is very loose. The Holga/Diana/? cameras have 
wonderfully bad lenses, as do the funkycam and its ilk. However, the 
Holga records its 6x6cm images on 120 film. Thus, the results of various 
abberrations, soft focus and random asphericity of the lenses is 
recorded with considerable dynamic range, long, smooth tonal 
distribution. The subtle details of the lenses faults are recorded, in 
effect, in quite high resolution, both tonal and spacial.

I was given a funkycam by a friend as an alternative to simply throwing 
it away. I have since acquired another version of the concept, a 
VistaQuest VQ-1005. In these cameras, the poor lens is supplemented with 
a very low resolution sensor with poor dynamic range and somewhat 
'chunky' tonal graduation.

This is not to say that they are not capable of creating artistically 
interesting images, only that the quality/feel/whatever of these images 
is very different from those of Holga and Co.

For one thing, the images from the funkycam are really small. A 352x288 
pixel image (0.1 MP) is just a big thumbnail, to me. Upsizing so as to 
retain the essential character of the image and without obvious 
pixelization is not trivial. With primitive auto exposure and no 
controls at all, a lot of shots just don't come off. Bright subject with 
darker surroundings? Fuggedaboutit. I get a blob of white surrounded by 
decently exposed stuff. On the other hand, the funkycam is much better 
than I expected in modest light.

You may not have noticed that none of the sample images in Michael's 
paean to the funkycam are taken under sunny conditions.

The VistaQuest has a much more useful image size of 1280x1024 pixels 
(1.3 MP). It's not so much that it resolves much detail - an early Oly 
digi Stylus with a real lens and 1024x960 image size (1.0 MP) resolves 
much more detail. The point is that the image size is big enough to be 
easy to work with. The VQ is sort of the reverse of the FC, with far 
better exposure outside and pretty useless in less than bright light. It 
will still blow highlights, but not all of them all the time. :-)

Anyway, these little thingies seem to be a way of creating, mostly by 
accident, I suspect, some interesting "bad" images, but images with 
quite a different character than those of the 120 film Holga & Co.

A few more notes for anyone looking to try one of these things:

The funkycams provide power to their internal memory full time, 
resulting in battery life measured in single digit hours. Battery die, 
images go bye-bye. So you actually are tethered to a computer, in a way. 
Also, they require proprietary software to download the images.

The VQ is a bit thicker, in return for which it has an an SD card slot. 
With a card, the internal memory is ignored, which may or may not 
improve battery life, but with rechargeables and an SD card, it is less 
important, as no batteries are wasted nor images lost. It has a USB mass 
storage interface, so the card shows up as a disk drive. In fact, it may 
be used in a pinch as an SD card reader.

It has two focus settings, portrait and mountain. They are very 
approximate. On mine and those of others who have posted about them, 
portrait seems to mean 18-24" or so and mountain something further away, 
but not too far. However, I saw a post somewhere saying focus, such as 
it is, is adjustable inside by screwing the lens in/out. Apparently 
turning the lens is how the external near/far switch works. I haven't 
tried that yet.

Ah, it's true. I just opened it up. Yes, there is a trick. One may 
indeed adjust the focus range. I got it to focus on this missive at 
about 15". Wow, there is a lot of sharpening being applied, bright halos 
on text. Tomorrow in daylight, I'll see about setting distance focus.

Moose

Moose

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