Once synonymous with photography and the venerable Kodak Moment, the Kodak company has undergone multiple transformations over the last century. Having dominated the film era, Kodak found itself in a war with Fufifilm and awkwardly straddling the analog and digital worlds in the 1990s.

It’s too simplistic to say that Kodak didn’t adapt quickly enough to digital photography. Having researched and invented early digital imaging in the 1970s, the common view is that failure to invest in digital caused their downfall. But Kodak did, in fact, produce many consumer digital cameras in the early 2000s period and did manage to gain reasonable market share for a while. Even industry titans like Nikon and Canon struggled to devise a winning strategy in the digital imaging market as smartphones rose to prominence.

Kodak may not have been agile enough to pivot completely from a huge historical investment in chemicals and film production, but in recent years, post-Chapter 11 Bankruptcy, they have managed to make some headway in a difficult market. It helps that the Kodak brand is still so strong and sought after by their partners and licensees.

And so, we come to the intriguing Kodak Charmera ~ a teeny tiny digital toy camera that can live with the car keys in your pocket or get lost down the back of your couch. I received one as a Christmas gift this year. Even though image quality from the 1.6 megapixel sensor isn’t anything special, it also records choppy video with sound, has a LED flash, a hole-in-body optical viewfinder, and features the cutest and smallest colour LCD on the back, making it a real charmer of a camera.

The Charmera features a number of filters and frames. I like using it in black and white mode, if only to disguise some of the worst noise. Adding some film grain in editing leans into the lo-fi aesthetc and also covers up some of the oversharpening and oversmoothing that toy cameras aggressively apply. Of course, pixel peeping is not what this camera is about, and even adding some simulated film grain in post-processing feels like a bit too much effort! The Kodak Charmera is, if nothing else, a neat fun toy. It’s also stealthy enough to take out for some gritty street photos.

The Kodak Charmera reminds me of seeing digital pictures for the first time from cheap old phones and early digital cameras. Maybe it’s not quite the same as seeing an image appear after washing chemicals over a roll of film, but it does take me back to the early days of digital imaging.