When wading into the plastic-strewn waters of toy cameras and weirdly branded scameras, you’d be foolish to expect image quality. I certainly don’t! What I’m looking for in cheap cameras like this is fun factor. The Kodak Charmera works not because it makes high quality images, but because it’s small, pocketable, easy to use, and fun. At the very least, the Charmera makes consistently dodgy photos, so I know what to expect.
The Chuzhao is a tiny plastic TLR-inspired digital toy camera. It has no menu system, a nice colour screen shaded by a flimsy plastic hood, and a bunch of awkwardly placed buttons that seem to operate according to cryptic laws – hold down one button to access the photo album then twist the tiny silver crank on the side of the camera to select a photo, then press another button to delete. Like I said, it’s cryptic. It’s a good thing the basic operation of the camera is easy enough.
My first impression is that the Chuzhao TLR-inspired camera can make surprisingly detailed photos in good light. In low light, it’s an impressionist painter’s worst nightmare – more oversmoothing than exists in half a dozen Kodak Charmeras combined. They’re not even worth salvaging in the best photo editing programs. I don’t believe all the AI in the world could save the worst of these photos without significant insertion of generated content. But as you can see in both the photos above and below, the detail possible can be surprisingly good for such a toy.
I need to make an admission: all of these photos have been ever so slightly edited. As with my Charmera pictures, I’ve added film grain to break up the oversmoothing, reduced the Clarity to make it look less sharp, and added some extra warmth.
The Chuzhao camera is a strange device. It’s not as unobtrusive as the Kodak Charmera because it’s not really small enough to fit into a pocket comfortably without it feeling like you’ve stuck too many Mars Bars in there. And because it features the classic TLR top-down view, it takes time to compose pictures and isn’t going to be your friend when you want to use it in other positions and angles. I can quickly grab a photo with the Charmera, but the Chuzhao demands more attention, making it not quite as fun or as convenient.
I do think there’s something positive to be said for using the Chuzhao in good light in the included black and white filter mode (mine is actually sepia tinted, so I just desaturated it during editing). And the inclusion of auto-focus (yes, auto-focus in a toy camera) means that it’s capable of close-focussing and blurring backgrounds. That in itself is pretty cool. Being fixed focus only, the Charmera can’t do that. Neither can the Camp Snap.
The Chuzhao is worth a look if you buy it cheaply. It’s available on a wide range of sites and I wouldn’t be surprised if quite a number of those listed are just copies of copies with different innards – so you take your chances with something like this.
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You’re going to get me in trouble with my wife. Why? Because I want one.This looks much more interesting than the Charmera has proven to be, if for no other reason than the autofocus and what appears to be the ability to focus closer than three feet.
I’ll likely get it . . . unless you have some other toy camera you’re going to review.
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Hmm…do I have another almost perfect toy camera to hand that you might want? Well, no. But, lots of people are having fun with cheap thermal printing kid cameras. I can relate, of course, My camera collection piles on the dining table and is looked at askance every week. That’s between me losing camera chargers in boxes and drawers. The Chuzhao is an interesting one. Yes, much more detail. The auto focus is a different experience for such a cheap camera. I fear it does interpolate on resizing and there are little ugly artifacts. Doubt the native resolution is 12 megapixels as claimed. That said, in good light I think it’s an interesting camera. The Camp Snap is actually technically better in terms of sheer resolving power at distance, for a cheapo camera of course, and it doesn’t seem to resize. It works at native sensor resolution. I think you’d have some fun with the Chuzhao, given it’s focussing capabilities. Don’t be fooled by price though. There are a few different versions at different prices. I paid about $40 AUD fr mine and it was listed as an original. I’d seen the silver box before in reviews, and it seems like a good model I received.
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I think the two I have will do me for now. Of the two, the Chuzhao will probably see more use, but you never know.
The upscaling apps I have typically do a pretty good job, but I’m not sure I would upscale any of these toy cameras images; they are good for the blog because of the small format of the presentation, where the results tend to show better because you can’t see the fine details.
It’s one instance where I don’t mind WP messing with the images (compressing them) because it tends to soften them.
You don’t offer versions of upscale images on your blog . . . are you saying you upscale them for personal use?
As far as I can tell, you’re not even showing them at full resolution (something I typically do for all my images if one cares to visit the SmugMug galleries), so I’m not sure why you mention the upscaling . . . unless you’re ‘artsifying’ them to print and/or frame.
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I discuss the upscaling just as a matter of the particulars of these cameras. I don’t do it myself with any of my photos. I rarely have anything printed larger than 8×10. The prints I’ve sold were this size. But I’ve no issue printing small. These photos, as you say, look fine for web or small prints. Many photos in books are printed small, so it just depends on what you need. I don’t even have large prints in my own home!
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