A few days ago, I received the G6 Thumb Camera ~ a knock-off version of the Kodak Charmera available from cheapo plastic junk merchants like AliExpress. A copy was always going to happen when it became clear that the Kodak would sell-out quickly.
As I tore the box open to reveal the toxic green G6 keychain toy camera, my contribution to environmental pollution gnawed at me. It’s a feeling that grows with each passing year. We might have cherished our expensive mechanical film cameras for many years in decades gone by, valuing their form and function in a much slower and less product-addicted world, but now it seems as though we can’t get enough of the next thing and the next thing and the next…
I edited all of the photos in Exposure X7 using settings that disguise the mushy and detail-bereft shadows, the blown highlights, the oversharpened edges, and the oversmoothing – though the G6, despite clipping the red channel as soon as even a hint of red appears in a scene, doesn’t seem to sharpen or smoothe things quite as much as the Kodak Charmera. Consequently, the images are bad in a different way, weird banding artefacts included.
The G6 can do a few extra things – I can set the EV, the image quality, and even the White Balance. I have mine set to -1 EV, 2 megapixels, and Daylight WB. Even though the image quality settings extend to a whopping 12 megapixels, I’m not even going to bother as I imagine things would only get worse if an almost useless image resizing algorithm were to be engaged.
The focal length is too wide to be really comfortable, and the 16:9 aspect ratio is not ideal. However, this does encourage different thinking around framing and composition – not a bad thing at all. Oh, and if I long-press the up-button on the back, the LED flash turns on and the G6 becomes a torch…
The Rusty Ruin Journal 