So, my nice Kodak Easy Share digital camera was broken in a freak body-surfing accident two weeks ago. I really didn’t have the money to replace it, and I thought I was going to be camera-less for a few months, until I remembered a little digital camera I bought at target a few years back. It cost me twenty dollars and was about the size of a matchbox. A really fun little toy. I had had a blast with it before I bought my now defunct Kodak. Here’s a pic I took with it back in the day:
So, I went to Wal-Mart this week and bought a similar little camera for only ten dollars that actually produces a better quality image, and has an LCD screen to boot! It’s basically a camera phone without the phone.
One of the things I love about lo-fi cameras is the character they add to a captured image. When people shot on Super8 film and later Beta and VHS, they created images that weren’t necessarily as true to life as the high-end digital mediums we have now, but the images they created have such “character” that their looks have become iconic and timeless. Lo-fi digital cameras have a similar effect. They place an image in an unmistakable time and place, but they also simplify the subject matter of the image to a pixelated point that turns that subject into something universal and timeless. In a sense, snapping a little 3 megapixel image on my new “Suprema” can be more artistic than a high-def SLR shot. Obviously, it all depends on what you want, but right now, I’m cool with my little lo-fi pictures. Like this new self-portrait. Oh yeah! : )
