Digicams are fun!
I’ve been using my phone as my main camera since the beginning of spring, and I recently started picking up some cheap YTK digicams on eBay at reasonable prices to add to my collection of fun photography tools.
My needs for photography tools these days are that they are portable, pocketable, one-handed, and fun to use.
I’m still walking with a cane, and my walkable distance remains confined to a couple of kilometers, so I need tools that I can slip into my pocket, operate with one hand, and that are fun to play with as my scenery has remained the same now for months, meaning that I need to keep coming up with ways to encourage myself to find new ways of seeing and enaging with my environment.
Digicams have proven to be a real delight in the fun category, and after I bought an old HP PhotoSmart 735 3.2MP from 2003, and a Kodak EasyShare C663 6.0MP from 2006, for my collection, I also picked up an old Olympus, Polaroid, and even older Kodak EasyShare with a 1.2MP sensor, all in the name of keeping me creatively engaged.
Now I’m not going to get into the whole CCD colour thing, or the digicam digital film look conversation, because I don’t care about it, and that is not why I want to play with these tools in the first place.
I got these cameras because they are quirky, they have playful designs, the files are low resolution, and as a tool, they provide me with different ways of interacting with my environment and their own unique aesthetic language.
There is no denying my love of all things liminal, and if I am going for any sense of nostalgia provided by the engrained look of that time periods technology, it is that, the lo-fi look of liminal images, which after the success of Kane Parsons film the Backrooms, is a rather trendy visual topic at the moment, but I have been into this kind of imagery long before it had a mainstream outlet.
Perhaps it is the limanl state of my existence at the moment, maybe it is the fact that the unused Bell Canada building and its parking lot have become my go to place to do laps and take pictures that I wanted to acquire some cameras that would allow to get a bit of an aesthetic look to pictures I was already taking with my seven year old smartphone, either way, I’m hooked on how fun digicams are with all their characteristics.
Snapshot photography and vernacular photography have always been near and dear to me, and maybe it is this “unserious” nature of point-and-shoot cameras that attracted me to my phone and these old YTK digicams.
To be honest, reproduction past 8x10 inches has never been a big deal for me. I like small prints, and I enjoy using non-fine art/photo paper for my prints as well, often using sketching paper from the dollar or newsprint, so the files I am getting from these cameras and my phone are more than enough for me to take them seriously.
I feel free to fool around, look for the uncanny, take cliche pictures of pretty shit, make snapshots of mundane, drab, everyday nonsense, and in post, I can pull together a narrative, a theme, a concept, or some kind of thread to make the images resonate with something more interesting outside of themselves.
There is still room for my big kid cameras, I just don’t feel the need for them these days, so having a collection of oddball digicams, all with their own look and identity, keeps me motivated to make pictures of the same crap over and over again.
Since I have been very happy with my phone photographs, I wanted to keep the edits the same for the digicam images, so I have been uploading the files to my phone and editing them with Snapseed.
The workflow is simple, the results are what I am looking for, and the prints turn out great for my uses and standards (4x6-inch prints look as good as you would expect since that was the marketable print size for these cameras from either your local pharmacy or one of those Kodak kiosks you’d find in Walmart or something), so I have no complaints whatsoever about this unprofessional process of mine.
I like having fun; you don’t need a digicam to have any of that fun, but for me, they most certainly help make things interesting.
This isn’t a review or a hype piece; I only wanted to share a few pics and say that I am enjoying these little oddball tools.
As always, take care!
Matt
Ooh I love that your going back to basics here Matthew - that HP Photosmart gets great results especially the b&w. It sounds as though things are slowly improving for you which is great to hear.
Great stuff, Matthew! Glad to hear you're having fun with these 'old-timers'. It goes to show what was already achievable all those years ago from relaticely modest kit. An excellent set, thank you. Btw I hope your road to recovery is still a clear route. Take care.