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/ËsnĂŠp.ÊÉt/Filling The Gaps: The â72MP, 4K Ultra HDâ Digital Scamera
This always happens to me: I had this urge (again) to try some circuit bending. This involves getting a cheap digital camera, taking it apart and poking some wires into the connectors on the sensor, which if done right can produce some lovely glitchy images, but if done wrong can wreck the camera, so it has to be a device that you donât mind possibly losing.
The second-hand electrical discount store CEX (Computer Exchange) is an excellent source for cheap digicams. In addition to specific models, quite often they offer âgenericâ digital cameras for just a few Euros, and whenever one of these appears on the website I am tempted to get it. The thing is, you donât know what youâre going to get. It might be a no-name brand camera fit for the bin, or sometimes an absolute classic, like the mint condition Canon Powershot G5 that arrived for just 3âŹ. The point being, although I always intend to get one of these cameras for circuit bending I always end up âfalling in loveâ with it, and not having the nerve to potentially destroy it.
Anyhow. Last weekend a 12MP âgenericâ digital camera appeared on the CEX website for 10âŹ. Normally, I would be reluctant to pay so much for a digicam, but this time I wanted some decent resolution and this seemed to fit the bill. When the package arrived, it was quite heavy, and I wondered if it might be a decent camera again, like something from the Canon Powershot range. Instead it was something even better; a â72MP 4K Ultra HDâ Chinese made scamera.
Itâs a real vlogging camera. See, it has a rotating screen and a cold shoe for the microphone (no input for it, though).I first noticed these appearing on reputable websites in Portugal like Worten and Fnac when I was looking for a decent resolution digital camera for myself a couple of years ago. At the time they were priced at well over 100âŹ, although often as not were heavily discounted. It was obvious it was a scamera, though not as blatant as those 35mm âCannonâ cameras that were around a while ago, cheap plastic fixed lens âSLRsâ with a lead weight in the bottom that made them heavier.
Advertised as a, â4K Digital Camera for Photography, 72MP Autofocus Vlogging Cameras for YouTube with 64GB SD Card and Battery, 18X Digital Zoom 2.8âł 270° Flip Screen Compact Travel Camera for Teensâ, they would pop up in the âmarketplaceâ of these websites. When I can, I generally avoid the marketplace, since theyâre often Chinese sites offloading tat at vastly inflated prices. And this was no different. Itâs a terrible sounding description. That entry was from Amazon, where itâs on sale for $36, but Iâm certainly not going to provide a link for it. No one deserves that.
That toggle switch does nothing apart from reduce the resolution even further.In the hand the â72M MEGA PIXELSâ scamera feels âplastickyâ and looks nothing like a quality camera should look. The camera can be turned on just by flipping the back open or, if the LCD screen is revealed, with an on/off button on the top. Incidentally, the red circled button is not the power button, thatâs to record video. The shutter button is the big button on the top front, with the âzoomâ toggle. That does nothing, apart from digitally zoom the image. The âwelcomeâ screen is the tackiest opening screen Iâve ever seen, and the switch off screen is the same (âbye byeâ). The scamera beeps and chirps with a cheap-sounding tune, and the shutter sound is hopelessly synthetic.
Look at the built-in flash. Itâs not got one flash symbol, but three. That flash must have the power of a thousand suns.Unfortunately, this 72MP camera doesnât have interchangeable lenses. Or nearly any lens at all.The lens is amazing, and not in a good way. Described as, â5-axis stabilizer, 5K ultra HD, 3.95mm f1.8â, this lens looks like itâs a simple lens that projects straight onto a small sensor, like youâd get on a toy camera. Which Iâm pretty sure it is. Although it says 5K on the lens, on the body the video resolution is described as 4K. Iâve not tested the video, or the sound quality, but Iâm sure that itâs not either, at least not without a whole package of electronic jiggery-pokery. Which brings me to the claim of 72MP resolution. Is it? I suspect not.
Photograph of a garden globe light at the highest resolution of 72MP.If you take a typical 72MP image, the file size is 9856Ă7,392, or 72,855,552 pixels. But when you zoom in to that image itâs full of artifacts, so thereâs certainly something going on there. I took a full frame image at 72MP, and a second at the lowest resolution offered by the scamera of 8MP. I zoomed each image to roughly the same size, and compared them. At 8MP, the zoomed image is âsharp-ishâ, with details in the plaster and glass pieces in the globe. Itâs still full of ârubbishâ, mind you. At 72MP, which from a true 72MP you would expect to be filled with detail, itâs a mess. I suspect thereâs been a lot of âupsamplingâ going on here, where the software in the scamera interpolates and creates new pixels based on existing ones. This adds more pixels to make a much larger image but does not add any further resolution. So by my rough reckoning, this is at best an 8MP sensor. Truly, a scamera.
Photograph of the globe at 8MP resolution. The image was enlarged to show detail. This image is quite sharp.When the 72MP image is enlarged to the same magnification, clearly there is the loss of a lot of information.I took the scamera out and about during a trip to OiĂŁ on a lovely sunny day, and here are the results. The images here have been resized to 1366 pixels at the longest edge, so thereâs no 72MP here (not that there ever was, anyhow). The colours came out quite delightfully, actually, and I really liked how it appeared. I was very confused with the one image of the water tower, mind. This was taken in daytime but it looks like night. I did actually try to check out the infrared response of the scamera, and there was a horrible âhot spotâ in the middle of the image, so this may well be light reflecting in the lens.
An image of my favourite trees and well. Taken at 72MP resolution with a 720nm infrared filter.In conclusion, I finally got my hands on the 72MP digital scamera, a device I had been interested in learning about for a while. At 10âŹ, it was still overpriced, and the scamera is truly a horrendous beast with absolutely zero appeal. Will I use it for circuit bending? Well, actually, although I was reluctant at first to do this, now Iâm thinking that it might be a worthy contender. One of these days, Iâm going to open it up, just to see what itâs like inside, and weâll go from there.
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#cameraslscams #circuitbending #digicam #experimental #glitch #infrared #lofi2 #retro #scamera #toycamera #trashcam #upsampling
Firda B.This was my favourite tree in #Waterloo Park for years. It was a sad day when I came here to admire it one day and all I saw was a stump. đą I took this photo with an all-plastic, featureless, #35mm film camera, a Vivitar Ultra Wide & Slim. It was my favourite #trashcam.
#ThickTrunkTuesday #WatReg #WaterlooRegion #Ontario #Canada #landscape #nature #photography #FilmPhotography #FilmIsNotDead #BelieveInFilm