Tag: cameras

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Insta360 Camera (First Impressions)

I recently got an Insta360 X3 Camera (affiliate link) because it was my birthday and somehow there was a sale and it’s been two years since I bought a camera.

Disclaimer: I had some credit card points to use up before the card goes away next month. The camera was $230, minus $90 I got it for around $150 USD.

I got a GoPro back around 2012 and used it to film the Power Racing Series until around 2019. I did not use it in 2020 because pandemic, but I did use it as a webcam for a bit. Then it sat unused for a while and it never worked again. I dug into the problem and the issue is a common failure. So while I still have it, the GoPro is non-functional.

That said, I considered getting a new GoPro, but the combo of the old one failing and seeing that GoPro the company was most likely failing, I decided to look elsewhere, hence Insta360. We use their webcams at work (and the quality is amazing, and an action sports guy I know loves his as well.

So I figured it was time to try something new. Here’s what I got besides the camera.

SanDisk 128GB Extreme microSD Card – I have a pile of microSD cards but they are older and slower and smaller. I tried one to start with and the camera basically says “This is an old slow card and it sucks”. Well, not those exact words, but it displays a warning.

Clamp Camera Mount – I’m no stranger to making my own camera mounts, but with this camera (which does not have a protective shell like the old GoPro cameras did) I wanted something strong and secure. I’ve read that one thing lacking on the Insta360 is a lanyard mount for extra security so a solid mount seemed like a good choice.

Insta 360 X3 Lens Guards & Screen Protector – The X3 does not have easy to replace lenses (like some later models) so that means if you scratch up one of the lenses you need to send it in for repairs. The lens guards are little half-dome plastic pieces to cover the lenses. They do add some distortion when the images from the front and rear cameras stitch the image together. I still need to work on minimizing this in the settings and software.

At this point I’ve only used the camera for a few bike rides, and for two of those rides I thought I had it recording and somehow did not have it recording. After the first time I read the docs a bit more (duh!) and thought I figured it out. Somehow I screwed up twice. Still, I think I just need to learn the controls a bit more.

I started to make a playlist of videos called Bike Riding.

Oh! And as you can see from the photo above you can do some silly/fun/neat stuff with a 360 degree camera. Sidenote: Did you know I used to do 360/Panoramic photography? Back in 2010 I did it for work, and built my own head. (See a Photo Album of Panoramas!). So this is not totally new. I mean, the video part is, but hey, it’s been 16 years.

So far there is a lot to like about this camera, but this is First Impressions and I don’t want to overload things, so in the next installment I’m going to cover a few more things… some good, some bad.

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Polaroid 645 Sketch

I don’t have a lot to say about this one except that it’s a Polaroid 645 Instant Camera and I have an affection for vintage electronics and of course I like cameras. Almost 20 years ago I received a few vintage cameras, nothing too amazing, but they were old and somewhat interesting, and I ended up giving them to a friend who was way more into it than I was at the time… Every now and then I sort of wish I had kept some of them.

It’s weird to think back to all of the cameras I’ve owned or used over the years… personally and at various jobs. My daughter is a huge photography nut, and when she was in school she interviewed me about photography, and cameras, including all the old ones I used to own. It was fun and interesting and I may even still have a copy of her report somewhere. I should find it and post it!

In the meantime, enjoy this sketch of a Polaroid 645 Instant Camera. I plan to dig up other old electronic devices and do sketches of those as well. If you’ve got an idea or a favorite, let me know!

I still like doing these sketches! I do them with an Apple Pencil on an iPad using Procreate. If you ever want a framed print of any of my sketches get in touch with me and we’ll work something out… Also, check out the Illustration page to see them all!

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Kenilworth Portraits

Remember when I got the Kids Camera Instant Print which I now just refer to as toy camera most of the time?

Well last month I went to Kenilworth Square East to see work by UWM PSOA students (including my daughter) so I brought the toy camera along and shot portraits of people. When you are holding a toy camera that looks like a pink kitty, people tend to let you shoot their portrait. Then when you hand them a receipt with their photo printed on it they smile even more!

So here’s a bunch of photos from the evening. I set the camera to print after each shot and tore off the print and handed it to the person (or people) in the shot. It was a ton of fun being able to share like that!

I took most of the photos but the one of me (and a few others) were shot by my daughter Madeline, who is also a photographer, and actually had work on display at the event.

When I got home I printed a second copy of each photo so I could use them for this blog post…

I also started a new photo album called Toy Camera to upload more of these shots…

The metadata says they were shot with an iPhone, which is sort of true, since I took a photo of each photo with an iPhone. Weird, right? It seemed like the easiest way to digitize them…

I originally messed around with a desktop scanner, but wanted a faster process.

Oh, there’s also a device to assist with taking the photos of the photos, and I’ll write more about that in another post.

For now, just enjoy these photos!

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Kids Camera Instant Print

I picked up this Kids Camera Instant Print which is a “toy” camera for kids that has a built-in thermal printer and spits out photos on what is commonly known as “receipt paper” and it’s a ton of lofi fun.

The one I got was around $40 USD but you can find them for less than $20 as well. (Just make sure it’s one that does thermal printing!)

I had seen a blog post from Joe Van Cleave titled Thermal Printing Fun! and then learned other nerds were getting these little cameras and having fun with them. (Note: Joe seems to be into typewriters and cameras so this puts him into the interesting person category for me!)

Here’s a fun Mastodon thread on these cameras and you can also see the #ShittyCameraChallenge hashtag for more.

There are a ton of these from different manufacturers and they’re all a little different and somewhat the same. Thermal paper is pretty cheap so the cost per print can be pennies.

This seems like the perfect camera to take to events and shoot photos of people and then give them a print. I know, you’re saying “But Pete, the photos look like shit!” and I would counter that they don’t look “like shit” but have a unique lofi look to them that has a certain charm.

This thing reminds me of the Game Boy Camera. When I got the Game Boy Camera working (and eventually the Game Boy Camera Dumper) I liked the style and quality of the images, but doing the transfer from the Game Boy to a computer was still a chore.

Anyway, the Game Boy Camera is still neat, but this Kids Camera Instant Print thing is more of an all-in-one unit. It’s a bit bulky but hey, it’s got a built-in printer.

One of the interesting things about the prints (since they are on thermal paper) is that they won’t last… at least not in their native form. You can’t laminate them as the heat will destroy them by turning it all black. You can “cold” laminate them with clear packing tape, or you can scan them to a digital file, or take a photo of them, make a copy, or just… let them fade, much like life itself does. They are ephemeral and maybe that’s okay.

Who knows? Caturday may be a lot more interesting(?!?) in the future…

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Game Boy Camera

I remember seeing people use a Game Boy Camera years ago, and with my interest in lo-fi tech (and probably spurred on by 8bitMKE) I ordered a Game Boy Camera for $11.97 on eBay almost two years ago (Hey, sometimes projects take a while.)

Last fall when my daughter moved out we found her old Game Boy Advance, and after a good five minutes of Tetris I popped the camera into it and took a few photos. But alas, with no way to transfer them out of the Game Boy, they were stuck there…

After some digging around I found some posts that mentioned using an Arduino to transfer the photos from the Game Boy to a computer. Arduino you say? That’s my jam! But even then it took some time before I did anything.

I finally got the cable I needed (a “Two Player Link Cable Cord for Nintendo Game Boy”) for $3.99 on eBay after first ordering the wrong cable, and I quickly grabbed an Arduino Nano, one of my breakout boards that was already soldered up, cut the cable in half, stripped the wires, grabbed a multimeter to figure out which was which, and got it all wired up.

The arduino-gameboy-printer-emulator repo on GitHub proved the most useful to me in getting this all set up.

The process to transfer involves connecting the Game Boy and “printing” the photo you want while the Arduino serial monitor is open and set 115200 baud. The data will flow into the serial monitor window, then you copy it and paste it into the decoder and you get your image.

While I’ve got a DSLR, a phone, a Raspberry Pi camera, and other ways to capture images, the Game Boy Camera is definitely one of the more esoteric methods of doing so. Stay tuned to see what I actually do with it.