The Bad Camera

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A thread to celebrate how bad cameras are. Viewer be advised, you are about to witness such horrors as "not quite Canon skin tone" and "not Arri DR", and maybe even a dash of "costs more than a Black Magic". I apologize in advance. If you also have such horrible things happening to you, please share, as difficult as it may be.

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The ones above suffer from not being full frame and also not having ff35 with superb 4K s35 and superb s16 4K options.

These ones are also small sensor, and yes, it is fixed lens, 1.6MP Samsung blackberry rip off. I still suffer from the trauma, because the screen was less than standard def, and not perfectly calibrated:
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(random shots of crew on their breaks between setups on an obscure indie film that shot on a real camera, the Alexa, but in ProRes only, so the film was a complete failure.)
I used to have fun, I was so arrogant.
 
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Great thread idea. We should definitely burn all the films made with sub-optimal cameras, they can’t have any value. This would go a long way to helping heal the actors who were distorted beyond Reality by filmmakers thinking that it was acceptable to shoot that way. Linklater, Lynch, Duplyas bro’s, sonderbergh should all be held and forced to learn what proper cameras are.
 
At one point I thought I could go out into more remote country side away from the cities and document some of the life before modernity fully settles in. But I think miniDV was barely full standard definition, and only 25Mbps, or something like that. Basically not worth using and I learned nothing, and as much as I enjoyed meeting people, I basically shouldn't have gone at all, with such a pathetic camera. Did I mention it was interlaced? Oh yeah. It didn't even make whole pictures at a time, had to scan twice just to get Standard Definition.

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Beautiful stuff, James. But to be honest, interlacing can go to hell. Unless you want to do a period digital home movie effect, I'll be glad to never see it again
 
Digital Bolex. Horrible camera. 24fps only 200-800 ISO max. Can’t shoot in the dark. Tiny 2k only S16mm format. Nothing automatic. Have to use old school photography skills and a light meter. Crappy vintage 16mm/S16mm c-mount glass.

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In the 80s and 90s, some commercials and music videos were shot with a camera so cheap that it could not fill a standard-definition frame, even after two passes. There were black bars at the top and bottom. Lame.
 
Anyone wants to compete in lo-fi is going to need to try to beat this bad boy. I actually messed around with one of these back in the day, pretty fun toy.

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Razz16mm said:
Digital Bolex. Horrible camera. 24fps only 200-800 ISO max. Can’t shoot in the dark. Tiny 2k only S16mm format. Nothing automatic. Have to use old school photography skills and a light meter. Crappy vintage 16mm/S16mm c-mount glass.

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I am glad you told me those horrendous specs, otherwise I might have enjoyed all of the gorgeous frames you posted.
 
Allow me to geek out a bit more on the Fisher-Price PXL-2000. I remember the commercial alongside my others for Transformers, G.I. Joe, Bonkers, and Pocket Rockers (okay, maybe different years).

It was a cool idea, to use an audiocassette, albeit 9 times normal speed. Even so, its resolution was only 120x90, 15 fps, and black and white (at least people could not complain about the color science). A short bit in Richard Linklater's Slacker was filmed with it, and if you search for it on Youtube you will find a mix of nostalgia and avant-garde cinema. This 0.12K camera is now a collector's item, selling for $400 on eBay, which is roughly its original price ($179) adjusted for inflation.

P.S. Barbie Video Girl has better quality
 
puredrifting said:
Anyone wants to compete in lo-fi is going to need to try to beat this bad boy. I actually messed around with one of these back in the day, pretty fun toy.

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I remember these in the big glass cases at Toys 'R' Us, next to the video game consoles and other "expensive" stuff you couldn't touch(remember taking the paper ticket up to the register to pay for something and then going to the security booth to pick it up?). Luckily, my family owned a retail business, that among other things, sold consumer electronics, so I had full on (consumer) camcorders to play with. Woohoo... VHS. Then Super VHS. Then Hi-8. The first camera I actually owned, though, was my first Betacam I bought after I turned 21.
 
Run&Gun said:
I remember these in the big glass cases at Toys 'R' Us, next to the video game consoles and other "expensive" stuff you couldn't touch(remember taking the paper ticket up to the register to pay for something and then going to the security booth to pick it up?). Luckily, my family owned a retail business, that among other things, sold consumer electronics, so I had full on (consumer) camcorders to play with. Woohoo... VHS. Then Super VHS. Then Hi-8. The first camera I actually owned, though, was my first Betacam I bought after I turned 21.
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Good times. I dealt with all of those horrible formats. To this day, my nightmares are riddled with Hi-8 tape dropouts. S-VHS was better but still crap.
 
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