I’ve been in the camera review business for over 15 years and in that time I’ve been fortunate enough to have tested and taken photographs with countless cameras, spanning a wide variety of designs and intentions. Curiously, as I prepared to review the Pentax 17 it occurred to me that I had never once reviewed a new production 35mm film camera in all that time.
Kenko Tokina has announced an ultra-compact digital camera called the Pieni II that is small and lightweight enough to be held between to fingers and takes tiny 1.3-megapixel photos and videos.
Dubblefilm has announced the SHOW Keiko, a special edition reusable film camera that is named after the orca that starred in Free Willy.
Are you sometimes annoyed by having too many easy and convenient ways to take perfect photos? Don’t despair…
The hobbyist LEGO designer who goes by Pandis Pandus (and who previously created a 1914 Ur-Leica LEGO camera) is back with an even more elaborate concept kit. It's a 1950 Leica IIIf LEGO camera that comes complete with a box, display stand, lens, finder, and caps.
Northern Arizona University recently decided to conduct a photography shootout that pitted two of its photography professors against each other. The challenge: to shoot the best graduation portraits they could with toy digital cameras designed for children. You can see how it went down in the 8.5-minute video above.
dubblefilm, the brand best known for its unique film stocks, has launched its first 35mm camera. The SHOW is an affordable 35mm camera that's basically a reusable "disposable camera" that's cheap to buy and fun to use.
In a bit of a call back to the classic DigitalRev TV "Pro Tog Cheap Camera Challenge," YouTuber Jessica Kobeissi enlisted one of her professional photographer friends for a special photo challenge: get the best possible campaign/editorial photos using only a $22 bunny camera. Hilarity ensues...
Filmmaker Joerg Daiber recently published a new creation to his YouTube channel LittleBigWorld, where he shares timelapses of places around the world made "miniature" using a tilt-shift effect. His latest, dubbed Flower Power, takes you to Brussels to watch the creation of the biennial Flower Carpet.
My name is Corban Lundborg, and I just completed a series of rare military survival courses at Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane, Washington, during February 2020. I was authorized to bring a film camera to the field portion of SERE (Survive, Evasion, Resistance, Escape) School. Equipped with a Holga 120N plastic camera, I was able to capture four rolls of Ilford HP5+ medium format film.
There probably isn't a photographer in the business who hasn't heard someone say, "You must have a great camera!" But is the camera really the primary reason behind a great shot? Putting this to the test, Jessica Kobeissi teamed up with photographer Brandon Woelfel to see what can be achieved with a toy camera.
After its launch in the early 1980s, Holga cameras became popular options for people looking to shoot medium format 120 film on the cheap. Production was shut down in late 2015, but now the camera is making a comeback: the classic Holga 120N is coming back this year.
Want to mix things up a bit, gear-wise, without breaking the bank? Photographer Mathieu Stern has an idea for you. In this short video he shares four cheap toy camera lenses that he thinks are worth your time.
I bought a Holga Digital through the Kickstarter fundraising campaign in August 2015. It is a fairly early model, so by the time you read this there might have been some tweaks or firmware updates.
I have never owned the original film Holga (or any medium format camera for that matter), so this review is based on the behavior of the Holga Digital camera on its own merit, not compared to its film predecessor.
If the only things you care about in a digital camera are novelty and thinness, then the "Paper Like a Digital Camera" is for you. It's a retro-styled toy camera that measures just 6mm thick thanks to its barebones construction -- it's essentially a set of tiny camera components sandwiched between paper parts.
Photographer Mathieu Stern found an interesting way to shoot digital photos through the plastic lens of a 1950s toy camera. After removing the back of a Photax Heanar Type V camera, he simply strapped it to the front of his Sony a7II using rubber bands.
After being designed in 1981, the Holga medium format toy camera developed a cult following among photographers who valued its affordability and unique lo-fi results.
But all good things must come to an end: Holga cameras will no longer be produced from here on out.
The popular Holga lo-fi camera is about to get a digital makeover. The Hong Kong-based company Holga Digital has unveiled a new digital camera system based on the design of the vintage toy camera.
DigitalRev TV is back with another episode of the Cheap Camera Challenge. This time, renowned fashioned photographer Lara Jade is tasked with shooting haute couture fashion photographs on the streets of Hong Kong using a 0.3-megapixel Anpanman camera packed with "awful features".
Photographs of galaxies far far away rarely convey just how large what you're looking at really is -- after all, how can you even fathom something that is measured in light years across. But these photos of the cosmos do an even worse job. By applying the tilt-shift effect in post, these photos show galaxies and nebulae look like they could fit comfortably in the palm of your hand.
Great news, Micro Four Thirds shooters -- you no longer need Instagram filters and the like to make your photos look... how shall we put this... distressed.
That's because toy camera powerhouse Lomography has just released an arsenal of plastic lenses that can add multiple-exposure, fisheye, color tint and other effects to previously ordinary shots.
The Bonzart Lit should look somewhat familiar since we shared its big brother, the Ampel, with you back in June. But even though the toy camera-style design is the same, the two cameras offer very different experiences.
The Ampel was a not-quite-toy camera with a tilt-shift lens built in, whereas the Lit is a very-much-toy camera that offers a fun and strictly non-professional photo experience on the cheap.
We've seen cameras sent to the edge of space to take pictures, and we've even seen toys photographed at the edge of space. What we had never see, however, was a toy camera photo taken from the edge of space -- until now that is.
The photo above was the result of a summer-long project by a class at Harrington College of Design in Chicago, and it's the first Holga toy camera photo taken from the Stratosphere.
When visiting Lancaster, Pennsylvania recently, Portland, Oregon-based photographer Lindsey Boccia made the mistake of not bringing her camera bag along for the journey. Boccia wanted to play around with analog photography, so she decided to buy some disposable cameras.
A quick visit to a nearby camera shop netted her four one-time-use cameras for about $6 each. She then "distressed" them to turn them into experimental lo-fi toy cameras.
Getting your camera noticed if it's not also a smartphone or a high-end shooter is getting harder by the day. And phones such as the newly announced Galaxy S4 Zoom are quickly shrinking the quality gap between the camera phone and the regular old camera.
Remember that tiny Lomo-inspired fisheye camera we featured back in February? It turns out there's actually a market for that camera, and the gadget's creator is now reaping the rewards as orders for the gadget have been pouring in.
Leica's Hermes edition M9-P is a beautiful camera that comes with a steep price of $50,000. If you don't have a spare 50 Gs lying around waiting to be burned, check out this replica created by Halifax, Nova Scotia-based photographer Chris McVeigh using 114 LEGO pieces. Sure, it may not be functional as a camera, but it's a great conversation piece, and one that you can build yourself at home!
Are you a fan of small things? UK-based photo enthusiast Greg Dash is trying to launch "the world's first digital Lomo-fisheye." It's a pint-sized digital toy camera that packs a 170-degree fisheye lens.
Wet plate photographer Ian Ruhter has received a good deal of attention over the past year for using a custom camera van to create giant collodion process metal photos. When he's not turning large sheets of metal into photographs, he's sometimes working on the opposite side of the spectrum.
One of his recent interests has been shooting pint-sized photos using a Holga toy camera that he converted into a wet plate camera.
It was about this time last year that the world was introduced to the Holga iPhone case: a strange-looking gizmo complete with a rotary wheel packing 9 separate lo-fi filters for the toy-camera, retro lover in you. Well, much like the Swivl we reported on yesterday, Holga has decided that bigger is better, and is attempting to break into the DSLR market with a new rotary wheel lens for DSLRs.