Jez Cunningham wrote:
> http://www.luminous-landscape.com/essays/funkeycam.shtml
>
I think the analogy is very loose. The Holga/Diana/? cameras have
wonderfully bad lenses, as do the funkycam and its ilk. However, the
Holga records its 6x6cm images on 120 film. Thus, the results of various
abberrations, soft focus and random asphericity of the lenses is
recorded with considerable dynamic range, long, smooth tonal
distribution. The subtle details of the lenses faults are recorded, in
effect, in quite high resolution, both tonal and spacial.
I was given a funkycam by a friend as an alternative to simply throwing
it away. I have since acquired another version of the concept, a
VistaQuest VQ-1005. In these cameras, the poor lens is supplemented with
a very low resolution sensor with poor dynamic range and somewhat
'chunky' tonal graduation.
This is not to say that they are not capable of creating artistically
interesting images, only that the quality/feel/whatever of these images
is very different from those of Holga and Co.
For one thing, the images from the funkycam are really small. A 352x288
pixel image (0.1 MP) is just a big thumbnail, to me. Upsizing so as to
retain the essential character of the image and without obvious
pixelization is not trivial. With primitive auto exposure and no
controls at all, a lot of shots just don't come off. Bright subject with
darker surroundings? Fuggedaboutit. I get a blob of white surrounded by
decently exposed stuff. On the other hand, the funkycam is much better
than I expected in modest light.
You may not have noticed that none of the sample images in Michael's
paean to the funkycam are taken under sunny conditions.
The VistaQuest has a much more useful image size of 1280x1024 pixels
(1.3 MP). It's not so much that it resolves much detail - an early Oly
digi Stylus with a real lens and 1024x960 image size (1.0 MP) resolves
much more detail. The point is that the image size is big enough to be
easy to work with. The VQ is sort of the reverse of the FC, with far
better exposure outside and pretty useless in less than bright light. It
will still blow highlights, but not all of them all the time. :-)
Anyway, these little thingies seem to be a way of creating, mostly by
accident, I suspect, some interesting "bad" images, but images with
quite a different character than those of the 120 film Holga & Co.
A few more notes for anyone looking to try one of these things:
The funkycams provide power to their internal memory full time,
resulting in battery life measured in single digit hours. Battery die,
images go bye-bye. So you actually are tethered to a computer, in a way.
Also, they require proprietary software to download the images.
The VQ is a bit thicker, in return for which it has an an SD card slot.
With a card, the internal memory is ignored, which may or may not
improve battery life, but with rechargeables and an SD card, it is less
important, as no batteries are wasted nor images lost. It has a USB mass
storage interface, so the card shows up as a disk drive. In fact, it may
be used in a pinch as an SD card reader.
It has two focus settings, portrait and mountain. They are very
approximate. On mine and those of others who have posted about them,
portrait seems to mean 18-24" or so and mountain something further away,
but not too far. However, I saw a post somewhere saying focus, such as
it is, is adjustable inside by screwing the lens in/out. Apparently
turning the lens is how the external near/far switch works. I haven't
tried that yet.
Ah, it's true. I just opened it up. Yes, there is a trick. One may
indeed adjust the focus range. I got it to focus on this missive at
about 15". Wow, there is a lot of sharpening being applied, bright halos
on text. Tomorrow in daylight, I'll see about setting distance focus.
Moose
Moose
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