Review: Camp Snap Camera - Part 2

 Note: The Camp Snap Camera was purchased by Guitar Ted and is being reviewed without the knowledge of Camp Snap. I was not paid, bribed, nor am I affiliated with Camp Snap in any way. I always strive to give my honest thoughts and views in any review I write.

This Camp Snap Camera will focus (sorry, no pun intended!) on the usage on the bike and out in the field where I take most of my images. I have a very unique use scenario in that I require my camera to be able to be operated one-handed because 95% of the time I am taking images while moving on my bicycle. 

I can make very minimal adjustments with my Olympus TG - 5 but things like manual settings and the like? No way I have time for that. So, the Camp Snap Camera really speaks to me as it has super-simple operation. 

For a look at the camera basics and first impressions, please see my earlier review HERE. Now on with this review.

The conditions for this particular review were varied. Things started out being very bright and Sunny, but transitioned to cloudy skies later on in the ride. Because this ride started so early in the morning and the Sun was lower in the horizon and the Camp Snap Camera is so prone to blowing out images, I decided to wait until the Sun climbed up in the sky a bit before I started using the camera.

These two images are pretty much untouched. I do have a "dehaze" feature in my photo editing software that I like to run all my images through and that is all I did to the above two images. 

I was mildly surprised that these came out so well. They have a weird, almost film-like quality in their overall hue and tone. The detail is pretty good, and contrast is fine. You'll notice that in the lower image the sky is blown out a bit. No surprise there. As I stated, this camera is really prone to this problem. 

 

The above two images are landscapes taken in directions away from the Sun. The camera handles the sky a lot better here and the only issue I see is how the siding on the church reflects enough white light that it blows out the details of the side of the building a bit. Otherwise I think I could do some work in the software program and make these stand out a bit better. 

Here in these two images you can see where the Camp Snap gets a bit overwhelmed due to both of these shots facing more toward  the Sun. The top one faces South, while the bottom one faces East. 

The top image just looks a bit off in the greens and blues, kind of like the gravel picture above. The bottom image is nearly unusable. In fact, I had two images from this batch so blown out that the images appeared as yellowish squares with no detail visible. 

This shot was processed.

I was a lot happier with images taken in diffused light or in cloudier conditions. Here you get more usable imagery. The landscape above is serviceable for my purposes and was run through the process I use for images on the blog. 

Comments: Here are a few more thoughts on this camera since I have had it. These are in no particular order.

• Surprise! Yep, you cannot review your shots, so you do not know if you actually have anything usable until you download them into a computer. I suppose you could do this with a laptop in the field, but why? As things stand, you are going to find shots blown out so badly that you cannot use them, or shots that are off-kilter and you wish that you had taken another. You can always take several shots each time and hope that one will work. 
• Start-Up: The start up for the camera is laughably slow compared to today's cameras. So, be prepared to wait a few moments longer before you'll be able to take that shot. This means you may miss a few shots. But then again, you probably are not doing sports imagery with this camera, right? 
• Landscapes were better than expected. Still, you've got to be very careful about lighting or the camera gets overwhelmed and blows out the shot. 
• It is super-lightweight and the temptation to throw it into a gear bag for your ultra-light set up is pretty high, but the camera seems pretty fragile and I would caution anyone concerning rough handling and vibrations over a long period of time. 

Conclusions: Camp Snap is a fun little camera for casual, goofing off shots that you are not going to cry about if they come out poorly or not at all. I think there is some basis for creative folk to take images from the Camp Snap and to manipulate them into art or creatively produced imagery that is interesting if you take the limitations of the format and challenge yourself to making something from that. 

That said, I don't see this as the camera you are going to rely on to document the trip, to capture the graduation party, or to make money with using images straight out of the thing. There is just too much randomness and chances that your important shots won't come out right, or at all. 

Especially since just about every smart phone has a decent camera in it that will do the job "good enough" for 90% of the population. In my case, I want to push the Camp Snap camera to its limits and see if I can get interesting faults and creative inspiration as a result. Maybe use this as a B&W format camera since the resolution is low and the images have a bit of graininess. For under $70.00 I can count this up as a chance to be inspired to make some art. Kind of akin to buying a cheapo guitar for the change of pace and character of the instrument.