Kodak released the Charmera last month, a camera charm based on the Kodak Fling from the 1980’s. It’s smaller than a Bic lighter. The camera was released in blind boxes that sold out almost immediately. I was lucky to get in on one of the earlier order windows and got my hands on it about a month ago. After seeing it in person and playing with it for a few hours, I realized I had to buy more. Not just for myself, but because I knew they’d make great little gifts.
I saw something shiny and wanted to give it to the people I care about. I really do have a crow brain.
🐦⬛ Caw! 🐦⬛
In This Article:
Specs
- Image Output: 1.6MP
- Video: 1440×1080
- Image Sensor: 1/4″ CMOS
- Lens: 35mm ƒ2.4
- Storage: Micro SD (1-128GB)
- Onboard Storage is only enough for 2 photos
- Battery: 200 mAh
- Video Frame Rate: 30fps
- Photo/Video Format: JPEG/AVI
- Dimension: 58×24.5x20mm
- Weight: 30g
Design? It’s Cute
mood
You may have seen the Charmera on this little blog already. I just couldn’t resist putting it in a variety of my product photos. I’m sure it’ll be in many more to come. It’s just a tiny little device, a charming charm of a camera. Everyone I’ve shown it to has agreed, it’s cute. It looks neat. I loved it before I used it.
I don’t know what else to tell you. Some things are cute because they’re fluffy and have big eyes, others are just tiny cameras.
The design is practical enough. There’s a small viewfinder that provides a cropped and off-center preview of your photo. I find this works best if placed over your right eye and view forward with both eyes. However, I find the viewfinder, which takes up most of the back of the device, works best for lining up your shots.
On the back are two directional buttons and a selector. On the top, the power button doubles as a back button with a short tap, and there’s the shutter button, which you can also use to play videos. The menu is simple. Photo, video, or options. And those options are simple as well. This is the most “point and shoot” a camera can get.
Photo Quality
The key is to remember to have fun with it, not expect serious quality, kind of like my guitar playing
I’ve got a number of cameras in my apartment. You never stop to think about it these days, but even the average person likely has a lot of cameras in their life. It’s so strange to me that there was a time when digital image sensors were rare, and film took time to process. There was a time when I couldn’t take a photo whenever I wanted. But now I have a few of my old digital cameras. Some Polaroid and Fujifilm instant cameras. A film camera or two. The cameras on my electronic devices, my iPad, my Mac, my phone. But there’s only one digital camera I have for the purpose of whimsy. That’s the Kodak Charmera. Oh, you could argue the Polaroid Go I have and love is a camera made exclusively for whimsy, but as far as digital cameras that try to capture a nostalgic and fun feel, there’s just the Charmera.
I used a Moment macro lens for my iPhone to take this closeup with the Charmera
The best way to describe the photo quality of the Kodak Charmera is early smartphone photos. It’s better than the camera I had in my flip phone that I used to take photos of important life events with my friends, but not by very much. It’s low resolution, coming in at only 1.6 megapixels. It has a plastic lens that blurs details. The exposure settings blow out highlights and turn shadows into dark textured grain. It’s just how I remember digital cameras from the earliest days when we started carrying them with us everywhere. You’re best taking a ton of imperfect shots so you can pick your favorites out later for uploading or storing forever. Much in the way Polaroid photos feel more like real memories over digital photos, there’s something nostalgic and impermanent about these images. Like, by being less clear, they force us to remember more.
Video Quality
Did you know the first iPhone couldn’t take video? It was photos-only. Eventually there would be apps that could attempt it, and Apple would release their own video features eventually, but that first iPhone was only capable of photos.
The Charmera is better than the iPhone in yet another way in this case.
Technically, you will get 1080p videos out of this. They won’t seem “HD” though. First, it’s not widescreen, it’s in the same 4:3 format as the photos. Secondly, the video functionality is a bit underexposed and grainy. There are plenty of artifacts. Finally, there’s no flash for video, so you can’t try to make up for the underexposed video with flash.
I tried recording some bands at shows I was at while testing, but it absolutely can’t do this. Shows are often a bit dark, which means you won’t get much in the way of details from your videos, but the real issue is the micrphone. I tried at multiple shows, both close to the stage and far away, and it never picked up the audio properly. Concerts seem to be too loud for this mic. Even in larger venues and a distance away from the stage, I couldn’t get details out of the audio because it was nothing but a loud piercing noise to this microphone. If you want to pair the vintage video with accurate audio, my advice would be to record audio with your phone or some other device and dub it in later. I would love to record band practice or a music video with this. As long as you’re recording audio separately, it would look really cool. But without a separate mic, it’s just going to be a loud screeching noise.
Videos have another interesting limitation. You can only record 5 minutes per video file. It made battery testing easy, but outside of that, you might not like needing to stitch multiple 5 minute videos together. Though it does seem to be seamless, so you could do so without much difficulty.
Fun Filters
Nearly the same shot, different filter
In the photo mode, you can select from a number of filters. There’s cool and warm tones, black and white, and high contrast pop art colors, as well as fun frames. You can also add a timestamp to all of your images, which I like to do for a vintage vibe. Like old webcams, you can have a lot of fun with these modes. It takes me back to those old webcam apps and cellphone photos. There’s something nostalgic about these, to be sure, but it’s still fun today. Knowing the limitations of what you’re shooting with makes it more fun to find ways to take good photos. It forces you to think about how you capture your shots more. I couldn’t do it well back in the day, but I’ve learned a lot more about photography since my first cellphone cameras, and now I can have a lot of fun with a retro camera like this.
Battery Life and Charging
Even an old rug can look cool with these filters
Video battery life was easy to measure. The video cuts off every 5 minutes, but it’s still continuous. I was able to turn it on and let it run for about one hour before it ran out. An hour and about two minutes. So don’t expect to be able to film hours of footage with this without an external power source, you’re just getting the one.
For photos, it was a bit trickier. I did end up taking two short videos during my testing. However, besides those, I got about 250 photos before I started noticing the Charmera making some odd noises. The camera shutter sound wasn’t quite right, and photos took longer to process. I shot more photos, rapid-fire, to a total of 285 before it started turning off. I would say to expect to charge it after a few outings, every 200 photos, or 1 hour of video, whatever combination you hit first.
Is it enough? That’s up to you to decide. It’s not my primary camera, not by any means, so I only really take it out for novelty photos and a few shots. For every 20 I’d expect to take with a better camera, I might take 3 with this. For me, the battery is perfectly fine. It’s a bit on the short side, but I haven’t had it run out when I needed it, so I’d say it’s still got a decent battery life.
Besides, when it does run out, I still have my iPhone or even my mirrorless. It’s not like I don’t have other and better cameras available, this is just a fun alternative.
With a trickle charger, something providing 5W of power, it takes about 2 hours to charge. There doesn’t seem to be any information on what kind of chargers you can use, but the device charges with USB-C. It can sometimes get quite warm, even a little hot while charging, but never so bad that I was truly worried about it. Still, keep an eye on it when not using something that has a variable power source, like your computer. The LED on top won’t be lit once the charging is complete.
It’s a Blind Box
Package insert via Kodak
Don’t Labubu my camera. My girlfriend likes toys and trinkets out of blind boxes, but I’ve never been a fan. I like to know what I get, you know? Mystery flavors in candies can be fun, especially if you like all the flavors anyway, but in something that you’ll be spending $30 on—or more, I’d prefer to know what I’m getting into. I do like most of the Kodak Charmera designs, but I’ll be honest, I would not have fallen in love with this camera as much if I had gotten one of the designs I didn’t like as much. I’m sure lots of people will like the gray or blue Charmeras, but they’re just sitting at the bottom of the list for me. Instead, I lucked out and got my favorite of the common designs, the red one. I couldn’t believe I got the exact one I wanted, and was so excited. But I couldn’t help but wonder, how disappointed would I have been if I got one I didn’t like very much?
I like most of them well enough, but I really wanted one of my favorites, was less excited about about half of them, and would have been disappointed if I got one I didn’t like as much.
But know what would be more exciting? Getting exactly the one you want.
Package insert via Kodak
I fully plan to open all the boxes I’ve ordered for friends to make sure I give them ones I know they’ll be more likely to enjoy.
I get that blind boxes are having a moment right now, but it’s not for me. They reek of gambling and I cannot ignore the waste issue that comes out from that. This package is much larger than the camera, and the inside is a plastic frame! It is, to their credit, type 1 plastic, which is recyclable most anywhere, but plastic recycling is bullshit anyway and we should be focusing on eliminating all single-use plastic. This could easily have been an all-cardboard or paper packaging. It would have made the inside more opaque anyway, which is more common in blind boxes than clear plastic to avoid people peeking inside to remove the gambling aspect of blind boxes.
I have a few similar keyboards with small differences in keycaps, color, or switches. I’ve got dozens of Swatches with the same physical design. People will buy additional items just because they like more than one design. You don’t have to make things a blind box just to sell a bunch of something to people!
That said, would you consider more colors, Kodak? Just, you know, maybe for a future round? Just a thought. I like purple.
Software Support
Pocket-friendly for your adventures!
Since the Kodak Charmera takes a micro-SD card, you can simply remove the card to use it with just about any device that has a card reader. I have card readers for all of my devices, so this shouldn’t be a problem. However, for some of my devices, it is. Apparently, Android doesn’t recognize the format of the SD card. If it reformats the card, and I use it in the Charmera again, it once again is unrecognizable to my Android phone. This could be due to a bug for some Android devices with cards that contain 64Gb or more of storage. The guide calls out this issue specifically. I can’t test with smaller cards because I don’t have any smaller cards. All of my SD cards have at least 64GB! However, it works fine through the Files app on iOS and iPadOS, both with a direct connection on my USB-C iPads and an SD card adapter for my Lighting-equipped iPhone 13 mini and iPad. Obviously, both solutions work with macOS.
It is a little frustrating not being able to get this to work for Android. Still, the photos this camera takes are small, so even a 16GB storage card will store thousands of photos. You can likely wait until you get home to offload all those shots anyway, but it’s much easier to share directly. I’d recommend getting 8-32GB cards for this camera. Anything larger is just overkill and the smaller sizes will work with more devices.
Odds and Ends
When you just have to grab your pocketable essentials for the day
Besides the low-quality photos, which have their own charm, there is one complaint I have about this camera. The time it takes to turn it off or on. It’s a tiny camera, it’s perfect for whipping out of a pocket for a shot. However, it takes pressing the power button for three whole seconds to turn it on! That’s forever in photography time! I could understand it taking longer to turn off, as the power button becomes the back button when the device is on, but at least let me turn it on quickly! On more than one occasion while testing this I missed some perfect shots because my camera was still turning on.
Another issue I noticed, but haven’t had come up often, is that the bottom of the camera can get quite hot sometimes. Especially when charging and recording video at the same time, though this doesn’t always heat it up. There is a reset button on the bottom, recessed in a pinhole, and I’ve had to press it on one such occasion when the Charmera became hot and unresponsive. This did instantly fix my issue and none of my images were lost.
The Charmera comes with a small chain and keychain loop. I do wish the loop was more like a quick release carabiner, but it works. I actually replaced mine with a wrist leash, something I might use on any of my other cameras, mostly because I store it in my pocket. This makes it both stay in my pocket a little better and easier to grab and pull out quickly. Not that you can turn it on quickly anyway.
Overall
I have a few other Charmeras on preorder. Once they arrive, I look forward to sharing the joy they bring with my friends. It’s not a great camera, but it’s cute and it’s fun. With how great our cellphone cameras are now, a bit of whimsy might be exactly what your pockets need. We used to say that the best camera was the one you have with you. Now we all have fantastic cameras in our pockets. So maybe the best camera is the one you have the most fun with. Over the past few weeks, that’s been the Charmera for me.
You can sign up for a wait list on a few sites. Adorama is one I frequently use for camera gear. You can also watch Kodak’s site for the next drop, but they sell out fast, so perhaps also follow their Instagram for updates.