Sunday, 24 August 2008
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Epic Edit's $50 Camera Project :
Red Hot Find or a Photographic Cold Fish ?
Equipment: A generic plastic P&S branded “Akira”. I got it off an Ebay auction recently for 99cents but it cost $7.74 with shipping. I’m inclined to think it was a promotional gift, and probably made in China or Taiwan. It looks to me circa the 80’s or early 90’s.
Design: By today’s compact digital standards, the design is pretty bulky. Yet, for a cheap P&S, I was pleasantly surprised to notice that some of the design elements created a nice feel when handling the camera. There’s a “bump” on the back, on the film cover which instinctively is your thumb will rest on. In the front, there’re these grooves which presumably is where your index, middle and ring finger will grip the camera. Being a all-plastic P&S, my “Akira” weighs a lot lighter than it looks.
Features: Really, really, basic. Lens, shutter release button, rewind and advance wheels. Everything else, distance, flash had to be estimated. What prompted me to bid for this item was the hotshoe – this means that I can experiment by matching it to my lomo colour splash flash.
My biggest bane handling plastic cameras is that I am always afraid I might break something, but in this case, I really needed to yank the film spool quite hard to insert the film in as it works on a little springy system. So I was literally all thumbs - trying to release the spool while pushing the film in and trying to get the perforations to latch on at the same time.
Film: Fresh Centuria (Konica) 200.
The Shoot : A much awaited outing to Singapore’s new observation wheel called the Singapore flyer. The weather didn’t bode well as it had intermittent rain so the natural light was not always sufficient for a camera that was meant for outdoors use.
This was compensated for by the addition of my color splash flash (or so I thought.) The flash worked ok for shots in the open, unfortunately, as some shots were also taken in the observation wheel’s glass cabin, I had lots of reflections and flares, but this wasn’t necessarily bad for some of the shots.
Verdict : Perhaps it’s the film speed, but this camera doesn’t seem to do wide, landscape shots well. It also appears to be a camera that prefers being closer to its subjects. For example the shot of the hose (last image) shows more vivid colours and details than pictures of the trees outside my house. Perhaps this Akira Point&Shoot isn't quite a red hot find, but the addition of using the coloursplash flash does lift some of the images from the norm and gives it that toy camera sparkle.
Complete roll of film from this review here :
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