Kodak Charmera - The Crappy Camera!

Take a 35mm f/2.4 lens (probably made of plastic), a 1.6MP CMOS sensor, a tiny lithium battery, a little display and pack them into a 30-gram plastic keychain (ABS, to be specific).

Next, create 6 cute designs plus 1 mystery one, throw everything into a "mystery box," spam it all over social media, and boom—you get the Kodak Charmera, an "awful" little camera that went totally viral in just a few months.

I saw it one day in its nice little box at a shop and well… I fell for it too. 40 bucks for the tiny camera, plus the cost of a 32GB SD card to save an endless number of photos.

Do I regret it? Nope…

But let's be real: the Kodak Charmera sucks. Seriously. Mine overexposes almost every single time, the focus is supposed to be set to infinity but sometimes you can't even tell what it's focusing on, the colors are weird… it’s genuinely terrible.

Then I tried to make it comfortable. Yeah, because you actually have to think about how to shoot in a way that might give you a decent shot, and somehow, it works. Well, maybe half the time. Or more like 1/3 of the time…

But those times the photos actually turn out decent, with a bit of tweaking you can get some "fun" shots out of it—the product of a technology that’s meant to be playful rather than high-quality.

Finally, I recommend watching Robin Wong's video on su YouTube , "6 Months With KODAK CHARMERA - Some Tips & Tricks!"]. He definitely knows how to use it better than I do!

Happy weird-photos! 📸

PS:

• You can find the 3D printed camera case file here .
• On AliExpress, by searching for "keychan camera" you can find similar cameras at very reasonable prices.