Browsing: Compact Cameras

You’ll likely need no introduction to the Kodak Charmera — the original $30 / 30g miniature keychain camera that sold by the bucketload last year. Its viral popularity inevitably drove up the price, but that increase has just been wiped out for the Amazon Prime Day sale — the Charmera at Amazon for $29.74 (US)…

Instax has clearly taken note of the Kodak Charmera digital keychain camera’s viral popularity and wants a piece of the action. Enter: the new Instax Pal 2. Its new look is a major departure from the original golf ball-like Instax Pal — so much so that this camera could have had an entirely new name…

Well, this is a new one. Godox caught everybody by surprise when it announced the C100, a slim, rectangular point-and-shoot camera built around a transparent rectangular screen that also functioned as the viewfinder… and it also worked as a light meter for film photography. What, many asked camera nerds, was going on here?

Camera technology has come on leaps and bounds throughout the 20th and 21st century, but one of the most important developments was the invention of the CMOS image sensor. This invention, dubbed the ‘camera-on-a-chip’, is the technology that allows everyone to carry high-resolution cameras around in their pockets.

Contrary to what you might think, the best-selling cameras of the past couple of years haven’t been made by Canon, or Nikon, or Sony, or Fujifilm. They haven’t been professional mirrorless models costing thousands of dollars. They have, in fact, been a pair of ultra-cheap point-and-shoot compacts from the oldest name in photography – Kodak.