Just before my Dad had to go on a long business trip to Canada, my Mom gave him a (very) inexpensive digital camera, the Aiptek PenCam Trio VGA. The camera produces... um... "sub-professional-quality" results when used as a regular digital camera, as you can see on these photos my Dad and brother took in Vancouver, but the camera is actually kind of fun if you use its shortcomings to creative effect. (Apparently I'm not the only one to think this way, as I've become aware of sites like loficam where many of the photos shared are ones where the el-cheapo digicam artifacted in an interesting way.)
Below are a couple of the test photos I shot after unpacking the PenCam. The flower picture, especially, turned out really wild — be sure and view its full-size .jpg. In case you're wondering what these huge .bmp files are doing here, that's the format the camera (wastefully) stores its grainy pictures in. Apparently they felt they couldn't do compression at this price point.
Click any image to go to its individual page. The image will appear in the next size up from that shown here, when available.
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Though this photo looks for all the world like it has 1980s-style cel-based effects animation overlaid on it to simulate a ghostly or radioactive glow, this is actually the unexpurgated shot out of the camera! The camera appears to really get confused by this shade of lavender. | |
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This one is a more subtle effect, but the way the camera has picked up this image it looks like the lamp has lost physical contact with the table and is floating slightly above it. Ooooooooooooo... | |
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