Three things I learned using the Kodak Charmera

I’ve been trying to get back into casual photography over the past six months. Unfortunately, photography can be a pretty expensive hobby, so I am pretty grateful that I got a Charmera over the holidays to play around with!

What is a Charmera?

A Charmera is a popular keychain camera, which have grown in popularity over the past couple of years. This one is pretty expensive for a 1 megapixel sensor, but it comes in a blind box with six different designs, including one ultra rare design! It’s perfect for consumerists such as myself.

Unfortunately for me, I got this blue one that I don’t mind, but don’t love either. If anyone has a cool one (the yellow or red) and wants to trade, do let me know!

Now that I’ve been seriously using this camera for slightly over a month, here are three things I’ve learned about the camera, and photography in general:

1. Wow, this camera has no stabilization!
   • Everything is shaky, especially if you have stress tremors like me. Snap more than one photo because it’s a huge gamble on which photo will not be slightly blurry.
2. Don’t count on a good sunset
   • Surprisingly, low-light performance is slightly better than what you’d expect on this camera. What isn’t good however, is any photo taken during dusk. The camera is not good at picking up a large light range and will end up overexposing the entire photo as a result. Shadows still work, but focus on even lighting in your photos.
3. People are WAY better to shoot than non-animated subjects
   • For some reason, photos with people really pop out with this camera. I believe it’s because it softens out silhouettes and faces, which really helps with the crappy look of the cameras.

Ultimately, I have really enjoyed using the Charmera, despite all of the issues I’ve faced with the formatting with the SD card. The camera works particularly well with street photography and those
candid moments that come and ago, and I’ll continue using it for that purpose. Looking forward to exploring photography more and being mindful of the photos I take!