I’m a camera guy. I like taking photos and I’ve been taking them for long time. Back in the days of film cameras, which for me were from 1984 to 2001, I owned about six cameras. That was over that whole stretch. At any one time I probably had three cameras that I used regularly. A 35mm SLR with interchangeable lenses, a small pocketable 35mm point and shoot, and the third camera was some weird fun thing I was trying out. A small Olympus XA rangefinder camera is one example, an Advanced Photo System (APS) camera another, a Polaroid instant camera a third, and even a Gameboy Digital camera.
Now, in the digital age (for me from 2001 until now) I use even more cameras regularly. Of course I have a camera on my phone plus I have one on my iPad. Those are almost incidental cameras but I do use them all the time. Then I have a super zoom camera and also a smaller super zoom camera that I carry with me on my commutes. Lastly I have my DJI 3 stabilized video camera that I film my Walks in NYC with.
I also spend some time looking at new cameras on the internet. I like seeing what’s out there and shopping around for whatever the latest thing is. I’m often checking out micro four thirds cameras which I’ve always wanted one of but have never bought. I guess it’s not that important to me but I like looking at them online.
I tell you all of this to explain the latest camera that I got. The two primary places online that I look at cameras are Amazon and eBay. If I’m just looking for prices of cameras in general I go to Amazon but if I want a bigger range of prices, such as for used stuff, I go to eBay.
One camera that always pops up on my searches is this cheap “Vlogging Camera.” It’s called that because it has an LCD that swivels around and can face the front of the camera (I love a swivel LCD by the way). It is a 48 megapixel camera and also shoots video.
I’ve seen this camera branded various ways but they all seem to be the same basic model. That happens a lot with stuff these days. I’ve noticed it a lot with mens’ shoes too. I think a Chinese factory makes a lot of a product for cheap and another company buys that product, brands it, and then sells it cheap.
A lot of companies do this and we end up with a lot of identical stuff with different branding. It’s probably why I always see complaints on Amazon that the product pictured isn’t the one sent to the customer. I think companies are just selling whatever the factory sends them. I think a lot of drop shipping is involved too. This is when the company branding and selling the product never even has the product in their hands. I’d shipped right from the factory’s warehouse to the customer.
These 48 megapixel vlogging cameras are usually priced from $50 to $100. I don’t know if there is a difference between the cameras on those two ends of the price but if there is I haven’t noticed it. I’ve always been curious what a $50 camera could possibly be like but I never wanted to pay $50 to find out.
So there I was a couple of weeks ago looking at Micro Four Thirds cameras, yet again, on Amazon and, yet again, these $50 48 megapixel camera pop up. But this time I decide to go to eBay and see if they are there too. Sure enough they are except I see one for $13. That’s kind of a crazy price. That included shipping too. With tax the price ended up being $14 and change so let’s just call it $15. I ended up buying that $15 camera.
When the camera came the first thing I noticed, that I hadn’t even thought of, was that it didn’t come with a Micro SD card. Of course it didn’t. What would a $15 camera came with a Micro SD card? So I pulled one out of a Ambernic hand held device that I wasn’t using and put it in the $15 camera and got to testing it.
The first thing I noticed was that it wouldn’t save a photo. I had the resolution set to 48 megapixels and it would go through the motions of saving a photo but nothing would end up on the card. I turned the resolution down to 44 megapixels and it saved a couple of photos. I thought things were fine but then it stopped saving photos again.
I also shot video with the camera and it saved that (unless it didn’t) but the video was choppy and was unwatchable. Don’t know how many frames a second it was recording but it wasn’t enough.
After all these troubles with the camera the idea struck me that maybe I had the wrong Micro SD card for the camera. Sometimes devices have an upper limit on how big a Micro SD card can be. I dug out the camera manual and found the info I needed. A 128 gig SD card was the upper limit and I had an 256 gig Micro SD card in there. I went online and spent $10 on a new Micro SD card that had the specs that they asked for. I now own a $25 “$15 camera!”
Guess what? It didn’t matter. I turned the resolution up to 48 megapixels again and it saved one photo and then stopped saving anything. I turned the resolution down to 44 megapixels and it saved three photos and then stopped saving anything. It wouldn’t save video either. I put the frustrating camera down and left it.
It wasn’t until a week later when I was telling the story of this camera to someone that it struck me to turn the resolution down to 24 megapixels. It never occurred to me because who wants to shoot with a camera on half resolution? But all my other cameras have less than 20 megapixels anyway. 48 megapixels is crazy large. That was one of the reasons I was always curious about these cameras. How can such a cheap camera have such a large megapixel count? It turns out that it can’t.
Anyway it was just this morning that I tried the camera out on 24 megapixels. Everything worked fine. It saved all the photos I took. I guess it’s not a 48 megapixel camera at all. And the picture quality was not particularly good. Lots of grain. About what you’d expect from a $15 camera.