In the early 2010s just prior to the influx of Smartphone photography everyone was making a pocket camera. People were still carrying pocket cameras because while early smartphones were able to take photos the quality of photos from early Smartphones could not compare to a pocket camera as they can now.
During this time phone photography just wasn't popular and hadn't caught on yet, it was a lot like comparing early digital cameras to Film. People were still accustomed to reaching for a pocket able digital camera instead of their phone. More people were used to having physical buttons to take photos, navigate menus and change settings with. So this era was the golden sunset to the pocket camera age (though like film, shooting with Pocket Digital cameras has now become a Niche and a bit of a hipster craze so it will not go away fully any time soon).
This meant a flooded market on the pocket camera side and everyone wanted to make a bank in this market during this time. If you couldn't make a better camera; then you could make a cheaper one and trick people into buying it.
This was the strategy of brands like Kodak, Vivitar and Polaroid for making "affordable" pocket cameras along with other companies that normally didn't make cameras such as GE, Insignia, Sanyo and Coleman (yes you heard me right; Coleman as in the camping supplies company- I'll be reviewing a Coleman camera later this year).
I have a few of these off brand cameras from the late 2000 and early 2010s and many of them share a lot of similarities.
Many will claim to have a high resolution sensor (as in the GE which claims to have a 14mp sensor in it though the output quality looks like something a 3mp camera from 2003 would take) so what the marketing lists as the "resolution" may not be the true resolution of the camera but artificially interlaced to create a larger image. Since I cannot find a user manual or any information about the RS1400 I cannot verify if this is the case with this camera or not.
They all have cheap plastic bodies and most will run on AA batteries vs having a dedicated battery pack. Many of these off brand cameras will have very low resolution back screens making previewing the photos on the camera after they have been shot look pretty terrible. So let's dig into the first of these off-brand "Knock Off" pocket cameras that I have access to. Behold the GE RS1400:
Getting details about this camera online is extremely difficult. If you search for the GE RS1400 on Google you will get a single digit number of hits on the camera which is unheard of. There just isn't a lot out there. I can't even find a release date.
All I know is I originally bought this camera at a Radio Shack in one of their last years of operation between 2011 and 2013 for $50. Which for a new digital camera was pretty damn cheap. Turns out this camera is pretty obscure and rare in spite of it being terrible. I imagine a lot of them didn't last as long as mine did and quickly got returned or turned into E-Waste.
As with all of my reviews I am looking at the still photography aspect only. I am not covering the video quality but they generally go hand in hand.
The camera is lightweight and plastic. The buttons are spongy and not very responsive which includes the shutter button. The video record button is right next to the power button on the top so needless to say I accidentally recorded a few videos when I was trying to turn the camera off.
Turning the camera on and off is surprisingly responsive. There is a short delay between writing each photo, but it isn't terrible and no real burst mode to speak of.
The RS1400 doesn't have any priority or manual modes but for a camera like this I shouldn't be surprised. Overall its just very underwhelming to shoot. It has a underwhelming feel and it has an underwhelming 4x optical zoom. The photos from the camera are equally underwhelming, and we will get to that later.
The live view does render at a smooth 30fps so its not choppy like some early pocket cameras were. The startup and shutdown lag is about on par with what you'd expect from a camera in this era. I'm not sure if its a CMOS or CCD sensor but the photos are very bland, cold and low color depth and WB accuracy as you will see in the unedited photos below.
While it is one of the worst cameras I've used it is not the worst I have used. There are plenty of pocket cameras and kids cameras which are far more frustrating to use (sadly the Kids Camera I did own I e-wasted since it was just that unusable and I also stripped the cheap battery door screw when installing the first and only set of batteries into it, so sadly I won't have a kids camera in this review cycle unless I happen to buy one before the year is over.
Here's the un-edited photos from this camera:
As you can see, the above photos taken straight from the camera are cold and lack any real color depth. They are very de-saturated. A lot of these photos have an ugly haze on them (espically the one of the Rooster) that shows up and while it can be corrected is something I normally would not have to deal with.
With the magic of Lightroom I'm able to clean them up into something more worth posting; however with most cameras I would not have to put nearly as much work in to make them look respectable.
Overall I'd give this camera maybe a 3 out of 10. It wouldn't be anything I'd want to carry and take around with me unless I had no other option. The photos off of it did clean up in LR surprisingly well but this is more credit to my editing software then the camera itself. It's one that will probably sit on my shelf for some time again unless I really want a challenge.
But for how obscure this camera is, and how little information I can find out about it this makes it a worthy collection piece for sure. Even if its not good it is Unique and sometimes that's all it takes to perk my interest.
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