2023 Weekly Challenge Week 51: Coleman Xtreme 2

Back in January for one of my first reviews I reviewed an off-brand pocket camera that was produced by GE.  It was indeed a bizarre fever dream of a cheap (but modern) digicam that became prevalent right before the rise of Smartphones when every company even ones that normally did not make cameras wanted to have a slice of the point and shoot digital camera market.

Last week I shot another of these, this time a design that traded a limited optical zoom to be waterproof; the Coleman Xtreme 2. 

By reviewing this camera and reading its manual I learned a few things from that gave me an idea of how the GE was so bad as well (namely the discrepancy on the sensor- which I will dive into later).  For now let's get some product photos up.  I'm not going to lie, aesthetically it has a unique design which gives it points over the GE RS1400 off the bat:

By the mid 2010s smartphones had started to take away more and more of a share of the pocket camera market.  However there was still one last big push to make pocket cameras and one niche in particular remained: Waterproof cameras.  These cameras were bought for both taking on a cruise in case you decided to go snorkeling and to give to kids who could throw the durable little cameras around without risking breaking your really expensive smartphone.

This camera is something my significant other won at a raffle 8 years ago, and had not been opened or used until my review of it.  Luckily unlike the Olympus D390 I bought that was DOA this camera did indeed work when I put two new AAA batteries (yes it takes AAA batteries) into it.

Just like the GE RS1400 you can't find any information about this camera online: when it was first made, any sort of reviews, etc. This camera is a bit more common to find for sale however then the RS1400 on E-Bay or overstock stores that have likely been sitting on a palette of them since the mid 2010s.

Since I have the box and manual for this camera I found that the manual has some interesting information which tells us more about this camera and even contradicts the writing on the outside of the box and top of the camera.  

The manual hints that this camera was released in 2015 however it is impossible to verify this as just like the GE camera no one other then myself has ever done a review on it that I can find, and no one with an endorsement from Coleman for sure. There's probably reasons for this as its well, pretty terrible.

Lets expand on the contradictory information from the camera's manual: on the top of the camera and package in bold text is written "16 Megapixels". Which was about what one would expect to see on a late model digicam right?  However when you open the manual you are told that the camera has a 1/3.2" CCD sensor with "5 million ACTIVE pixels" so in reality it is a 5mp camera.  

Which tracks for the size of the lens and overall poor build quality of this camera.  Coleman likely took surplus sensors from one of the first generation smartphones they could get in bulk for next to nothing and slapped it into this waterproof case.

How it gets the 16 megapixels is by in-camera interpolation which is a fancy way of saying it just blows up the pixels in this particular case.  Think of how a Digital Zoom works- its similar to that except instead of cropping in on one area of the photo this expands the entire image.  The results are just what you expected pretty terrible.

On top of this, this camera is a Manual Focus pocket camera.  Yes you heard it, Manual Focus on a Digicam in 2015.  This automatically takes away points from the GE RS1400 as while the AF on that camera wasn't great atleast it had it.

I was originally going to review this camera two weeks ago, but after a day of shooting with it in "16 megapixel mode" and not having any real useable images from that set, I decided to take a step back; there had to be something I was missing as there was no way the camera could be that bad.

Well, I was half correct.  Not really mentioned in the manual there was an adjustment lever on the side of the camera for focusing between macro and landscape (infinity focus).  The camera was by default set on Macro mode and I found that this setting threw everything out of focus as even photos taken up close were extremely blurry.

Switching to the landscape mode helped a lot, but the camera still had a hard time getting a solid focus on anything with this early cellphone style pan-focus lens it had on it, but it provided me with a few useable shots instead of practically none from the first time I took it out.

After I figured that out, and set the resolution to what the hardware of the camera could do (5mp) results got marginally better.  I got one really nice shot with it that did in earnest really surprise me (which you will see below, the landscape photo of the frozen lake) but only under very specific conditions did it pull that off.

Otherwise the shots were noisy at any ISO, blurry, smudged and lacked detail. It reminded me very much of the early attempts at phones for photography which furthered my hunch that was exactly what it was: a sensor and lens from a five to ten year old phone that was re-packaged into a waterproof case.

As such, I have some insight that since the GE RS1400 had similar quality issues it likely was the same story; take an old camera phone sensor, put it into a camera and then market its Megapixels to be higher then it actually was to make it sell. It's such a bizarre shovelware strategy which is proven to work especially in days before online reviews were centralized.

The build quality however was much better then the GE RS1400.  The rubber grip made it feel nice in your hand and the buttons including the shutter were more responsive; which for a cheap waterproof camera is impressive.  The video button was not on the top next to the power button and the power button itself was not easy to accidently double tap to turn off right away.

Overall however this camera was worse then the GE camera which is saying something.  It lacks basic features such as Autofocus.  The menus are extremely laggy and irratating to navigate.  The camera has a silent shutter with a terrible shutter lag even if you leave the digital shutter sound on. 

When you take a photo with this camera the "shutter noise" actually fires off before the shutter does making it extremely easy to move the camera while taking a photo as the tone implies that the the photo taking is done.

To sum this review up: I only liked the fact that this camera's design was fun and unique and otherwise want to chuck it into the middle of the Mississippi River (but I won't because A its not mine and B it is so terrible its a fun conversation piece). 

And finally, let's move onto the photos, starting off with the one photo that I had to do a double take on when I got it to the computer because it somehow actually looks really nice, unlike the other 150 or so photos I took with this camera over the last week and a half.

2023 Weekly Challenge Week 50: Canon Powershot A75

Earlier this year I reviewed the Canon Powershot A510, and the sensor and design this camera is very close, almost identical to the Powershot A75 even if they are in two different series.

In the early 2000s this was actually fairly common to do especially for Canon.  Prior to the Powershot ELPH series which standardized the smaller more compact form factor Canon tried a lot of different designs in their pocket cameras, with some being discontinued to show up in later model series. If a model design did well, they may re-use the design a year or two later under a different series.

Released in 2004 this camera is almost identical to the Canon Powershot A510 (released one year later in 2005) in physical button layout, size and form factor.

The Canon Powershot A75 has a 1/2.7" 3.2mp CCD sensor.  The Canon Powershot A510 that proceeded it has a newer and very slightly larger (smaller fractions under 1" sensor size is bigger) 1/2.5" 3.2mp CCD sensor.

The similarities between the sensor are not the only thing these two cameras share. They both have a indented finger grip, full manual controls with a 4 way dpad, optical viewfinder, 3x optical zoom and could both take filters/lens adapter by the optional attachment that could hook up to the camera's accessory ring.

Both are powered by 4 AA batteries making them popular for digicam enthusiasts. The one noteable difference is the A75  uses Compact Flash and the A510 takes SD (not SDHC) memory.  The A75 is a little more useful as it can read CF cards up to 1gb whereas the A510 will not read any SD cards over 512mb; which makes locating memory cards that work with the A510 a lot harder to work with.  While you should be able to use the more standard 2gb SD card, mine would not read it and seemed to struggle with anything over a 512mb card.

There is one unfortunate issue with both of these cameras, and this is Quality Control issues.  These were entry-mid range consumer pocket cameras and they were not built to last.  Both are plagued by a variety of wear and tear issues (which happens for cameras that are almost two decades old.  However after talking to other Digicam collectors it seems very common that both of these camera series have a lot of defects) ranging from dead sensors, to dead zoom or AF motors on the lenses and worn out control buttons.

My A510 and A75 both have flaws which prevent me from giving them a full honest review.  As I mentioned when reviewing the A510; one of the D-Pad buttons was worn out which prevented me from changing the time/date or adjusting other functions such as exposure compensation.

During this review, the A75's optical zoom motor got stuck to the full wide focal length.  The lens would still extend and retract as it was turned on or off; but after two photos the zoom lever on the front would no longer engage the motor to extend the lens to zoom in.  Autofocus did work, but I was locked to one focal length.

The shooting experience of both cameras was very close to each other.  Startup and shutdown time was good, but there was a slight input control lag as well as a shutter lag when a photo was taken.

The mechanical issues of both cameras along with the fairly meh and slightly laggy shooting experience makes me very unlikely to shoot with either of these again.  

If one was searching to get the mid 2000's Digicam look and wanted the ability to do manual exposure then both of these cameras would be an option provided you were able to find one in better condition then the ones I own. In this case, the sensor in the A510 seemed slightly more vibrant and sharper so I would recommend that over the A75 but the differences are pretty slight.

So with the defect limitations of the particular camera I have, here's a few examples of I was able to get for one of my last reviews for this 52 camera project.

2023 Weekly Challenge Week 49: Fujifilm Finepix T550

 Towards the end of the pocket camera era (early to mid 2010s) camera manufacturers made one last push to make small, compact and cheap pocket cameras that offered one thing that Smartphones did not (and still do not) offer: a true seamless optical zoom.  

Most of these late model pocket cameras shared a few things in common:  they were very basic to use with a lack of physical controls, had a decent optical zoom range for their size (typically around 10x) and a lot of these actually ran CCD sensors to keep costs down making them the last CCD based cameras that were available new on the market over a decade before they were deemed obsolete by the camera industry as a whole.

Back in Feburary I already reviewed one of these cameras; the Canon Powershot ELPH 190. The Fujifilm T550 was a direct competitor to this camera with a similar sub compact size, solid optical zoom and aimed to be a true no-thought to use point and shoot camera.  Of the two cameras the Powershot ELPH 190 wins hands down in just about every respect, which I will go over in the rest of this review.

Released in 2013 the Fujifilm Finepix T550 as mentioned before was a budget sub-compact "super zoom" pocket camera, and among the last push at making true consumer (not hobbyist) pocket cameras that were as easy to use as a Smartphone.  Smartphones would obliterate this market in 2018 making the slightly newer Canon Powershot ELPH 190 (2016) the true swansong to this class of low-end true point and shoot cameras.

This camera features a 12x optical zoom and a 16mp 1/2.3" CCD sensor, making it very similar on paper to the late Powershot ELPH series (150-190).  

Ease of use on both is very similar with both cameras allowing the user only to change basic things like set a timer, turn on or off the flash and enable macro mode.  Some more advanced features such as setting a manual white balance or adjusting the EV are available in the camera menus but are not easy to access.  

Overall this camera is pretty standard for a consumer grade point and shoot camera; where it is assumed the average person will never need any "Manual" features and just trust the camera to make all the decisions for them (very much the same mentality for Smartphone photography as well). With this in mind, the Canon Powershot ELPH 190 does a lot better job of providing really nice photos straight out of camera with not a lot of fidgeting in post or frustration while taking the photo IE having focusing issues or shutter delays.

The T550 has a number of flaws in operation that I have found in other camera reviews such as focus hunting AF (ELPH SD630), Movie button too close to the power button often causing me to record a video instead of turning the camera off (GE RS1400), overall non-responsive when compared to competing cameras (IE ELPH 190) and fairly meh overall image quality when you compare it to the ELPH 190 which is a lot sharper and has better dynamic range in spite of having a similar sensor on paper (16mp CCD vs 20mp CCD 1/2.3").  

I felt less inspired to shoot this camera this last week as a result of its technical flaws combined with the fact that December is not typically a very interesting month for Photography in Minnesota or Wisconsin. So I did not get a good variety of photos with this camera; mostly just quick "snapshots" of still life or plain landscape scenes.

As such, this is a camera which will be on my sell list for 2024 to trim out of my collection.  It still gets that vintage high contrasty CCD look; but there are a lot of cameras in my collection that do a better job of this with a lot less effort.

2023 Weekly Challenge Week 48: Olympus Tough TG 620

 Earlier this year I reviewed the Olympus Tough 8010, a camera that is nearly indestructible but that's really all it has going for it. Last week I shot a better version of a Tough series camera a mid-range Tough TG-620.

The king of waterproof cameras is the Olympus Tough TGX series.  Sadly even a TG1 commands insanely high resale prices so getting ahold of one for cheap is really hard to find at a price that warrants my "fun digicam budget".

So today I'll review the best Waterproof camera I own and for a small sensor compact it's relatively solid even if you don't take the water/dust and shock resistant build into factor.

At first glance the TG 620 is a pretty unassuming little waterproof camera.  It has the offset lens design which can be a challenge when trying to shoot two handed and like all waterproof pocket cameras has an internal optical zoom so no lens extends when the camera is powered on or zoomed in.

Released in 2012 it has a pretty standard 1/2.3" 12 MP CMOS sensor.  Being a CMOS sensor does give it a slight edge to ISO noise and it did a perfectly fine job up to around ISO 1250 when I used it indoors.  For a small sub 1" pocket camera getting useable shots at ISO 1250 is actually pretty solid.

Startup and shut down times are nearly instant, thanks in large part to not having an extending lens. Menu operation is smooth and the UI is vastly improved over the Tough 8010.  It has a really nice shutter button for the size of the camera as well.

Other controls such as the 4 way joystick and zoom toggle are a little small; but it is very uncommon to see a pocket camera with an actual joypad control vs the more standard 4 way D pad buttons with the OK in the middle.

The lens on the TG620 is also the sharpest least distortion internal zoom lens of any internal zoom pocket camera I own easily beating both the Tough 8010 and the Sony T300 by a fairly wide margin.

Overall this camera would still fall just outside of a pocket camera I'd take out as a daily shooter which would comprise of the Panasonic ZS100, ZS50, Canon Powershot S90 and Olympus XZ-1.  It easily ranks in the upper half of pocket cameras I enjoy shooting which will likely save it from the chopping block (the Olympus Tough 8010 on the other hand yeah that can go.)

It's not a perfect pocket camera by any means.  Its short 5x optical zoom is only a 3.9 apeture while at wide angle.  This makes it fairly slow and limits what you can do with it indoors.

This camera has one unique feature, an LED assisted macro mode. It has limited useage and I wouldn't try using it with anything moving such as an insect but for a small sensor camera it did pretty good at picking out small details on this sandwhich, getting it in focus in a room with very low ambient light otherwise.

 

 

Altough I can't compare this camera to a more flagship waterproof camera like the Olympus Tough TG5 or the 1" sensor waterproof Sealife camera if I was in a situation where I needed something waterproof such as while wading or swimming or if I was on a vacation that had water based activites that would be high risk for other cameras; I certainly could get some decent shots out of this camera.  

 

Sure the detail falls off at 100% crop and sure it has a fairly limited Dynamic Range to work with due to being a small sensor CMOS chip, but it can still deliver some shots that look better then my Cellphone which marks it off as a win in my book.

Overall it was a lot more enjoyable to shoot and had much more consistent output results the the Olympus 8010 and was also more consistent then the previous week's Canon Powershot ELPH SD630; granted this camera is 6 years newer.

So while I can't give this a glowing review for every situation as it can at times come up short; if someone was looking for a camera for a high-risk situation that can be bought for cheap and still had serviceable controls, operation lag and output quality; I certainly could recommend this camera to them.

To wrap it up enjoy some photos I took with this camera into the first two days of the last month of 2023: