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imomus
Last week I needed a new digital camera and saw a neat one -- something called an I Snap Camcorder AV-60, made by "Camson Japan" -- in the window of an electronics store on 5th Avenue. It was pretty hard to convince the burly men in the store -- I think they were Mexicans -- to part with the camera. It was the last of its kind, they said, and they weren't sure where its box and power supply were. They showed me lots of other cameras, but something about the Camson intrigued me. It had very tiny dimensions, recorded sound separately from video (good for podcasts and interviews) and had a flat base and swivel screen (both essential for tripod-free portraits). I haggled the Mexicans "down" to $120.
This camera has turned out to be mysterious, terrible, and great. I can't find a single reference to it, or its allegedly Japanese (but probably Chinese) maker, anywhere on the internet. Nobody on Flickr, for instance, uses a Camson. What's more, the pictures it takes are pretty awful: there's a blue cast on everything, the flash is pathetically inadequate, it's terrible in low light. As a result, I tend to take the kind of pictures I took in the early days of digital photography: full-on, broad daylight images of flat, graphic-designlike subjects. When I do take indoor shots, I'll often have a thumb in the region of the lens and have to boost the contrast (and therefore the grain) enormously in Photoshop, as in the shot above, taken at Jan's udon party on Sunday night.
The great part is that bad cameras sometimes take much more interesting images than good cameras. I suppose it's an extension of the lo-fi aesthetic -- why would someone choose 8-bit sounds, for instance, when they could have "sophisticated" digital synthtones capable of burbling across the sound spectrum in quad? Well, as the newly-released Germlin THRASHR album demonstrates (and Germlin is Joe Howe, also seen in the picture above, and of course responsible for the sound of the Joemus album), there's a ton of character in cheap and cheerful low resolution sounds.
Joe and his girlfriend Emma are Berlin residents now, and today they're biking down to Oderbergerstrasse to visit Bonanza Coffee Heroes. I'd join them, but Hisae and I have to head back to Jan's apartment: we're covering it for the next edition of Apartamento, the "everyday life interiors magazine" which applies lo-fi -- or perhaps "slow-fi" -- principles in its approach to design. Hisae is taking the pictures. Not with my new Camson, but her old analog Nikon. When it comes to capturing funky ambience, you don't want too funky a camera.
Joe and Momus play together at West Germany on June 24th.
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(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-04 10:33 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-04 10:44 am (UTC)It seems like kind of a cool little oddity, though, and the swivel screen does have some nice potential applications.
The problem with placing value on "crappy" digital technology, though, is that virtually any effect you might cherish in such a device can be easily reproduced in post-processing, even if taken by a better product. And of course, the nicer camera will also let you take all sorts of higher quality pictures as well. The "Camson" will only ever be able to take pictures like that.
Tangentially, I've found myself annoyed with many in the "lomography" movement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lomography), who champion amateurism and rulebreaking, all the while acting like elitist snobs toward anyone who dares to shoot digital photos.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-04 10:53 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-04 10:55 am (UTC)I did briefly consider an essay on whether this might be the digital equivalent of lomography.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-04 11:03 am (UTC)I am thinking these thoughts too. For the past year I've only used the camera on my Nokia as I kept breaking any decent digital cameras I bought. I find some of the effects really quite cool, esp if I desaturate them and crop them to a square to look like an old 70s snapshot. Mainly I think I like working within the limitations - like writing a song using only a few chords a limited palette of sounds. You know.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-04 11:06 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-04 11:29 am (UTC)If most of the lomography people I've met or read the thoughts of weren't such hypocritical douchebags, I wouldn't have such a problem with the "movement" in general. What they don't seem to realize is that their photos only really impress two sets of people: those who don't know the technical details of how such a visual effect is achieved, and other lomographers. Any great pictures I've ever seen in that style still required that the photographer on the other end have some idea what he/she was doing in the process.
cawfee tawk in WC1
Date: 2009-06-04 11:35 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-04 11:36 am (UTC)Both you and the lomographers would intentionally be working with flawed/crappy/limited technology, and purposely tweaking things to produce odd and sometimes beautiful effects.
Most of the reason why Lomo photos look the way they do is because the cameras often only have one aperture/shutter speed setting, which must be used in all lighting conditions, so the only thing you can really tweak is your film. They also often have light-leaks, due to poor body construction, and of course cheap plastic lenses that produce barrel distortion and vignetting.
I'm guessing the "Camson" probably suffers from some of the same problems, especially exposure-wise.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-04 11:39 am (UTC)Anyone can buy a digital camera, and anyone with money can buy a high-end medium-format camera, but being a Lomographer requires (a) a modest amount of money, (b) being in the know (though these days it's not much of an issue, given that Urban Outfitters have been selling Lomos to suburban kids (and donating a chunk of the profits to the Republican Party, but that's another issue) for years; remember, cool is a positional good, and everyone being cool is logically impossible), and (c) having the cultural reference points that value the particular choice of a particular cheap 35mm camera.
I'm told that the Diana is the hipster lofi film camera these days. That and a stock of expired 120mm film (going cheap, as the manufacturers didn't anticipate their clientele going digital).
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-04 11:43 am (UTC)Re: cawfee tawk in WC1
Date: 2009-06-04 11:47 am (UTC)One place I didn't expect to find good coffee but did: Reykjavík. Te Og Kaffi on Laugavegur has the best coffee blends I've had so far this side of Melbourne.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-04 11:48 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-04 11:52 am (UTC)Re: cawfee tawk in WC1
Date: 2009-06-04 11:56 am (UTC)Thrasr and d
Date: 2009-06-04 12:32 pm (UTC)No words about the the Strasbourg Zenith Concert hall or Massimilano Fuksas, Nic?
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-04 12:33 pm (UTC)Here's Aaron Rose's photo blog, he uses a cheap digicam too - http://www.rvca.com/advocates/?cat=3
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-04 12:49 pm (UTC)Digital gippos and Teenies hippos swimming in worthless whizzing bits
Date: 2009-06-04 12:57 pm (UTC)Re: Thrasr and d
Date: 2009-06-04 12:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-04 01:11 pm (UTC)What irks me is the fact that the Lomo people go out of their way to promote this amateur, no-rules, anti-formalist aesthetic, but then they do a 180 and spout this really essentialist view about film, and how it's "just more real," etc ... as though digital imagery doesn't consist of the exact same process, only instead of light hitting a piece of film, it hits a sensor.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-04 01:14 pm (UTC)Momus, you should just convert all your "Camson" pictures to grayscale.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-06-04 01:18 pm (UTC)That said, yeah. They really should cover Lomo.
tinnitus
Date: 2009-06-04 01:39 pm (UTC)I didn't know how to get in contact with you but your article in the wire interested me greatly. I play guitar in a band called Girls and have very slight tinnitus which I do not want to get any worse. I hate going to concerts as they are always too loud and sound awful to me. I am really scared. I never see anybody talk openly about this and so your article was really wonderful. There is so much which goes against making music quiet and I don't know how to deal with that. I like records. I am looking for help and advice.
Also I enjoyed the Gongs' record. Peter is friends of friends through Oberlin and I have liked all the music of his that I have heard.
Sincerely,
John Anderson
john_orbach@yahoo.co.uk
Re: cawfee tawk in WC1
Date: 2009-06-04 01:51 pm (UTC)