lxforrest
Newbie
With my $15 3rd party "apple pencil" and a sketch tool app, my ID design journey began.
Since I’ve used Camp Snap, Flashback, and Paper Shoot for a few months and taken hundreds of photos, I’m able to summarize the pain points based on my user experience:
1. Large, bright, accurate viewfinder like my beloved Agfa Optima.
Due to no screen set up for live view, users communication to the world is purely through the viewfinder. The brightness, especially the FOV accuracy are the most critical factors
This is a 3D-printed 40mm large viewfinder I bought some time ago for my GR3x. Interestingly, its size is exactly the same as the Agfa Optima's—1 inch wide by 0.9 inch tall. I highly suspect that the Chinese seller actually salvaged the glass from a Seagull 6 (青岛6), which was a legal Chinese copy of the Agfa Optima made back in 1974.
2. Minimum shutter lag.
All three cameras I’ve tested have some level of shutter lag. Based on my testing, here’s the ranking from least to most noticeable: Flashback – Camp Snap 103B – Paper Shoot. Flashback has almost no shutter lag, which might be due to the mechanical design of its shutter. Camp Snap ranges between 0.2 to 0.5 seconds, and it's worse when the flash is on, since the LED flash needs to power up after you press the shutter. Paper Shoot has the most noticeable lag, ranging from 0.4 to 1 second—especially when taking the first photo.
With the noticeable shutter lag, I found it difficult to use the Camp Snap and Paper Shoot for street photography—especially when trying to capture walking subjects. It’s even harder to get a good shot of my 4-year-old son, who’s basically turned into a little monkey lately. As for the Flashback, while it performs well with minimal shutter lag, I don’t feel comfortable using it as my main carry-around camera due to its low image quality and the occasional blown-out exposures.
I'm not entirely sure what causes the shutter lag, since I'm nowhere near an expert when it comes to camera hardware. But I suspect a powerful enough processing chip—like the ones used in mid-range action cameras—might be the solution. They don’t seem too expensive, judging by what’s available on Amazon or AliExpress. If I can build a camera with decent image quality and minimal shutter lag, I might finally be able to truly 'live in the moment,' instead of in a '0.5-second-later' moment.
3. Film-like Filter Quality
All three cameras claim to offer “film-like” filters to add a retro vibe to your photos. However, in my opinion, none of them truly replicate the look of real film—especially when compared to what I can achieve using Lightroom presets or .cube LUTs. There are a few reasons behind this:
Above: Camp Snap SoC = JL3331B
Above: Flashback Soc = ESP-32
Above: Paper shoot = NT96565MQG
I think my approach to creating better film-like images will be something like this:
4. Higher quality lens
As mentioned in the pain points above, all three cameras use M6 lenses or low-end pinhole-style lens modules, similar to those found in cheap digital cameras. It’s unclear whether these lenses are made entirely of plastic or if they include some glass elements (though I’m not about to throw them into a fire to find out). Due to their limited resolving power and noticeable corner distortion, all three cameras suffer from a lens resolution bottleneck—where the lens resolution is lower than the sensor resolution.
For example, if the lens can only resolve detail up to 2MP but the sensor is 8MP, you’ll still get an 8MP image file—but only about 2MP worth of actual detail. The remaining 6MP are essentially noise or empty data that doesn’t contribute to real image quality.
I believe there’s a cost-effective way to solve this. From my experience with action cameras, even the budget models can produce better images than similarly priced digicams. One major reason is the use of M12 lenses with relatively large apertures, which allow more light in and offer better optical performance overall.
Above: M6 lens camera module
Above: M12 lens, as you can see the size difference of these 2. M12 tends to have better image quality then the M6 lens
I guess I will choose to use high quality M12 lens with f1.4 - f1.8 aperture on my camera, this will reduce the mismatch between lens resolution vs sensor pixel and create a better image quality without any heavy interpolation or sharpening.
After a few days of thinking during my office work and few weeks of research after my office work, I finally got a sketch drew out (this is my second draft actually, first one was just too ugly to show anyone)
To be continued... @rewindpix.com
Since I’ve used Camp Snap, Flashback, and Paper Shoot for a few months and taken hundreds of photos, I’m able to summarize the pain points based on my user experience:
- Highly inaccurate viewfinder (the signal from eyeball to brain = 40-50mm, actual photo = 24-28mm and I hate post editing to cut someone's leg/hand out)
- Shutter lag became a big issue, especially when the damn kid starts to sprint outside of the frame (don't like the feeling of only lived in the moment 0.5 to 1s ago)
- Film filter. All 3 claims that they are to replace the disposable camera, but I don't think they studied hard enough to mimic disposable film like photos (Flashback one35 might be better, since it got a server for "dark room" process, but 24 hours wait time....)
- Not so great lens quality. The lenses are so tiny that I am afraid they might not be able to feed enough pixel for the 8MP (Camp snap) or 12MP sensors (Paper shoot). The lens itself caused the resolution bottleneck
1. Large, bright, accurate viewfinder like my beloved Agfa Optima.
Due to no screen set up for live view, users communication to the world is purely through the viewfinder. The brightness, especially the FOV accuracy are the most critical factors
This is a 3D-printed 40mm large viewfinder I bought some time ago for my GR3x. Interestingly, its size is exactly the same as the Agfa Optima's—1 inch wide by 0.9 inch tall. I highly suspect that the Chinese seller actually salvaged the glass from a Seagull 6 (青岛6), which was a legal Chinese copy of the Agfa Optima made back in 1974.
2. Minimum shutter lag.
All three cameras I’ve tested have some level of shutter lag. Based on my testing, here’s the ranking from least to most noticeable: Flashback – Camp Snap 103B – Paper Shoot. Flashback has almost no shutter lag, which might be due to the mechanical design of its shutter. Camp Snap ranges between 0.2 to 0.5 seconds, and it's worse when the flash is on, since the LED flash needs to power up after you press the shutter. Paper Shoot has the most noticeable lag, ranging from 0.4 to 1 second—especially when taking the first photo.
With the noticeable shutter lag, I found it difficult to use the Camp Snap and Paper Shoot for street photography—especially when trying to capture walking subjects. It’s even harder to get a good shot of my 4-year-old son, who’s basically turned into a little monkey lately. As for the Flashback, while it performs well with minimal shutter lag, I don’t feel comfortable using it as my main carry-around camera due to its low image quality and the occasional blown-out exposures.
I'm not entirely sure what causes the shutter lag, since I'm nowhere near an expert when it comes to camera hardware. But I suspect a powerful enough processing chip—like the ones used in mid-range action cameras—might be the solution. They don’t seem too expensive, judging by what’s available on Amazon or AliExpress. If I can build a camera with decent image quality and minimal shutter lag, I might finally be able to truly 'live in the moment,' instead of in a '0.5-second-later' moment.
3. Film-like Filter Quality
All three cameras claim to offer “film-like” filters to add a retro vibe to your photos. However, in my opinion, none of them truly replicate the look of real film—especially when compared to what I can achieve using Lightroom presets or .cube LUTs. There are a few reasons behind this:
- Low resolution and poor lens quality, especially due to the low-grade pinhole lenses they use. That said, 12MP—or even 8MP—isn’t too bad for viewing on a phone-sized screen. These resolutions are also more than sufficient for applying Lightroom presets or LUTs to create decent film-like images on a computer or app. I tested some photos from my truly vintage digital camera, the Panasonic DMC-LC1 (a 21-year-old 5MP camera), and they still looked great after post-processing.
- Image processor limitations in the SoCs they use. For example, the Camp Snap uses a JL3331B chip. I couldn’t find any official datasheets or info on it, which makes me think it’s not widely used—at least not in imaging devices. Paper Shoot, on the other hand, uses the NT96565MQG, a chip found in many low- to mid-range action cameras. According to the datasheet, it supports 4K 30fps video and sensors up to 20MP. This likely explains why Paper Shoot delivers the best image quality out of the three. They even offer “film filter cards” (sim card–like cartridges) that produce more convincing film-style effects than Camp Snap. Flashback's approach is shockingly fun, It uses an ESP32 chip, which is commonly found in DIY projects—including basic webcams. However, the ESP32 doesn’t seems have any built-in image processing capabilities for film emulation. That’s probably why Flashback users have to sync to an app and wait over 24 hours for their images to be processed.
Above: Camp Snap SoC = JL3331B
Above: Flashback Soc = ESP-32
Above: Paper shoot = NT96565MQG
I think my approach to creating better film-like images will be something like this:
- Fine-tune the ISP (Image Signal Processor) in the SoC to get a solid baseline—especially for accurate auto white balance. That will give a good foundation for the overall look.
- Leverage the SoC’s processing power to apply 3D LUT directly to the image (Multiple filters can be selected in camera). I’m not sure yet how demanding this would be on the processor or how long it would take to process each shot—but I’ll give it a try.
4. Higher quality lens
As mentioned in the pain points above, all three cameras use M6 lenses or low-end pinhole-style lens modules, similar to those found in cheap digital cameras. It’s unclear whether these lenses are made entirely of plastic or if they include some glass elements (though I’m not about to throw them into a fire to find out). Due to their limited resolving power and noticeable corner distortion, all three cameras suffer from a lens resolution bottleneck—where the lens resolution is lower than the sensor resolution.
For example, if the lens can only resolve detail up to 2MP but the sensor is 8MP, you’ll still get an 8MP image file—but only about 2MP worth of actual detail. The remaining 6MP are essentially noise or empty data that doesn’t contribute to real image quality.
I believe there’s a cost-effective way to solve this. From my experience with action cameras, even the budget models can produce better images than similarly priced digicams. One major reason is the use of M12 lenses with relatively large apertures, which allow more light in and offer better optical performance overall.
Above: M6 lens camera module
Above: M12 lens, as you can see the size difference of these 2. M12 tends to have better image quality then the M6 lens
I guess I will choose to use high quality M12 lens with f1.4 - f1.8 aperture on my camera, this will reduce the mismatch between lens resolution vs sensor pixel and create a better image quality without any heavy interpolation or sharpening.
After a few days of thinking during my office work and few weeks of research after my office work, I finally got a sketch drew out (this is my second draft actually, first one was just too ugly to show anyone)
To be continued... @rewindpix.com
