So you want a digital Rollei?

[shawn]

Thanks, that one still isn't SOOC, though it does look quite a bit better. Less saturation, sky is probably a more accurate shade and the over sharpening/haloing is pretty much gone around the flower and in the trees in the background.

 

[DownUnder]

Now if somebody could invent Rollei digital 120 film, my photographic life would be almost perfect.

I have four of those beaut beasts - German, not Chinese. Buying a five-pack of roll film for them is now an investment in Australia.

We live in hope.

 

[DownUnder]

I knew I should have taken Chinese in college, 55 years ago. 😁

Me also. The way this planet is going, as a global lingua franca Chinese may soon be more useful than English.

And BTW, does Chuzhao mean Rollei in Mandarin? Or are we talking Cantonese here?

 

[yossi]

Me also. The way this planet is going, as a global lingua franca Chinese may soon be more useful than English.

And BTW, does Chuzhao mean Rollei in Mandarin? Or are we talking Cantonese here?

No. Chuzhao is not Rollei in Chinese. Chu-zhao are two Chinese words 初照. Literally 初means early, first, or classic. 照means shine, but can also means photography. I don’t know what is the intended meaning when this company chooses this name of the toycam though. Probably thinking of simple, minimalist way of photography.

 

[Rick Waldroup]

Mine arrived yesterday afternoon. Haven't had much chance to shoot with it, though. I charged it up and fooled around a bit with it and this camera is really going to be a lot of fun. The camera comes with an unusually nice, quick release strap. The first thing I found out was that the strap is way too large for the camera. By too large, I mean the strap is just a bit oversized for this small of a camera. So, I had an old Ricoh GR lanyard in my junk box that I put on the camera and that is much better. The presentation box the camera comes in is also really nice for an inexpensive toy camera. I hope to get some shots around the house in the next couple of days. Then, this coming weekend I will be attending a St. Patrick's Day festival and plan to really use the camera during that event. Should be fun.

 

[micromontenegro]

Well, it was a long, long time with no new cameras for me, so this toy will break the dry spell. Thanks for the heads-up!

 

[santino]

The camera lomography (or whatever they are called, obviously not Lomo from St. Petersburg aka Leningrad) missed to release. At that price it seems to be a no brainer!

 

[shawn]

Mine arrived today. It is tiny! Definitely fun to use but if anyone is thinking about anything semi-serious with this be sure to do some test shots first. It is 12 megapixels 3456x3456. Lots of shutter lag in AF, still some when you set it to AF only when you press the button inside the crank.

In reasonable light (meters at ISO 100, f5.6, 1/200) the noise reduction it applies is brutal. At 1:1 it looks more like a painting than a picture.

This is SOOC jpeg. Click on it twice to see it full size.

It doesn't write any shooting data to the exif but based on the NR and the limited DR it might be shooting at a high ISO all the time or at least ramps it up very quickly. Will try in full sunlight tomorrow to see if that improves.


Still for $30-$50 it is a fun little toy that can fit in a shirt pocket.

 

[Dogman]

Mine came this afternoon. I've not yet used it except to charge the battery and take a couple of snaps of the computer screen to see if it works. It does.

I haven't looked close but does anyone know how to set the date? Mine defaults to 09/08/2024, presumably the date it was made. Kind of a pain to have to reset the date in Lightroom every time I import photos from it.



..........................................

 

[DownUnder]

... It is 12 megapixels 3456x3456. Lots of shutter lag in AF, still some when you set it to AF only when you press the button inside the crank.

In reasonable light (meters at ISO 100, f5.6, 1/200) the noise reduction it applies is brutal. At 1:1 it looks more like a painting than a picture.

Still for $30-$50 it is a fun little toy that can fit in a shirt pocket.

Too true. Quids for sure it won't cost $30-$50 here in Australia, land of high prices for every little thing.

Interesting comment about the "looks more like a painting". Some years ago I had a period of converting many of my lovely landscapes into oil paintings with my Faststone software. Fun to be able to do them in-camera even if the charm of paint soon wore thin with me, and nobody showed the slightest interest in looking at my Velvet scenics, or buy one when I exhibited six at a local art show. One tries and learns. I sold a few mounted 4x5" sepia toned on FB paper, but with the darkroom donkey work involved the effort wasn't worth the AUD $15 I got for each image.

As for this camera, I looked in all the usual places, but they appear to be all sold out. Or low stocks. Or both.

Now if someone with enough smarts will repurpose the original Kodak Box Brownie as a digital snap shooter...

 

[yossi]

Mine arrived today. It is tiny! Definitely fun to use but if anyone is thinking about anything semi-serious with this be sure to do some test shots first. It is 12 megapixels 3456x3456. Lots of shutter lag in AF, still some when you set it to AF only when you press the button inside the crank.

In reasonable light (meters at ISO 100, f5.6, 1/200) the noise reduction it applies is brutal. At 1:1 it looks more like a painting than a picture.



This is SOOC jpeg. Click on it twice to see it full size.

It doesn't write any shooting data to the exif but based on the NR and the limited DR it might be shooting at a high ISO all the time or at least ramps it up very quickly. Will try in full sunlight tomorrow to see if that improves.


Still for $30-$50 it is a fun little toy that can fit in a shirt pocket.

Cool doggie!

I got a note from the local post office that mine will be delivered by end of today. I wish I am unlucky enough to get a prototype which doesn't have NR/sharpening built-in 🤣

 

[yossi]

Haha mine has just arrived!

Can't wait to take a few quick test shots. No, it ain't prototype with RAW output😅
Full size images have obvious sharpening artifacts but not too brutal. If viewed at 1600x1600, the artifacts are not very obvious.

Two SOOC jpeg images, one in colors :

The next one is from in-camera B&W, SOOC:

Downsized to 1600x1600:

Conclusion: for a toy camera at this price point, I shouldn't expect too high IQ. It is a fun little camera, and am happy with it as is.

 

[Rick Waldroup]

The one thing that did surprise me when I got the camera was the lack of a lens cap for it. The viewing lens is no lens at all, just a piece of plastic. But there was no type of lens cap for the actual lens. Not really a gripe, just an observation. I have shot toy film cameras since I was a kid and most of them did not come with any lens caps either. I did find an old, padded lens pouch in my junk box that the camera fits in perfectly, avoiding banging around in my camera bag.

I did notice that the B&W jpgs are warm, like a slight sepia tone. I prefer a more neutral or slightly cooler tone, but these warmer jpgs should be fun to play with. I am a firm believer in working with whatever a toy camera provides. After all, it is a toy camera- let it act like one, warts and all. It is simply a matter of using those quirks and warts to your advantage to produce some really cool photos. I shot a Holga lens on my m4/3 cameras for years and some of the best photos I got from my m4/3 system came from using that cheap, 15.00 Holga lens.

I have been downsizing the past few months and my extremely small, everyday carry bag now holds four compact cameras- a Camp Snap toy camera, the newly arrived Cuzhao toy camera, a Lumix LX100, and a Ricoh GRIIIx.

 

[Dogman]

Warm B&W. Yep. But I made it even warmer by toning in LR. Again...I haven't played with the camera much since I got it but this is one I shot from the computer desk yesterday while examining it.





I think it will be fun to play with.

................................

 

[x-ray]

I have a question for the digital experts here.

When I received my little Rollei a week ago I just picked it up and started shooting pix. No reformat of the card and everything went just fine. I downloaded the images that you can see in my samples. I didn’t reformat and just continued shooting more images. I downloaded those and they looked fine.

Today I took a little road trip snd shot probably 30 more images on the same card but had reformatted it in my Mac. When I preview the images in the camera they looked great. When I got home I went to my desktop Mac to download them and no images showed up on the card. WHAT? I tried my Mac laptop too and no images. When I insert the card back in the camera and hit the preview button I see my images. What’s going on?

I tried different reformatting formats with no luck. Images appear in the VF but not in the folder. When I look at the card in disc utility it doesn’t see any data on the card. I even tried a recovery software and it didn’t see any data.

Interesting, I put the card into my card reader on my desktop machine and drug a file of images into the card and it worked fine which indicates the card is functioning properly.

Another interesting thing, the book doesn’t tell how to reformat the card in camera but I figured it out. Pressing the two buttons that are mid camera between the lenses will reformat the card. I thought that would resolve it but my computer won’t recognize the card if I reformat in camera.

I’ve tried reformatting in camera, with my Mac, downloading direct from the card with a card reader and with a usb cable. No luck. I even reset the camera, no luck. Even using disc recovery software didn’t reveal any images.

I ordered a Sandisc card and will try that and if that doesn’t work the camera go back to Amazon.

I’m lost!

 

[yossi]

I don't have a spare card to play with it, but just out of curiosity, I formatted the memory card in-camera and connected it via the supplied cable to my good old Mac Mini. No issue. It shows up on the desktop and images in there are readable. I used a dedicated card reader and connect it to a newer MacBook Air. Same, no issue reading the image.

When I use "Show Info." to check the memory card, it is in MS-DOS (FAT32) format. As shown below:



You may wanna try formatting it in your Mac with this MS-DOS (FAT32) format. Your default file format might be different (say, Mac OS Extended).



Btw me no digital expert in any way😊

 

[shawn]

Where you looking at the disk using the finder directly or through something like lightroom? The camera might be dumb and base its image numbering just on the last number on the card. If so when reformat the numbering would have reset the 1and files would gave repeat names. Some image programs will hide what it suspects are images that are already imported (based on the name).

If you are just looking in the finder that won’t be it. If it is in the finder are you seeing any directory at all? If not the camera might be flagging it as an invisible directory which won’t be seen that way.

I will play with it tomorrow to see what is going on.

 

[x-ray]

I appreciate the info.

I’m looking at it in the finder and there’s no directory. I even tried a file recovery software and it didn’t see any images. Again when I put the card in the camera the images play back normally. ????

I did not try Fat32 and will give that a try tomorrow. I have another card on the way and will try that when it arrived if Fat32 doesn’t work.

The strange thing is when I formatted in camera my computer wouldn’t recognize the card.

Another day tomorrow and another try.

Thanks all, very much appreciate your help.

 

[shawn]

What version of MacOs are you using? I just tried formatting the card in camera (took a bit to get it to select OK) and took some shots. It does reset the file numbering. The disk mounts fine in the finder and the DCIM directory shows right up with all the pics inside. Disk was formatted Fat32 by camera.

BTW: Formatting is just press and hold the middle button on the left when viewed from above. The right button displays what might be firmware date.

 

[x-ray]

I think I have Catalina. My machine will go one OS newer but I have software for my Imacon scanner that won’t run on newer OS. Hasselblad bought Imacon and discontinued these scanners annd updating software and no one produces a compatible software.

Initially when I got the camera my computer saw it just fine so I don’t think it is my OS. I’m guessing its due to my Mac defaults to a different format and I need to format rhe card to Fat 32.

I’ll give Fat32 a try later. Other than that I have a new card coming but I’m thinking that’s not the problem now.

Thanks all!