Thursday, October 25, 2001

From the "el cheapo" but cool department: Last year for Christmas I got a "Pencam" digital camera, a little super-cheap digicam originally sold on QVC (or HSN?) and now sold on TV and other stores. The coolest thing about the camera is that it is small as hell and produces useable pictures. And when it produces less-than-great pictures, sometimes they turn out kinda cool anyway. I use it occasionally, mostly outside because the thing needs loads of light, and anything less than bright indoor light or daylight makes it emit a disapproving noise and refuse to take a picture. It's fun, though not a substitute for a real multi-mega-pixel cam that has a flash--and because of that it tends to sit on the desk more often than not. And then I stumbled upon this website: pencam.org. It's a gallery of pencam images put together by another pencam user, who apparently takes a lot of pencam pics. Like me, this guy puts all his pics through photoshop to balance things out, and you can see from his galleries that when you do this you can get some nice pics. It reminds me of the Fisher-Price Pixelvision camcorder that was available in the late 80s. That cam recorded low-quality, low-resolution black and white video onto standard audiocassettes, and was obviously aimed at children. But because the images it produced were interesting and stylized, the thing ended up becoming popular with artists and video experimenter. So, what started out as a cheap little toy ends up being a sought-after tool for artists/fetishists. So I wonder if that's what'll happen to the Pencam in another 5 years... mmmm, probably not. But maybe I'll be inspired to make my own pencam gallery.
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