Friday Faux Film Folly

My most recent photographic purchase was a Chuzhao, a tiny digital camera built to mimic a 1930s era Rolleiflex twin lens reflex roll film camera.

At $33 it is basically a toy but with an adapter and a set of 17mm iPhone filters it becomes a system of sorts, with a polarizer and gradient filters plus star, wide angle, fisheye, macro, and prism lenses. The viewing hood on top unfolds to give a proper image (non-reversed) and it has auto-exposure and stores date and time in the metadata as well. It is switchable between color and monchrome (sort of a washed-out sepia) and it even does movies!

What is really hilarious is Amazon’s ‘pairing’ of it with some actual roll film (which wouldn’t be usable with it) — and for about the same price!

I’ve taken some pics with the Chuzhao; the tiny sensor imparts a certain impressionistic quality: