The Lo-fi camera market has had a turbulent 12 months. But new camera touted a few months back to be a new entry player with retro styling and switchable filters. The Retro Snap looked like a tweaked Camp Snap – the current budget favourite of the field and there an element of shameless hommage (or is that… cough… cough copying ?). And Mines turned up just before Christmas. But just like Dodgy Uncle Jeff I kinda wish it hadn’t. At least Uncle Jeff brings what he says and he’ll answer my messages though. Same can’t be said of Retro Snap Cameras Ltd.
For clarity this isn’t the Retro Snap™
Adding to confusion there is another camera called the Retro Snap that looks like my Y4000
That’s the Retro Snap™ which is sold by another company (Retro Snap™) and is a rebadged a Y4000 for quite a bit more than a Y4000 costs.
But that’s not our Retro Snap
So Tell me about this Retro Snap
Our camera today is sold by Retro Snap Cameras Ltd. It appears IMHO to be a completely separate company to Retro Snap™, although they’re both based in London
I have heard rumour Retro Snap Cameras Ltd had some relationship to a UK marketing company briefly used by Camp Snap. There certainly are shades of the Cappy Camera v Paper Shoot scandal even if they don’t
The camera is actually made by Dongguan Soonpam technology co ltd, a Chinese manufacturer who make kiddie cams, action cams and cheap digitals as well as massage devices (?!?). It’s just marketed by Retro Snap Cameras Ltd.
The camera touts a retro feel digital to replace film cameras with a switchable 5 filter choice. And the promo images look great
But that’s not what you get for your £65 MSRP before postage IMHO.
Overview of the Retro Snap
This looks very similar to the camp Snap. You have a plastic retro looking simple digital camera. Like it’s rival there is no image viewing LCD just a LCD showing image count. The camera is fixed focus with LED light instead of a flash (they market it as flash but it isn’t). Just like the Camp Snap you can set the light to come on as required (auto), forced off and forced on by means of a switch.
There are a few noticeable differences. The biggest one is the button beside the LCD that lets you select 5 different filter settings (standard, Monochrome, Japan, Retro and Vivid). This would place it ahead of the Camp Snap which is limited to changing filter by swapping out firmware.
The camera also has an on/off button and has a full sized SD slot with a 8GB card pre installed (oddly a micro SD in adapter) . It boast a 550MhA battery (recharged via USB C). The front of the camera has a plate that is swappable the so called snapface.
Now the promo images look great but as we’ll see I’m not sure they’re taken on the same camera.
But keep that image in your mind. We’ll come back to that
Detailed Spec
Yeah good luck with that . Other than the battery and SD card size there isn’t much given by the company. We’re told it has a 8MP sensor but the company describe a 4000×3000 pixel image size which is actually 12MP. Either someone in marketing is in trouble or we’ve interpolation.
The battery is claimed to last up to 2,500 image. I assume that’s either marketing BS or lab conditions. I got to 110 shot before it dropped from full charge which is pretty reasonable suggesting you’ll squeeze out 300-500 on a single charge in real world
We don’t know any other specs. Nothing is given in EXIF either.
The average file size of 252 shot images was 2.615MB. This seems reasonable as my 12MP Nikon P500 shots on average 2.5MB images. Files are recorded as standard JPEG
Build
Compared to the Camp Snap it’s slightly smaller and made out of similar plastic and has a similar feeling. It’s changeable plate hasn’t quite the same grip as the the Camp Snap. The Flash/LED switch markings are hard to read like the Camp Snap 1.01.
The USB-C port, SD card slot and reset button are accessed under a long strip of silicon rubber on the base. That feels much more flimsy cf to the Camp Snap and doesn’t fit snugly again when you lift clear. I doubt it will last long. beside the fixing points near the USB port is a small LED showing the charging status.
The viewfinder is atrociously out of focus. It’s really bad
On the positive. The monochrome OLED LCD panels is clear. It shows no of shots taken on card, filter mode and battery life.
In the Box
It comes in a small but nicely themed box
As well as the camera with SD card in situ, you get a wrist strap, soft cloth bag and 2 USB cables (Type C to Type C and USB Type A (2.0/1.0) to USB C. There’ a multi language brief guide and a separate note on setting the time (more on that later).
The micro SD card provided has no markings
In use
So it charges up via -USB-C. To turn on hold done on button until a shutter clunk is heard and wait til the rear LCD comes on. Frame your shot and take. The shutter sound is nice and quiet but seems to predate the actual shutter action as the camera lags as when you use the auto flash mode the LED light comes on after the shutter noise.
To change filter setting press button beside the LCD.
Parallax error is more evident on closer shots It’s not helped by the awfulness of the finder.
The LED light is activated by using switch on rear
A neat feature is hitting the on off button rather than shutter causes a little bleep to let you know you’ve goofed. Holding down that button will turn the camera off but it will also auto sleep after a couple of minutes of inactivity.
The shutter sound is subtle & nice but you can’t turn off or down
The camera can be synced to your PC using the attached cables. Interestingly I could also open the SD card on my Google Pixel 7 using the USB-C to USB-C and using the files by google app. This would make it quite handy if out and about and you wanted to do a rapid posting of a shot. But given the image quality I doubt it’ll get that much use
However news to me !! I could do the same with my Camp Snap 1.01 and A Paper Shoot 18MP
Setting the Time
The camera has a small file marked time in the root directory of the SD card. It’s very similar to the file we’ve seen with the Y3000 & Y4000 micro cameras. I’m going to give you some advice the manual doesn’t save a copy of that file under another name. I’ll explain why in a moment
Opening the file will reveal a date stamp familiar to computer engineers and programmers. Mines had
2024-01-01 23:59:59=
No idea what the = is for but the date shown is based on the RFC 3339/ISO 8601 standards
YEAR-MM-DY HR:MM:SS
Now just alter that date and time to your current dating keeping the =. Save it and will adjust the clock
Once you do that something odd happens with the file. Viewed on file explorer it resets to the original date & time although the camera is displaying the correct time. But open it in notepad and the file is in gibberish
It isn’t all chinese per se although some characters are. The 㨳 character after (-) translates to either cupboard or ghost. Try replacing it with new date and the datestamp goes all whacky. Hence I advise to hold onto the a copy of original which you can tweak and save as the time.txt. This resolves the date
But can you turn off the date stamp ?
Theoretically there may be a way.
But you get no idea how to do it. I’ve tried numerous things based on cameras like the Y3000 but no dice
Results
And really that’s where things fall apart. There was quite a bit to like up to here but………
TL;DR is the image quality isn’t great and it certainly doesn’t match the promo images . It will look fine enough on the small web shots we have here but either look at the cropped samples or click through. It’s technically better than the Y3000/4000 micro cameras. It lags behind that Camp Snap on all shots I took.
Testing conditions and comparisons.
Mines arrived in atypically dull Christmas period. No rain but no sun predicted until January. I also shot it against a Camp snap for some shots. Not the newest shiny 1.03 but my older 1.01 version. The cameras also made a trip up to Edinburgh in the dusk alongside the new Paper Shoot 20MP and a modern Google Pixel 7 smart phone was used on some shots as a guide. and then the Sun came out in the New Year.
Filters on the Retro Snap
Lets start with some good news however. The colour filters offered have a subtle but noticeable impact on images. The monochrome does what it says with a reasonable greytone position IMHO.
I have to say they’re no where near the Paper Shoot or Flashback film like effects although the same is true of the Camp Snap. Nor do they match that honey brown retro tint you get on the promo images
Daytime shooting 1 – Dull day
Oddly for reason that will become apparent, I’ll start on a dull day
Lets start with this shot. You can see the full Retro Snap version here I’ve 3 examples of the shot one on my Pixel 7 phone, one the the Camp Snap and one on the Retro.
The camp Snap is pretty close with this although it does have a cooler tone. It looks a smidge soft but otherwise does alright. ut the Retro Snap…. Now it might not be too apparent of the horrors on this small ~640 pIxel wide version but you should see it’s a bit over sharpened.
So lets close crop all 3 images you can get a better sense of quality or lack of
The Pixel 7 funnily enough has the best quality. Things fall off with the Camp Snap but in fairness this is the lowest resolution of the 3 (8MP v ~12/12.5MP). But then you click onto the Retro Snap… oh boy
Start with the 60% off the degree of fringing and ghosting due to processing is phenomenal. It looks like the letters are 2 tone. There’s more pixelation but this is a higher resolution than the Camp Snap. This suggest again either over processing, interpolation or both. Colours area lot flatter and less vibrant and way much more detail is lost.
The image look better on the small sizes we see here but close up they fail. Here’s another 3 ways comparison
But zoom in and thing change. The Camp Snap dynamic range has goosed the exposure but is still it has more detail. Neither win points here but the Camp comes off better overall as the higher resolution Retro Snap looks more like an impressionist painting (I adjusted rotation on this image)
The full Retro Snap image can be found here.
Let’s take another direct comparison
Again close cropping shows the amount of detail lost to noise
I don’t want this to be about the Camp Snap. So lets focus on the Retro here
We get tiny degree of pincushion radial distortion. It’s more than acceptable for the class. AWB swings between being a bit blue cool to being a bit red in daylight in standard mode. It’s not driven by artificial light as this slightly blue bridge and the slightly pink cottage shot above shows. It’s not awful however.
Close objects show more clearer details than long
Dusk in the Capitol
I had to take my eldest back up to Edinburgh between Christmas and Hogmanay so lugged these up with the new Paper Shoot 20MP and Lomography LC-A+ film camera. I’d intended to stay in town for a few hours doing some dusk/night shots but the drizzle and the insane parking prices mean I had a quick walk, a Cortado and then as the rain came in, I ran off to Ikea
The Paper Shoot 20MP was impressive in some shots but I still have a few Niggles. Also how is a 20MP taking images that are are smaller than the 8MP Camp Snap?
But we’re not here to focus on that.
The tl:dr is all 3 cameras can take shots in these conditions and they all have similar flaws. They all tend to over lighten images and halation like blooming is evident. The Camp Snap was consistent but grainy as light fell, but the Paper Shoot varied but could do wow shots. The retro Snap. Well all of the issues we discussed before apply and it brings up the rear
This shot isn’t the finest hour of any of the cameras. Even on the smaller images you should see that Retro is bar far the noisiest but the Camp really digs into the blooming
If you zoom in then you get a clear sense. No one comes out winning but at least yo can see it’s £6 cocktail time on the Camp Snap and Paper Shoot and they aren’t over processed and fringing although the Camp Snap is more grainy (which you may like)
I shot this second round just before I left . It was ~30minutes after the Sun had set. Again I think you can just see how weak the Retro is compared to the other 2. The Camp colour palette is better suited here and although famously slightly blue bias gives the most vibrant warmer image.
And let’s zoom in on the statue. The older Camp Snap is sharper but grainer. Both the paper Shoot and retro are fuzzy but the processing issues on the Retro again make it a poorer choice.
AS Light falls like the Camp Snap it get a bit more grainy. You can still get some shots you’d get away for web or small print use but zoom in and it’s clear the extra pixels add nought
In the usual everything looks better in B&W, the Monochrome mode works well until…
… you zoom in 🤢🤮. If anything the fringing is more evident or I caught the Ready Brek kid on the go.
Bright Sunlight
Normally you’d think thing would in bright light. I mean just look at these promo images like this Look great don’t they ?
Now these are 1080×1080 crops but even if you zoom in they preseve details. But in reality……
This was what I got using supposedly the same camera. You should already be noticing things are different but hey that could just be the colours right ?
Sadly no. Lets just crop in by roughly the same (and remember this is a roughly 4000×3000 pixel original)
Yikes. You can open that up more if you want the full horror. Its Frankly artefact city from ghosting fringing and blocky central. But it’s maybe just one off photo ?
No. sadly no
Here’s another
And lets just crop a bit in…
Jinkies !!!
And I could show you more. Oddly the camera does worse in really bright conditions. Get a bit of shade and things are a little better but you can see why I showed you dull light photos first. It’s also clear that Retro Snap did not take the shots on the same camera I got
Closer objects fare better but the shot below is really interesting
Our Blues Brother Graffiti in the shade looks okay but the white block of flats has been turned into a featureless lump. You might put it down to being off centre. But I took the same shot for the filter example. In all of those the building whilst poorly rendered at least has some features
Night Shooting
When light levels really drop I hadn’t really much hope but the Retro can take night shots of illuminated objects. The image quality is better than I expected but not great. washed out colours and noisy compared to the same shots captured on the Camp Snap
Flash or lack of
I was Critical of Camp Snap having a LED light rather than flash and the Retro has the same set up. But turns out the Camp LED flash is actually not awful for what it is when you compare it to the Retro
The Retro can just about put some light on an arm held selfie but the noise on the image (click here for full size) is marked. You might think that the illuminated side of my face is nearer the flash but in fact its’s not.
I kid you not but my PC monitor was on that side and provided more illumination than the flash did. The Camp in comparison illuminates me well in the same shot
Oddly I like the shot but frankly the flash has nothing to do with it. It failed to do much.
Move further away and it gets worse
If you crop in on the figure whilst the Cam p has some noise thing look okay but the Retro….
What do Retro Snap Cameras Ltd and other users have to say
Contacting them has been hard. I tried their page to ask about turning the date stamp off. Still no reply a week later. Retro Snap posted on Christmas Eve there may be issues with the finder and resolution on some cameras and gave a different email address. This just ended up being rejected when i and others tried to use. It on their FB channel they suggested a subtly different email which at least seem to have been accepted. But it’s not great is it. I emailed them on that address which did get accepted but after waiting the weekend and full working day I’v heard nought.
Other users have reported similar experience to me in quality. Those that had heard back were offered a refund or to keep the camera and wait a new V2 version in January. But this doesn’t take away the this feeling
Final Thoughts on the Retro Snap (V1)….
The TL;DR is don’t buy this. It’s the present you really wanted from your parents but your brother got what you wanted and you got some junk.
I’ll post if I (a) ever hear from them and (b) if a V2 does turn up. But this is frankly dodgy leftovers with no mayonnaise in sight. I was expecting to do a review against something that rivalled the Camp Snap. I ended up with something only just better optically than a Y4000 that costs a quarter of the Retro and can shoot video. In fact a 3 year old can take better pictures on a no longer made Kiddie cam than i could with this.
And it’s frankly a shame. there were some nice touches. Whilst the filters weren’t mind blowing, they were easy to use. The shutter noise was good and I liked that quirk on/off button beep.
But there are lots of red flags. No decent spec and what info we have is conflicting 8MP sensor producing 12MP image – Sounds like interpolation to me and it begs the question of why. And they clearly ain’t done basic QC if by their own admission at least 20% have dodgy viewfinders & sensor issues. The filtered images shown on site even the home page re uses the same image and applies the alleged filters in post and we don’t get the same effect with the filters in use.
But worse, they’ve been pretty disastrous with customer support. They’ve not answered their own webpage form and then gave out the wrong email. Maybe they’ll get in touch and at some point I’ll geta V2 that resembles the images they have but frankly I’ll not hold my breath on that. If they do get in touch, I’ll update post here.
And you can get a good quality alternative for the similar money
The better alternatives
The newer 1.03B Camp Snap comes it at £51 over 10 quid cheaper. Camp Snap has become it’s own mini craze but you need to flash the firmware to change the filter. The newer model is marginally better than the 1.01 I tested here. I’ve mentioned the Paper Shoot the current 20MP is phasing out the older 18MP. With case it costs £129 but you do get more film styled filters, proper changeable casing and a filter ready lens . You can also expand the filters by accessory cards.
If a film look is what you really want, and that film look is a cheap disposable. Then take a gander at the Flashback ONE35 which offers a film like experience (27 shots before reloading digital films (3 types) and a development process). It costs £77 at the time of typing. An it takes much lower resolution images that look better and more authentic film like.
I reviewed the 18MPaper Shoot, Camp Snap 1.01 and the Flashback in a recent group test
Of course if these are too good for you, then go for a Y4000 or Y3000.
These and a legion of similar lo-fi lo-quality cameras can be found on the likes of Amazon and AliExpress for the price of a takeaway Pizza. They also shoot video which is equally lo-fi but up to HD
And they aren’t that far behind the retro. There’s also a range of Kid friendly cameras out there like the Vtech Kidizoom Duo Fx Camera real world reviewed here on Mumsnet. DCW reviewed the older Kidizoom Duo 5.0 and you can see from it’s bigger review images that it produces better images than the Retro Snap even in the hands of a 3 year old. You do need to deal with the fact you’re wandering around with a toy.
And of course I’m contractually obliged to mention the Quirky Yashica Y35 but you may need the services of the A-Team to track one down (no Face you can’t have mines). But this has a retro look and a quirk physical filter system. Overpriced, overhyped and overexpectations led to it’s demise although Yashica still list it as a product
And that’s before i get onto vintage lo-fi digitals Cameras.
Sources
If you must you can visit Retro Snap website here.