A long, flat bar of plastic and brushed metal, a small window at one end, a round shutter button on top, a script logo running along the side. Anyone who grew up between the seventies and the nineties will recognise the shape before reading the name: it is the silhouette of the 110 pocket camera, the one that lived in glove compartments and holiday rucksacks. Except this one has no film inside.
The Camp Snap 110D is the new camera from Camp Snap, the American brand known for its cheap, screen free digital cameras. It rebuilds the slim 110 body from scratch around a digital sensor, and keeps the one rule that made the brand popular: there is no screen to look at. You frame through an optical viewfinder, you press the button, and you see your pictures later.
A format that belonged to everyone
The 110 cartridge was launched by Kodak in 1972 with the Pocket Instamatic line, and for two decades it was the most democratic way to take a photo: drop in the cartridge, close the back, shoot. The tiny negative never delivered great image quality, and the format slowly disappeared, but the shape stayed in collective memory as the very idea of a camera you carry without thinking.
Camp Snap reproduces those proportions closely. The 110D measures 143.2 x 50 x 24.5 mm, slides into a jeans pocket, and keeps a proper optical viewfinder at one end. The only display is a tiny segmented LCD, like the ones on old calculators, used just to check settings and the shot counter.
Filters on a slider, not in an app
Inside, the 110D borrows much of the hardware of the Camp Snap 2: an 8 MP Sony sensor and a 26 mm equivalent f/2.0 lens, with a dual tone LED flash. The novelty is a physical five position slider that switches between Standard, two Vintage looks, Analog and Black & White. No app, no menus, no editing afterwards: the look is chosen with your thumb, before the shot, as you once chose a film.
There is also a 30.5 mm thread on the front for real screw on filters, and the settings door closes with screws, a detail inherited from the brand’s origins as a camera for kids at summer camp, where nobody wants small hands fiddling with the card.
Camp Snap has also addressed the most common complaint about its earlier models, the lag between pressing the button and the picture actually being taken, with a faster shutter button and a clearer click. A small thing on paper, but on a camera with no screen, the moment you press is the only feedback you get.
Nostalgia products are everywhere right now, and many of them stop at the costume. What we like here is that the retro shape is not just decoration: the slim body, the viewfinder and the slider all push towards the same idea of photography as a quick, slightly blind gesture, without the screen that turns every picture into an immediate verdict. At this price it is a toy, and it knows it. But it is a well designed one.
Product: Camp Snap 110D
Design: Camp Snap
Price: $74.99, pre order, shipping from late October
Images: courtesy of Camp Snap
Website: campsnapphoto.com
Via: HiConsumption
