Kodak Charmera Blind-Box: Keychain-sized Digital Throwback

You don’t know which design you’ll get until you open it, and it’s quite random (there are six standard looks and one rare variant). I didn’t get the color I wanted, but I felt excited regardless. What u get is small enough to hang from a bag or keys, but is a fully working digital camera. It’s got a 1.6-megapixel CMOS sensor, a fixed 35mm-equivalent lens, and a simple rear screen for checking out shots. It shoots photos at 1440×1080 and video in AVI at 30 fps. A microSD slot supports cards up to 128GB, and a USB-C port for charging and file transfer.

escalator at T21

It’s quite simple: plug it in and drag the files off, just like the early days of digital cameras. The shooting experience is basic and intentionally limited: no autofocus; no computational corrections; image quality that leans toward grainy and low-res. Instead of trying to impress with sharpness, the Charmera leans into lo-fi character. It includes dif digital filters, giving the photos a nostalgic, late 90s digital look straight out of cheap consumer cameras and early web uploads.

I enjoyed the monochrome filters, which made me think of pixel art, but all of them are pretty cool to be fair. The lack of high image quality is beautiful because it reminds me of those days when the internet had a lot of text, which in a way is the golden area of the internet (for me).

black and white setting

These pics I took the same day. It was a pretty chill stroll from Terminal 21 to Rama 9 at about 8 p.m. The shots haven’t been edited. I find them aesthetically very pleasing. It’s really satisfying when just embracing the camera’s natural limitations. The whole point is you get what you get, and that’s what u enjoy.