i bought a cheap digicam i bought a cheap digicam
it's entirely unremarkable and clearly just a Chinese OEM rebadged for Polaroid
just how i like them
here's some pictures it takes
not terrible, but focus seems troublesome. it _has_ the optics to focus better, but the autofocus seems to give up too early/too late, wonder if it's faulty or just bad from the factory.
it also functions as a webcam(!) provided you have windows xp
if anyone knows how to get an old webcam (VID 0784 PID 0060) working on windows 10, let me know. i think it'll work on linux, will try later. i got one of these working on XP under virtualbox once, but now vbox just refuses to capture any usb device anymore and i can't find a fix
someone should make vuescan but for old usb webcams instead of scanners
i finally got it working on virtualbox and it's just as bad as you can expect, super dark and no focus control (gotta use the autofocus in point-and-shoot mode, then plug it in while it's still on)
i love camera jank
oh also i opened this camera up today (to try to see if i could find anything obviously wrong causing the erratic auto-focus, but i didn't) and i found clearly labeled serial port test pins 👀 something for a future test maybe
this is what i mean by the autofocus randomly not working, on pics 1 and 2. i made the camera run through autofocus a couple of times, made sure it was set to focus to infinity, and the camera reassured me it was in focus. this mess came out
other picture came out fine tho
when i took it apart yesterday i still didn't manage to get all the way down to the sensor, so it's possible the sensor is dirty or something like that. the marks on the camera body do suggest this might've been banged about a bit in the past
if you have the patience for the 5-6 tries it takes until it focuses properly, the lens on this thing is actually really nice. 3x optical zoom and a surprisingly impressive macro
turns out my suspicions were correct, this is the exact same as the Vivitar ViviCam 5355, only rebadged for Polaroid as the i534, long after they became just a brand name