The Kodak Charmera is a tiny keychain camera produced by licencing out the name of the famous film manufacturer, and it’s the current must-have cool trinket among photo nerds. Inside is a tiny sensor and a fixed-focus M7 lens, and unlike many toy cameras it has better quality than its tiny package might lead you to expect. There will always be those who wish to push the envelope though, and [微攝 Macrodeon] is here to fit a lens mount for full-size lenses (Chinese language, subtitle translation available).
The hack involves cracking the camera open and separating the lens mount from the sensor. This is something we’re familiar with from other cameras, and it’s a fiddly process which requires a lot of care. A C-mount is then glued to the front, from which all manner of other lenses can be attached using a range of adapters. The focus requires a bit of effort to set up and we’re guessing that every lens becomes extreme telephoto due to the tiny sensor, but we’re sure hours of fun could be had.
The Charmera is almost constantly sold out, but you should be able to place a preorder for about $30 USD if you want one. If waiting months for delivery isn’t your bag, there are other cameras you can upgrade to C-mount.
For those struggling to get hold of a Charmera, Thumb Camera on aliexpress are in the exact same form factor, firmware is a little nicer to use as well. Boots instantly into picture capture mode.
But is the hardware the same? Does it use the same sensor?
every lens becomes extreme telephoto
Photo nerd alert: A long focal length lens is not necessarily a telephoto lens, and a telephoto lens isn’t necessarily a long focal length.
“Telephoto” refers to the optical configuration that allows the focal length of the lens assembly to be longer than the physical length of the lens. An additional negative lens in the path makes that possible.
For example see https://spie.org/samples/PM158.pdf page 211, compare with a more conventional lens on p. 209.
Huh, I’m curious. Would the implementation they’re referring to be telephoto or just long focal length? Assuming that’s determinable from what’s presented.
They’re speaking of basically any lens attached, due to the tiny sensors in the camera. So your typical 24mm or 50mm camera lens would be a telescopic lens when attached to that camera, but certainly not using a telephoto design. In fact, there’s a very good chance the 24mm would be a retrofocus design — a telephoto in reverse, with the effective focal length shorter than the actual measured length of the lens.
Modern physics as applied to optical definitions…
Does cropping a picture retroactively turn the lens into a telescopic one?
What if you blind crop the image and never look?
This years crop is excellent, E85 is 30%.
Haze had bad year though…not hot enough.
Damn the hippies for limiting CO2.
IIRC all micro 4:3 cameras can take full size lenses and keep stock focal plane, adaptors take place of mirror.
Promiscuous adaptors exist, some just dumb though.
Sensors are smallish, but not tiny.
Being telephoto is not directly a lens property. The lens just hast a focal length, say 35mm.
Combine that with an Image Sensor with 2.5um Pixels, and you still won’t know.
The question ist about the full frame. Would the image look like a human field of view?
Say, you take a Mpixel sensor. Then this the image will look rather zoomed in “telephoto”. Take a 150 MPixel Sensor and it will look like a wide angle view.
However, rarely will a random 35mm lens illuminate a huge 150 Mpixel Sensor. So the lens will have a marking that it is typically used for wide/tele.
While certainly true, you have to back to the days of Leica rangefinders to commonly find telescopic lenses that are not telephotos.
As a fellow photo nerd, thank you
I’d say not telephoto but magnifying or zoomed in from the lens original image area.
I have a 2X telephoto adapter for a VHS camcorder that when held backwards over my normal phone camera gives 150 degree fish-eye view. Not bad for junk bin sourcing. Optics can be weird.