Park Avenue with the Camp Snap

Park Avenue – New York, New York A couple of days ago, I featured photos of Midtown Manhattan shot with the Fujifilm X Half. I called that camera a toy, even though it had a hefty price tag. I also bought another toy camera on my trip to New York. A true toy that’s a very reasonable $69. Sometimes low expectations are liberating. At that price, I assumed the Camp Snap would simply be a novelty—a camera to enjoy for its simplicity rather than for the quality of its photographs. Much to my surprise, I prefer these pictures to those from the X Half, which costs over ten times as much. The biggest image-quality problem with the Camp Snap wasn’t the resolution or sharpness. It was the aggressively digital look of the JPEGs, which conflicted with the disposable-film aesthetic the camera was trying to emulate. My goal was to soften the image through post-processing to create a more film-like look. So while the Camp Snap is intended to be the ultimate point-and-shoot with little more than a…