At Home with John and Debbie

I’ve been browsing camera shops’ web sites because I reckon our forthcoming trip to New York might be a good time to buy a new one (smaller so I can carry one around more; higher resolution video; not wrecked from being in my pocket with my keys).

For a few exhiliarating minutes, I seriously thought that instead of all those useful features, the Rolleiflex MiniDigi might be a wise purchase.

It’s so cool. It mimics old Rollei cameras which exposed onto square format film, and used the second lens for a smoked glass viewfinder onto which you looked down, holding the camera at waist level. I was disappointed to read on and discover that it’s basically an expensive toy.

I’m still seduced by the concept, but the mere 2 megapixel resolution (although my first digital camera was 1 megapixel and I was happy with it at the time), the fixed focus lens, and the fact that the top “viewfinder” lens is a dummy (the viewfinder is an LCD displaying output from the main CCD) are nails in its coffin.

Shooting natively in square format would certainly be interesting, but it’s easy enough to crop photos from an ordinary camera to a square.

Still, it’s a small object of desire. $270 in the shop I found it, but out of stock. They must be in demand. For a similar price you can get a 7 megapixel Canon Elph…

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 22nd, 2006 at 20:24 and is filed under Tech. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.