Thoughts on the tiny camera market (and Kodak Charmera specifically)

[kye]

I got a Kodak Charmera keychain camera recently.  It's terrible and you shouldn't buy one, but it is interesting.

In case you don't know, keychain cameras are seriously tiny cameras (think smaller than a GoPro) and have gone viral in the last year or so.  The Kodak Charmera is probably the most viral one, with multiple production runs being sold out very quickly and reissues etc.  Here's mine in comparison to some other cameras, including a couple of GoPro-sized action cameras and some actually pocketable cameras (GF3 and GX85).

Why is the Charmera interesting?  I think the design is essentially perfect:

• It's incredibly small (obviously) and ridiculously light but it's actually quite tough
• It's got a 35mm equivalent FOV lens
• It charges from USB-C
• With almost any MicroSD card it has practically infinite storage
• It has a rear screen that is just large enough to navigate the (very simple) menu and frame shots
• It's super-simple to use, if you plug it into a computer it turns on, mounts as a USB drive (without needing any software), charges the battery while connected, then when you unplug it it turns off again
• It's a ~15Mbps motion JPEG codec
• It's USD $30

Why aren't I recommending it?

• The image quality is terrible.  TERRIBLE.
• It says it has a 1440x1080 sensor, and that's the resolution of the JPGs and video files, but I think it's 2x2 binned, and heavily sharpened too, so it's a very poor quality VGA camera.  I shot a resolution chart - the moire was practically psychedelic.
• JPGs are just as bad as the video files
• No control over anything and with its AE it's perfectly happy to clip the crap out of decent chunks of the image

Why am I even bothering to write about it then?

It's a new class of camera.

We haven't really had cameras that were smaller than action cameras before, but not only have we got them now, but they sold out multiple times, so the world (or at least the trendy impulse buying world) has solidly suggested there is demand for them.

As far as I can tell, the competitors are action cameras, or those that are smaller like the Insta360 Go, and that's about it.  Those are 10x the price though, and larger and not nearly as fun to use.  The image quality of them is vastly superior, but in todays market where I wish I could get a camera that was smaller, had a quarter (or sixteenth) the resolution, and was drastically cheaper, this is the kind of thing that didn't used to exist really.

Even just playing with it around the house, I film things I wouldn't normally film.  It feels different to use.  

This is a new product in the market that smartphones basically killed.

Everyone used to have small point-n-shoot cameras but they all got killed by smartphones - the industry essentially got eaten from the bottom up.  This is the first counter-example I'm aware of (other than action cameras).  I would venture that everyone who bought one already had a smartphone, so this fulfils a niche that their expensive fragile dopamine-addicting smartphone doesn't.  

Retro cameras have enjoyed a resurgence recently, but I would suggest that this is different as it's a new thing rather than an old thing limping along.  This might make executives take note - it's not that small cameras are dying slower than they think - there is active demand and innovation in this space.

Tech gets better.

Assuming this form-factor remains popular, the video quality will get better.  I don't know why it wouldn't remain around..  kids aren't likely to want to record themselves less in future, tiny things won't stop being cute, having something so small it takes up zero space in your pocket (it's a keychain camera!) won't stop being handy, etc.

What I'd really like to see is a 'pro' version of this camera..  one that takes real 1080p video and doesn't sharpen it like it's entering a butchering competition.  Same size (or a little larger), same simple design, could be more expensive and still be interesting.

[Clark Nikolai]

3 hours ago, kye said:

What I'd really like to see is a 'pro' version of this camera..  one that takes real 1080p video and doesn't sharpen it like it's entering a butchering competition. 

Me too. I see them and they look fun but the picture examples are so bad. The sharpening is the worst part of it (but likely to make up for the low quality lens.) Being the age I am, I don't get any nostalgia for the look of early digital cameras. I want a better image (even if it's small by today's standards.) It doesn't have to be raw but a higher bitrate JPEG would be great. The option to save two files, one raw (or log high bitrate JPEG) and a JPEG with an in camera filter applied would be good. Unlike the days of early digital cameras, there's no need to save storage space anymore.

I once had a little spy pen camera, no viewfinder, only 1 megapixel. It only held 12 pictures but they were pretty good quality considering the size. It was fun because you just pointed in the general direction and clicked. Only later when you got home you found out what you got. Not a design thing, just the limitations of the time. I got it for ten bucks or something and it was totally worth it for a bit of fun a few times. It sat in a drawer for twenty years and now doesn't hold a charge. It's not worth it for me to replace the battery.

 

[mercer]

Some kid will use that camera and make a short film and upload it to YT, then he'll get a Hollywood deal.

A couple will buy 30 of them and put then on the wedding guest's tables for people to snap photos and take some video. The groom will edit them all together on his phone while sitting on the beach during his honeymoon. He will also upload it to YT and probably get a Hollywood deal. lol. 

[kye]

10 hours ago, Clark Nikolai said:

Me too. I see them and they look fun but the picture examples are so bad. The sharpening is the worst part of it (but likely to make up for the low quality lens.) Being the age I am, I don't get any nostalgia for the look of early digital cameras. I want a better image (even if it's small by today's standards.) It doesn't have to be raw but a higher bitrate JPEG would be great. The option to save two files, one raw (or log high bitrate JPEG) and a JPEG with an in camera filter applied would be good. Unlike the days of early digital cameras, there's no need to save storage space anymore.

The example pictures online are actually cherry-picked.  The images I'm seeing from mine are worse, to the extent I wondered if I got a fake.  When I looked closer I just think they chose the nicest ones, which is really just how social media works!

You'd be forgiven for thinking it's the lens, but it's really not.  Here is a sample image so you can see what I'm seeing.

Charmera - 1440x1080 - SOOC - 280K file size:

For reference, here's a 1440x1080 280K image from my GX85 with matched FOV:

The level of detail is incomparable.

What happens if I take the GX85 image and 2x downscale it to 720px then upscale it to 1440 280K again?

It's a lot closer, and obviously I haven't sharpened the crap out of it (just doing this quickly in Preview on Mac).

But what happens if I take a 3x downsample 480px, then upscale to 1440 280K again?

This is definitely lower resolution (the artefacts from the lower res are larger compared to the Charmera).

Charmera crop:

GX85 -> 3x downsample -> 1440px:

GX85 -> 2x downsample -> 1440px:

That's much closer.

What does all this mean?  The limitation is the processor.

I believe that they're using a 1440x1080 processor (as they claim) but they're using it in a 720x576 20p readout mode, then sharpening the crap out of it, then upscaling it to 1440x1080, converting it from 20p to 30p, then compressing it to ~15Mbps.

The colour isn't that great either, this may be a processing thing too, I'm not sure.

The issue is that for them to use the sensor in a 1440 readout mode would require 4x the data rates, which is 4x the processing.  If you want the file in real 30p instead of 20p padded out to 30p, that's another 50% again, so 6x the processing.  As we know from compact cameras that try and be 4K or 6K and also small, that's overheating territory.  It's also "batteries only last how long?!?!?!?!?!" territory.

So it would need to be 6x more powerful.  I'm not really sure how much extra space those things would require, although GoPro can now do 8K30, which is 16x the data rates of a 2K30 camera, plus its doing all kinds of stabilisation processing etc on top of that, so I'd imagine there is room for these things in such a device if someone was to make one.

Someone said that this circuit is likely a very common circuit in all kinds of cameras like dash cams etc, so it's probably only through economies of scale that this can be done.  There were quite a number of action cameras and other common cameras that had a real 1080p30 readout, so maybe the pro version could leverage one of those existing architectures of existing chips.  That would be pretty awesome!

[kye]

1 hour ago, mercer said:

A couple will buy 30 of them and put then on the wedding guest's tables for people to snap photos and take some video.

I've heard that this is quite common, although from larger cameras with more camera-like shapes.  I wonder how many people have done this...

[Emanuel]

20 hours ago, kye said:

I got a Kodak Charmera keychain camera recently.  It's terrible and you shouldn't buy one, but it is interesting.

(...)

Love the way you put it! : ) As everyone of your posts BTW < 3 Thanks, always a pleasure reading you : ) Great-juicy-post BTW part II ;- )

[Emanuel]

7 hours ago, mercer said:

A couple will buy 30 of them and put then on the wedding guest's tables for people to snap photos and take some video. 

A couple of my cousins did this a couple of decades ago : ) with Kodak disposable 35mm film cameras.

No photographer, no wedding videographer at all ;- )

[newfoundmass]

If it had a decent camera I'd actually be interested. But the ones I've seen will all end up as e-waste eventually.

If it took photos (I don't really care if it takes video) that looked good on social media I'd be very interested though.

[kye]

6 hours ago, newfoundmass said:

If it had a decent camera I'd actually be interested. But the ones I've seen will all end up as e-waste eventually.

If it took photos (I don't really care if it takes video) that looked good on social media I'd be very interested though.

Yeah, definitely e-waste, although everything gets there eventually so it's all relative.

I was thinking more about this challenge of getting a not completely rubbish image from the smallest camera and it's probably getting an action camera and using it in a crop mode to get a tighter FOV and using the stabilisation features so it's not so jittery.

For example the GoPro 13 Black is 5599x4927 and 12-39mm FOVs.  So the 39mm FOV will be a crop of 1722px wide, and I'm assuming you can have all the stabilisation etc enabled for normal video for that.  
The DJI Action 4 is about a 16mm FOV and with its 3648×2736 sensor if you cropped to 2x (its max) then you'd have a FOV of about 35mm and about 1824px wide, so a similar story.

Of course these are drastically more expensive and far less pocketable, especially if you are like me and only carry things in your front pockets and therefore the camera probably wouldn't have a pocket of its own.

[maxJ4380]

4 hours ago, kye said:

if you are like me and only carry things in your front pockets and therefore the camera probably wouldn't have a pocket of its own.

Cargo pants…🤔

[kye]

2 hours ago, maxJ4380 said:

Cargo pants…🤔

In that case, I've heard about this excellent pocket camera called the RED Komodo!

[maxJ4380]

 

2 minutes ago, kye said:

In that case, I've heard about this excellent pocket camera called the RED Komodo!

At  $30   i'd buy one...  

[maxJ4380]

On 6/30/2026 at 9:03 PM, kye said:

What I'd really like to see is a 'pro' version of this camera..  one that takes real 1080p video and doesn't sharpen it like it's entering a butchering competition.  Same size (or a little larger), same simple design, could be more expensive and still be interesting.

 

Good on you for trying something different, i lost interest after the image quality comment.. For two reasons 1) i dont think it will happen, every 2 year old and up has already mastered mums phone, and their bigger and heavier than any action camera i think. Ergonomically and for useability i think there's real constraints to avoid when going much smaller in an action camera for the majority of people. If one wanted a tenfold increase in quality you'd just buy a second hand gopro i reckon or other action camera if your not a fan of gopros.

 2) I think the amount of people screaming for less sharpening on camera and letting the user deal with it is a very small segment of the market.  Which they have been able to ignore so far. Although with the amount of youtubes available on sharpening and grading online, manufactures may have to lift their game soon. In some instances its happening we have the mission1, now theres also 2 other action camera threads on the forum so we should be well catered for. 

 

 

[eatstoomuchjam]

9 hours ago, kye said:

Of course these are drastically more expensive and far less pocketable, especially if you are like me and only carry things in your front pockets and therefore the camera probably wouldn't have a pocket of its own.

Another thread where I'll mention the Insta360 Go 2/3/ultra or similar as an option.  The price is definitely higher than a Charmera, but in terms of size, it's maybe even a little smaller?  And with much better image quality.  From what I remember, the carrying/protective case in the Go 2 is about the size of an Airpods case and I've definitely kept those in my pocket before.

5 hours ago, maxJ4380 said:

Cargo pants…🤔

Matt Granger has entered the chat

[maxJ4380]

2 minutes ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

Matt Granger has entered the chat

😝 not sure if i should be offended or not...  I vaguely remember him as a nikon guy ?  i watched few of his youtubes but there was something that didn't click with me, i didn't watch much of his stuff. 

[eatstoomuchjam]

4 hours ago, maxJ4380 said:

😝 not sure if i should be offended or not...  I vaguely remember him as a nikon guy ?  i watched few of his youtubes but there was something that didn't click with me, i didn't watch much of his stuff. 

He used to wear weirdly large cargo shorts and it became a running joke on this forum.  He doesn't seem to do that as much anymore, but the meme lives on!

[maxJ4380]

Do you think it’s time for a revival? I could blog about the mission 1 however it’s not a Nikon…

[kye]

17 hours ago, eatstoomuchjam said:

Another thread where I'll mention the Insta360 Go 2/3/ultra or similar as an option.  The price is definitely higher than a Charmera, but in terms of size, it's maybe even a little smaller?  And with much better image quality.  From what I remember, the carrying/protective case in the Go 2 is about the size of an Airpods case and I've definitely kept those in my pocket before.

Yes, the Go is definitely the nearest competitor, but quite different actually.

The Charmera is:
- half the weight: 20g vs 39g (unsurprising given the processing and battery requirements)
- similar in size: it's slightly longer but also thinner
but probably the most significant thing is the Charmera has a screen and the Go doesn't, unless you add the case, but then it's the size of a GoPro again:

The screen is really a differentiator for use, as the Charmera has a 35mm FOV that you compose by looking at the screen, and the Go is a 16mm FOV that you can't compose unless you use an app or "rig" it up with the case.  Unsurprisingly, we're back to the fundamental differences between a normal camera and an action camera, only in this case both cameras are much smaller than a normal action camera!

The size is interesting too, as today I took it out with me and it fit nicely into the tiny coin pocket that sits above/inside the normal front pocket of my jeans.  If there was such a thing, this would have to be crowned the King of pocketability!

I've fitted mine with a finger strap (not a wrist strap, that would be far too large!) and now testing that as a "minimalist rig".  The people that use a keychain (like the one it comes with) only get video where the audio is the sound of the metal keychain links all reverberating through the camera body, so my finger-strap is made from a thin paracord.

17 hours ago, maxJ4380 said:

😝 not sure if i should be offended or not...  I vaguely remember him as a nikon guy ?  i watched few of his youtubes but there was something that didn't click with me, i didn't watch much of his stuff. 

I watched a bunch of his stuff when I was first getting into photography and learning the exposure triangle and all that stuff, but I quickly outgrew his content as he seemed to be a very low-maturity "camera club" photographer, who only ever focused on specs and sharpness and practicalities, and when it came to what you did with the camera he seemed to be all about "the rules" and not about creatively breaking them or moving beyond them.

In photography most people resent how the general public think that their expensive camera is what creates nice pictures, not the photographer, but the irony is that most of them don't create work that is really much beyond taking dull formulaic pictures with expensive kit, and Matt was squarely representative of that mindset.

[eatstoomuchjam]

6 hours ago, kye said:

The screen is really a differentiator for use, as the Charmera has a 35mm FOV that you compose by looking at the screen, and the Go is a 16mm FOV that you can't compose unless you use an app or "rig" it up with the case.

True - though an argument could be made that an ultrawide lens and higher resolution frees you from too much need of a screen.  Just sort of point it in the general direction of the photo you want and shoot.  Then lock down the frame in post.  Instead of Weegee's "f/8 and be there," we could be in "16mm FOV and be there."  😉

[Anaconda_]

There’s a new kind of tiny camera that doesn’t have a screen and will easily fit in your pocket. You might even forget it’s there. 
 

in one of the comments -

The C100 features a 2MP sensor paired with crisp 1080p video recording. We deliberately chose this setup to embrace our 'Vibe Over Pixels' philosophy.

It gives you that effortless, nostalgic snapshot texture and lightweight file sizes without any tech-spec anxiety!