'80s flashback

Post by **timdrage** » Sun Jan 22, 2006 2:24 pm

The gameboy camera is amazing... You can tell it was a labour of love at nintendo, it's such a totally weird software.. there's loads of odd stuff in there aside from the camera. It even has, hidden as a 'game', a3-channel synthesiser/sequencer complete with waveform editor!!! 8O

I have two, plus the crazy thermal printer!

Lots of fun for lo-fi images and crunchy noises. Some day I'll rig up some outlandish roundabout system to capture live video from the thing, It has a nice look to it in motion but you can't save enough frames for more than about a second of movement. With the GB camera plugged into a SNES with the adaptor cartridge and then captured to DV or whatever, could just about shoot live action thru the thing!

Also fun are DigitalDream "l'espion" keyring digital cameras... about the size of a matchbox, shoot 20 photos at very low resolution or 80 at unusably low resolution!

and can also capture a couple of seconds of video. I really like the images these produce, suprisingly nice colours in good light and very fuzzy and vignetted... and the video is really wibbly and dreamlike... the image bends quite a lot... for example if you film from a moving car the scenery all looks diagonally slanted! Weird.

Since any phone cam nowadays is a million times better they're pretty easy to find dirt cheap on ebay... I have vague notions of collecting a whole bunch of them for no-fi timeslice filming or something.

Post by **Arislan** » Sun Jan 22, 2006 3:26 pm

If it can take pictures, it will be used for porn.

http://www.sito.org/~ed/gameboy/ashley/

Post by **Angus** » Sun Jan 22, 2006 7:08 pm

The "kiddie camcorder" looked a bit different from the Pixelvision, but it was essentially the same...and from Fisher Price. I am sure it was converted to output in PAL.

I saw it on television, and briefly in shops. The problem may have been the price wasn't all that much lower than a low end VHS-C camcorder of the day...maybe it was half the price. Parents just weren't prepared to spend that much on their kids in those days. My parents were quite well off (ie I had a couple of super 8 cams...hifi cassette and open reel to mess about with as a teenager when the Fisher Price cam was launched) and my recollection is that the "kiddie camcorder" was out of the price range for me.

Certainly I recall hearing that the things were woefully unreliable, even when new. And of course the quality was dreadful. I stuck with super 8

Post by **timdrage** » Sun Jan 22, 2006 7:25 pm

The only Fisher Price toy camera I'm aware of in the UK is nowhere near in the same league as pixelvision!!! I got one from a car boot sale; bascially all it really is is a low quality black + white CCTV camera with a nasty plastic lens in a tacky camcorder-shaped enclosure. It has phono outputs for video and sound, you have to connect it to a VCR to record anything so it's not at all portable.

I did poke around inside it, replaced the lens with one from an old S8 projector and actually got a pretty nice telephoto image, but ended up frying the electronics while meddling with it

I did hear some rumour about an actual PAL pixelvision of some sort tho... also I believe new ones were being made in china in the late 90's?! But I forget what they were branded as... and they're probably no easier to find than geniune ones these days.

Post by **Evan Kubota** » Sun Jan 22, 2006 7:50 pm

Is the Game Boy camera compatible with the Advance or Advance SP? I do have a GB Color but I want to use my SP ;)

Post by **timdrage** » Sun Jan 22, 2006 8:35 pm

I'm pretty sure it should be.... I seem to vaaaguely remember having tried it with a friends Advance... I think!? :?

Anyway, they can be found verrry cheap these days (due to the lack of avaliablity of the printers + paper for them) so probably worth a go!

Post by **audadvnc** » Sun Jan 22, 2006 9:39 pm

Freya wrote:I've never, ever, heard of people making porn with the pxl cam. You must move in different circles, or perhaps you were thinking of the PD-150? Easy mistake to make! ;)

love

Freya

Well it wasn't me, I just ran across the references on the Net, i.e:

http://www-cgi.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/user/j ... lporn.html

Post by **Angus** » Sun Jan 22, 2006 10:04 pm

What a shame the pixelporn seems to have been removed

Post by **tlatosmd** » Mon Jan 23, 2006 3:13 am

I'd say, that Pixelvision camcorder sure looks like designed after the Kodak Ektasound cams.

Post by **malisia** » Wed Mar 01, 2006 3:40 am

hi! I'm a big fan of Pixelvision 2000 and game boy camera.
you can see some of my Game boy pics here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/malisia/sets/373927/

I've also created a Game boy camera group on flickr:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/gameboycamera/

and I've made a music video with pixelvision:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c2_7BaZ5YSA

I'm glad I found this forum.

Post by **adoyle** » Wed Mar 01, 2006 4:56 am

i have 2 pxl 2000s converted cameras in london...
just done a shoot with dita van tesse, marilyn mansons wife..
i output to a ntsc clam shell mini dv recorder...
it really is a lovely thing.
i did a load of sparklehorse music stuff years ago..it looked great..
i used to talk with the inventor in new jersey years ago...he was a big fan of Bill Brandt,the photographer..and tweaked the look of the camera,to give a similar feel....in his shed he said he had made a colour version,that looked like low res kodachrome..i got very excited at this until he told me the prototype was 4 foot lon by 3 foot...
in the uk fisher price had a crummy security camera,and also the tyco kid cam which was rubbish...no pxl 2000s in pal.....
funny enough the front end including the sensors and plastic lens,that help with the amazing depth of field were made in scotland..