The Shitty Camera Challenge: Into The Woods With The Circuit Bent Action Scamera

The Shitty Camera Challenge: Into The Woods With The Circuit Bent Action Scamera

This post was first drafted back in August, while we were on our annual holiday in Meco near Lisbon. I travelled light, with just the Pentax Optio I-10, the Ilford Pixie 35-II and the little pink circuit bent action scamera. On our daily walk to the beach through the pine woodlands, I would take one of the cameras along with me, and this time it's the turn of the action scamera to give us its interpretation of this very picturesque walk.

Just as an introduction, if you're not familiar with what circuit bending is, here's what I did to create this little gem. I disassembled the camera, one of those cheap GoPro action camera clones, to reveal the lens assembly and main board. I took a small piece of metal foil and used it to short out some of the contacts on the ribbon wire connecting the sensor to the main board. I then reassembled the camera. Although the sensor still 'sees' a normal image, the short in the ribbon wire means that decoding of the signal by the camera is all scrambled, and if I was lucky (which in this case I was), the final images become a psychedelic interpretation of the scene.

The scamera takes a few seconds to 'settle down' when making an image, so if I'm quick enough with the shutter button and a flick of the wrist, I can get different, and occasionally much more interesting, variations of the same image. In one instance, for example, the final image came out quite green and yellow, but before it stabilised, the camera produced a lovely kaleidoscope of colours, and I was lucky enough to grab one of these. Rather than providing a description of each image, I thought I would just present a few from the holiday without comment, and you can make your own interpretation. 

I'm always trying to find more cheap digital cameras for circuit bending, but of the few I've tried so far, this is definitely my favourite. I’ve posted the whole series in an album on my PhotoWeb (formerly Joomeo) (https://public.joomeo.com/albums/6a5268e83d1e4) if you want to see the rest of the images. If you are on Mastodon, you can now follow this blog directly. Just go to Mastodon and follow my WordPress account at @keithdevereux.wordpress.com@keithdevereux.wordpress.com. All new posts will be automatically updated to your timeline on Mastodon.

#CircuitBending, #Digicam, #Glitch, #GlitchArt, #Glitchy, #Retro, #Experimental, #LoFi, #ToyCamera, #ActionCamera, #GlitchVideo, #LoFi,