JOCO VX5 12MP Digital Holga Camera

It broke after a week. It's unfortunate because it was fun to use though. Save your money

Buy it for your kid. It is like Strawberry fields forever. But do not wait to take any good photos. You can buy some colored papers and put them in front of your digital camera. Useless geek ever. And sucks battery like nuts.

I bought this camera without being able to find any reviews. The price was good, I love holga, diana, lomo and toy cameras, so what the heck.It is a cheap, plasticy cameara with a shutter so quiet, you can't hear it. fixed focus lens, or you can adjust it for macro. no appature adjustment. I personally would have loved an appature adustment - remember the sun or the cloudy settings - no biggie, I do like the fixed focus.When you get your camera, be sure to have 3 new AAA batteries. I does come with them, but they are cheap and probably near dead, I got 3 shots before mine were gone. Also a SD card. I put a 4GB, that's good for 800 shots at the fine (12mp) setting.The two biggest disapointments for me was #1 a rectangular screen. I really got into the square format of diana images with the vignetted edges. You will get some vignetted sides with this camera, but without the square formant, a big bummer for me. Sure you can crop, but loose the vignette -The other issue I had was #2 the lens is way too sharp. Nothing like the Holga lenses, this lens was rather sharp without the abberations that make the Holga lenses unique. Not as sharp as a DSLR Lens, maybe more like a cellphone. Good, but not great, but not poor either.But the camera is fun and easy to use. I don't get into the effects that are built in, you can add those later if you like wtih photoshop or lightroom. I shot outside on a sunny day, and got nice contrasty images. The shutter speed is rather slow, so have a steady hand, or enjoy the blur. It's also nice you can turn the flash on or off. The digital zoom is useless - you can crop later needed.So it is what it is. Not a Lomo or Holga, but a fun toy camera to use and enjoy. I'll keep mine and am looking forward to using it again.

I have been facinated by the trend in photography called Lomography, which consists of using cheap plastic conventional cameras to produce images with visual defects, vignetting, and often unconventional color gamuts. The images acquired by these cameras have a nostagic appeal, especially for people like myself whose first camera may very well have been a consumer level film camera. My first camera was a Kodak Brownie, which which took square pictures. Square prints were ubiquitous until point and shoot 35 mm cameras replaced Instamatics and Polaroids in the 80s when the 3 to 2 aspect ratio ruled. So I considered buying a Diana film camera, but things like the availability and cost of film and processing quickly discouraged me. So what next? It was possible to create a "lomo" look in Photoshop and other image processing software, but that elliminated the fun and sponaiety of being able to go out and just shoot photos with crazy abandon and then pick out ones best shots later. So what other options did I have? Read on:Enter the Lomo JOCO VX5 which is considered to be a "toy" camera. Billed as digital Holga, it is sort of a weird hybrid that produces lomo looking images at 4000 x 3000 resolution (3 to 2 35mm film aspect ratio)--with a variety of easy to access effects. I agree with the other reviewer here that it would have been better if a square or 1:1 aspect ratio were available as the vignetting the camera produces can't be turned off so severe cropping would be necessary to get more of a true Holga or Diana look. The color images it produces is similar to cross processing and a bit washed out; others are a selection of tints. There are variety of color effects that can be applied while taking the pictures and a menu of them with some other options that can only be applied after they have been taken accessed through the viewing menu. The effects applied afterwards retain a copy of the original color scheme that the picture was taken in. I like the black and white setting the best, it produces better grayscale images than my much more expensive cameras in many cases The video produced is a vhs quality 4:3 aspect ratio with poor sound quality, which is more of a Super 8 or 8mm look. In the old days did didn't have sound movie cameras, so it's not a big deal if you want to "fake" an old timey home movie look--the audio can be deleted in your video editing program or you can use a secondary device to record better sound. There is no speaker, so whatever audio is recorded can only be listened to or after the movies are downloaded ot a computer. Focus is fixed and there is only a close up or 3 ft to infinity setting; the "macro" is not true macro and is somewhat limited. I have had the camera for a while yet and have yet to discover what the exact "sweet" spot for the macro setting is--but it seems to be closer than what the owners manual states--you'll have to experiment--but don't expect to get any extreme close ups.Pros: Produces whimsical and interesting images. The camera's price is resonable for a novelty camera. Menus are straightforward and easy to access. Resolution for still images is high enough to produce a decent quality print should you desire to do so. There is an onboard flash as well which is a feature that is often absent in cameras in the toy camera class, but is more useful for fill flash than anything else. No film required for that cool lomo look. The vignetting for the most part looks good, but it would have been nice to have the option to turn it off if desired.Cons: The camera only can output 3:2 aspect ratio images, so if you are looking for a square prints you're out of luck here. You can crop your images to squares and add the vignette in your image editing software, so if you want squares you'll have to compose with that in mind. The camera also has a significant shutter lag and does poorly in low light situations. Light areas can be easily blown out so it is necessary to often access the EV settting (exposure comensation) to make adjustments as it is virtually impossible to recover badly overexposed images. The date and time settings are whiped out when the camera battery compartment is opened so unless you transfer your images via usb cable, if you use the memory card in a card reader you'll have to enter the date and time again after each image transfer. No sound for video and no audible shutter sound to confirm you got the shot. It is difficult to see the LCD in brightly lit surroundings, the optical viewfinder is a bit off so leave plenty of room around your subject just in case if you're trying to shoot with it.My final analysis is that it is fine as long as you look at this a novelty toy camera, but it is difficult to get consistent results form it. Some people may like that uncertainty and it's fine for experimentation and novelty; but if you're shooting an imporatant event make sure to take your real camera with you as well. It's a more economical way to play than with a real Holga with the cost of film and processing, and since you get immediate feedback on what your finished image looks like you can confirm you got the shot--with film if the prints come back a disaster you can't go back in time and recapture the moment.

Great Product