I Bought the WORST Kickstarter Camera Ever

Summary

The Yoshika Y35 Digifilm camera, a Kickstarter project from 2017, gained attention as a digital throwback to film photography, raising over a million dollars. Despite its vintage appeal, it left many backers dissatisfied due to subpar build quality and misleading marketing. The camera mimics film photography with features like a winder and physical filter cartridges but suffers from quality issues, such as a cheap build, shutter lag, and poor image quality. Many backers felt misled by the brand's reputation, which was leveraged by a different company. Although it offers a unique shooting experience, the Y35 fails to deliver on its promises, making it more of an overpriced toy than a reliable camera.

Highlights

• Kickstarter dreams turn sour with the Yoshika Y35, a digital camera attempting to recreate the film experience but falling short in execution. 🎬
• The camera gained initial excitement and hefty funding due to its nostalgic appeal, but ultimately failed to meet expectations. 💸
• Its unique features, like a shutter-winding mechanism and swappable filter cartridges, enrich the user experience but don't mask bigger quality issues. 🚫
• Marketing leveraged the Yoshika brand, misleading backers into expecting more, resulting in a legacy of disappointment. 😡
• Despite failings, some might find charm in its distinct experience, if they know what they're getting into from the start. 💡

Key Takeaways

• The Yoshika Y35 camera was a Kickstarter sensation, raising over a million dollars, but left many backers unhappy due to quality issues and misleading marketing. 📉
• Mimicking film photography, the Y35 uses a unique winding mechanism and physical filter cartridges, yet these features do little to enhance its lackluster performance. 📷
• Despite the Yoshika brand's historical pedigree, the company behind the Y35 leveraged this reputation unethically, leading to widespread disappointment. 🤔
• Though it provides a distinct shooting experience, the camera's poor build, shutter lag, and bad image quality make it hard to recommend. 🙅‍♂️
• If priced lower and marketed truthfully, the Y35 might be seen as a quirky toy rather than a failed attempt at innovative photography. 📸

Overview

The Yoshika Y35 Digifilm camera was a Kickstarter darling in 2017, designed to mimic the nostalgic experience of shooting with film within a digital format. Raising over a million dollars, its promise seemed irresistible to photography enthusiasts who remembered the legacy of the Yoshika brand. However, beyond its clever marketing and nostalgic appeal lay significant problems that quickly turned enthusiasm to regret for its backers.

This camera boasted quirky features such as a shutter-winding mechanism and physical film cartridges, designed to simulate changing filters or film types. Initially intriguing, these features failed to compensate for the urgent lack of quality in construction and function. The absence of an LCD screen, problematic shutter mechanics, and misleading claims about its capabilities painted a picture far removed from the marketing glitz.

Despite holding a certain charm through its unique and analog-inspired quirks, the Y35 is hampered by severe technical flaws, such as significant shutter lag and disappointing image results. If marketed as an affordable novelty toy rather than a serious camera, it might have found a niche among hobbyists. Instead, its high price and misleading marketing turned it into a cautionary tale for Kickstarter backers.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction and Background The chapter discusses the speaker's experience with a Kickstarter camera project that failed to meet customer expectations. Initially appealing as a nostalgic return to film photography, the Yoshika Y35 Digifilm camera garnered negative feedback post-launch, leaving many backers disappointed. Despite the project's shortcomings, the company is planning to launch a similar project, sparking curiosity about the potential quality of the new product.
• 00:30 - 01:00: Unboxing and Initial Thoughts The chapter discusses the speaker's experience with a Kickstarter camera project that raised over a million US dollars. The speaker managed to purchase the camera at a great price from someone who backed the project, used it once, and decided to sell it. The unboxing experience of the camera was described as uninspiring, although this was attributed to an attempt at minimalism, possibly for environmental reasons.
• 01:00 - 02:00: Unique Features and Design The chapter titled 'Unique Features and Design' focuses on a camera that has become popular due to its distinctive features, aiming to recreate the film experience in a digital format. Without an LCD screen, the camera offers no setting previews or photo reviews. It includes a simple optical tunnel viewfinder without any indicators, eschewing the functionality of a rangefinder. Focusing isn't indicated either—it functions as two pieces of plastic put together. Additionally, taking a shot requires manually winding the shutter.
• 03:00 - 04:00: Toy vs. Serious Camera The chapter discusses the difference between toy and serious cameras, focusing on their mechanical operations and functionality. It highlights a feature of some cameras where a ratchet system mimics the experience of shooting film, despite not performing any mechanical function. This is contrasted with the Epson RD1 digital rangefinder camera, which has a functional winder that actually winds the mechanical shutter, making it unique among digital cameras.
• 05:00 - 06:00: Lens and Marketing Claims The chapter discusses unique marketing claims regarding a camera's lens and filter system. Notably, the camera uses physical cartridges to change image filters, a feature not seen before on other cameras. These cartridges, which alter color effects, ISO numbers, and aspect ratios, could be purchased separately or as a bundle, though the author notes their redundancy since a switch or button could achieve the same effect. However, this novel filter system was part of the experiential marketing strategy, contributing to successful sales via their Kickstarter campaign.
• 07:00 - 08:00: Camera Performance and Usability The chapter discusses the initial overwhelming positive reception and funding of a camera project, reaching substantial financial goals quickly. While the author is not entirely against the idea, they express an appreciation for using different types of cameras to enhance their shooting experience. However, upon receiving the camera, the author immediately notices issues with the build quality, something that early backers also pointed out.
• 09:00 - 10:00: Image Quality and Experience The chapter discusses issues related to the build quality and reliability of a camera. It highlights that the camera is cheaply constructed and prone to breaking or malfunctioning, even with minimal use. A common problem is identified where the camera fails to take a picture after winding, but a workaround involves leaving it in a halfway position to take pictures continuously, although this workaround disables another feature of the camera. The chapter emphasizes the fragility and poor build quality of the camera, noting that it feels it could easily break.
• 11:00 - 11:30: Camera's Place and Conclusion This chapter discusses the distinction between toy cameras and more serious cameras, focusing on the Yoshika Y35. Despite being labeled as a toy, the Yoshika Y35 has not met customer expectations, especially when compared to the Camp Snap, another toy camera. The Camp Snap is praised for its durability and affordability, highlighting that the key difference lies in meeting user expectations, rather than the physical build or price. The conclusion reflects on the role of these cameras in the photography world.

I Bought the WORST Kickstarter Camera Ever Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 I bought the worst Kickstarter camera ever. At the time, it seemed like a cool throwback to film photography, but it ended up with hundreds of backers leaving dissatisfied reviews, even 8 years later, and very few, if any, happy customers. And this is especially relevant now as the same company is teasing a brand new Kickstarter project for a camera that looks very similar to this one. But how bad can this camera actually be? This is the Yoshika Y35 Digifilm camera and it was launched as a Kickstarter project back in 2017. It
• 00:30 - 01:00 ended up raising well over a million US and that's because this isn't a normal camera or Kickstarter. I was lucky enough to find someone who sold me the camera almost untouched for a great price. And they said they backed the project, received the camera, used it once, and immediately wanted it gone. And it was a great deal for me. But maybe I'm the sucker for buying it knowing what I know. Let's just say the unboxing experience is uninspiring, but we'll just pretend they're saving the environment, and we'll call it minimal. Like I said, this isn't a normal digital
• 01:00 - 01:30 camera, and its unique features are why it's sold so well. That and another big reason we'll get to in a second. This camera is trying to mimic the film experience in a digital camera, and it does that in a few ways. There's no LCD screen, so no preview of settings or review of the photo after the fact. The viewfinder is a simple optical tunnel with no indicators and it's not a rangefinder like the look implies. Meaning there's no indication of focus here either. It's literally just two pieces of plastic. To take a shot, you must first wind the shutter. And you have to do that in
• 01:30 - 02:00 between every shot. But when you do that, you're not actually doing anything mechanically in the camera that's helpful. You're not advancing the film or winding a mechanical shutter. It's just a little ratchet system that hits a little bumper button and lets the camera know it's ready for a shot. but it's just there to kind of mimic the experience of shooting film. Interestingly enough, the much higherend Epson RD1 digital rangefinder camera also has a winder, but this one actually winds the mechanical shutter, so it's actually doing something and it's pretty cool. That's the only other digital camera I'm aware of that at least
• 02:00 - 02:30 attempts this in anyway. And then finally, and this is unique. I've never seen this on any camera before, the camera changes image filters by physically removing these cartridges and placing a new one in. These cartridges were sold separately or bundled together for an additional cost and range from different color effects, ISO numbers, and aspect ratios. Obviously, these are completely unnecessary. You could just use a switch or a button on the camera to switch filters. But once again, this is the experience they were trying to sell and sell. They did. The Kickstarter
• 02:30 - 03:00 was funded in four hours and then reached a million half dollars or something crazy like that. So, obviously, people really liked this idea. And just to be clear, I'm not totally opposed to this idea. I like shooting cameras sometimes just have a little toy camera on the side that just gives me a different experience and kind of challenges me in some ways. So, I mean, you you'll see in a minute how this actually worked. The first thing I noticed when I got the camera was the build quality or lack thereof. And this is something that backers noticed pretty
• 03:00 - 03:30 quick as well. There's no sugar coating this. The camera is really cheaply built. One thing is already broken on my barely used camera. Sometimes after you do the film advance shutter rewind thing, the camera will usually not take a picture. I looked this up and it's actually a common problem that happened to a lot of people. So thankfully somebody figured it out. You just wind it and leave it in the halfway position and then you can infinitely shoot photos. But now I can't use like one of the features of the camera. But a lot of the camera just feels super cheap like it could break easily as well. In
• 03:30 - 04:00 defense of this camera though, it's clearly meant as a toy and not a serious photographic tool. And there's a lot of cheap toy cameras out there like my Camp Snap, which I actually really enjoy. And I'll be comparing this to a little bit because unlike the Yoshika Y35, the Campnap has actually done really well and has rave customer reviews, even being a cheap toy camera. But the big difference between these two cameras was expectations. The Camp Snap is also plastic and cheap, but you can drop it and it won't break. The Yoshika Y35 has
• 04:00 - 04:30 more going on to break, but it doesn't actually feel any cheaper in quality. This Cam Snap camera is a heck of a lot cheaper than this camera. Even with the biggest discount for the earliest backers, this camera cost $130 USD for just the camera and a single cartridge. That's over double the cost of the Cam Snap. And then when this fully launched afterwards, it was $250 for just this camera. Over four times the price of this. And when you pay more, you expect more. But the most
• 04:30 - 05:00 infuriating part to me is if you go back years ago and look at the comments of the original backers, they were excited about the brand Yoshika and what it represented in the past. The brand name gave them trust and they purchased on that trust. But like many older camera brands, Yoshika is not the same Yoshika anymore. The brand rights were sold to a Hong Kong-based group who were able to use it for this Kickstarter launch. And I get that that isn't legally wrong. It just sort of feels ethically wrong to lean on that to sell an overpriced toy camera. But back to the camera itself,
• 05:00 - 05:30 one actual hardware upgrade that the Yoshika Y35 seem to have over other toy cameras is that it supposedly has an actual lens. I mean, more of a lens than other toy cameras have. Technically, any piece of convex plastic or glass, we can call it a lens. But if you look at the marketing material, they go out of their way to talk about a real glass lens with four glass elements, which basically means a more sophisticated lens. And it insinuates that this was custom made for the camera. And with the lens, it even mentioned future upgrades, which makes
• 05:30 - 06:00 me and other customers think, oh, maybe in the future you could swap lenses. So, I decided to take the camera apart and get to the bottom of this. I am particularly interested in looking at that lens and sensor. While I take this apart to get there, I want to tell you about a great place to buy used camera gear like this. Not not like this because this is a bad camera, but you know, like good used camera. And that's from Bay, who sponsored this video. Bi is a website that lets you shop local Japanese listings from wherever you are in the world. It's sort of like garage sale hopping in Japan, but just from the comfort of your office chair. And the
• 06:00 - 06:30 reason this is so helpful is because it lets you get in on camera and lens deals that other buyers aren't seeing. That Epson RD1 I showed you earlier was purchased last year on Bay for almost half the going rate of other camera stores. When you buy an item on Bay, the seller ships it to their warehouse in Japan and then Bay ships it to you. This does mean you're going to pay for shipping twice, so budget accordingly, but I've always found the overseas shipping costs fair and the shipping is very quick. First-time Bay shoppers save 10% on their first purchase using my link in the description. So, check it
• 06:30 - 07:00 out and then let's check out this lens together. This doesn't look like a custom lens design for this camera at all. First off, the whole front piece is just a facade for the real lens underneath, which just looks like an off-the-shelf lens you can buy yourself, typically used for machine vision type projects. And sure enough, it just uses the standard M12 lens mount. So, I went ahead and picked up another M12 wide-angle lens to swap out and try on this camera. And if you want to see how that experiment went, then subscribe so you don't miss out on the video coming next. The irony of all this is I don't
• 07:00 - 07:30 mind the lens quality at all. I just think the marketing around it in that original Kickstarter was unnecessary at best and misleading at worst. Okay, but actually using the camera, we get some good things and some more bad things as well. The camera does take a moment to power on. I learned to flick it on, then move the advanced lever to the middle position a few seconds before I actually needed my shot, and then it was ready to go. And I know the optical viewfinder doesn't help you other than framing, but I actually kind of like it. It goes with the experience of not seeing your exact
• 07:30 - 08:00 exposure or settings and just looking into a window of the world around you with no digital interactions. And that's the vibe this camera was going for. And honestly, they kind of nailed it. I mean, yes, it it's gimmicky to swap out the film cartridges and actually a little bit annoying. You could probably break them or lose them like I did in my backpack. But surprisingly, the gimmicky film cartridges are not at all what makes this camera bad or what annoys me the most. They actually deliver on their promise. It it really is a different experience. When I'm out shooting, I
• 08:00 - 08:30 have to flip open the back, pop in a cartridge. It's just annoying enough to switch them that I ended up treating it kind of like a roll of film. I chose a film stock or whatever for the hour and shot that and I would just shoot that before switching it out later. It's funny because as much hate as this camera gets, the whole mechanical film experience is kind of here and it kind of works except for my film advance lever which doesn't. But if you also wanted good images, that's where it starts to go even more downhill. Before we get to the image quality itself,
• 08:30 - 09:00 there are two technical problems that really irk me with the images. Let's talk about those first. The first is rolling shutter, and it's pretty bad here. Basically, the sensor reads out slow enough that you can get some funny looking stuff if the camera or subject is moving when you take the picture. It's kind of awful, but okay, hold still and take pictures of trees and we can work with that. But the second problem, and this one drives me insane, and it's something that the first Cam Snap did, too, and was fixed in a later version, and that's shutter lag. When you press
• 09:00 - 09:30 the shutter on the Y35, it takes a second or two before actually taking a picture. It even plays a little shutter sound, but that sound doesn't actually mean the picture was taken. The most reliable indication that the picture was taken and we're done is the light changing colors, but you can't see that light while actually taking a photo. And it's bad enough that between the shutter delay and the rolling shutter, an entire day worth of shots for me were ruined. I swear I'm not obsessed with taking bad pictures of people's legs. You can kind of work around this by when you take a picture, hold still and make sure it's
• 09:30 - 10:00 actually done before you move the camera. But that really irks me. It's one of the few flaws I just really can't stand in the camera. But suppose you actually get the shot you want. How is the image quality? Well, it's horrible as you'd imagine, but it's actually kind of my favorite part of the camera. The images do have a lot of noise, even in good lighting, and they look super oversharpened. Of course, it doesn't shoot RAW, but you didn't actually think it did, right? The colors from the different cartridges aren't amazing, but I think they're interesting enough that
• 10:00 - 10:30 you could really learn them well enough and get consistently cool looking results in the conditions they're best suited for. Here's all six cartridges that I have shooting the same scene side by side, just so you can get an idea of what they look like. My favorite cartridge is probably this orange one that's labeled in my fancy, which doesn't really make any sense at all, but it gives off a really strong faded vintage look. And I don't really have the best examples here, but I got enough shots so far that I think I can really see the potential. But the best part about the images is this is one area where I think the campaign wasn't misleading at all. If you look over the
• 10:30 - 11:00 project, the sample images they provide really look like they were taken from this camera. They are pretty bad. Now, I have heard from some backers that the image quality wasn't what they were expecting. So, maybe I'm wrong. But to me, it just seems like from the get-go the image quality was pretty clear it was going to be bad and they delivered on that. The weird part is, and I feel so conflicted, and maybe I'll get some hate for saying this, but the Yoshika Y35 I I don't actually think is that bad of a camera. If it was much cheaper and the marketing less misleading, people
• 11:00 - 11:30 knew what they were getting into. I actually think it's kind of fun. Do you want to see what a really good filmike experience on digital is? You want to check out this video I made on the Epson RD1. It's a fantastic camera. I'll see you over there. And until next time, as always, happy snapping.