Shitty Camera Challenge!

I thought I'd done this challenge last year too, but turns out I did it last in 2024. The challenge (such as it is) is to take a photo every day with a camera that's 'shitty'. What's a shitty camera? This post by Cheryl Lindo Jones has a pretty good explanation, along with a handy chart. It feels a bit sad that an iPhone 5S can be considered at all shitty. Every time I pick the thing up I think how elegant, how sleek, and how classy it feels. Back when it came out it was mocked with "long phone is long" for being so big, now it looks tiny. I have an iPhone 16 (not even a Max) and it feels huge in comparison. Bring back small elegant phones!

I posted more than one photo on some days, and on a couple of days I took photos but didn't post them. I've included all the photos I posted and the two I meant to, along with the captions I added.

1st July

Mirror selfie in a gym, me holding an iPhone 5S with more mirrors and gym equipment behind me.
Classic mirror selfie for an old phone camera. I was tempted to stick a smudgy instagram-style filter on it, but no. (iPhone 5S)

2nd July

Yellow oriental lilies, slightly bruised from falling over but still fabulous
I wondered why the lilies were looking odd, and they’d fallen over from their own blooming heft! Propped them up on the maple and pointed the iPhone 5 at them. (iPhone 5S + Olloclip Telephoto)

3rd July

A Polaroid photo of oriental lilies. The lilies are just about visible in the blurry low-contrast image.
For today's challenge I used up a bunch of Polaroid film I've had in the fridge, and posted 12 of them to my blog. Polaroid really is such a massive disappointment. Whatever they did in the 70s to make the film, they should go back to that. (Polaroid OneStep 2)

I made a separate post about the Polaroids here.

4th July

A photo of the Lego ‘Everyone is Awesome’ set taken with a toy camera.
Found a toy camera and it even charged! (No-Name Toy Camera)

This was some weird no-name toy camera I had in a drawer. I don't know what it is, and I've only ever got pictures off it using an SD card, I daren't plug the actual device into my computer.

5th July

Sunlight shining through the leaves of a cherry tree, creating lots of bloom glowing effects amidst deep silhouetted branches and backlit green leaves
I quite like how this came out. Hazy summery forest light (as much as our garden is a forest, as much as I’d like it to be). (iPhone 5S + Olloclip Telephoto)

6th July

Compare and contrast, toy camera and iPhone 16 Pro. (No-Name Toy Camera and iPhone 16 Pro)

Obviously the picture on the right is far clearer. That was taken with my iPhone 16 Pro, not currently considered a shitty camera, but maybe one day it might be (or a mysterious magical device that hypnotised people before The Event)

7th July

A hot pink rose against a red gate. This is using the telephoto olloclip on an iPhone 5S, the olloclip is on wonky so there’s a slight tilt-shift effect going on with the focus.
So glad I painted the gate this colour. It was meant to be a different shade but there was a bit of a saga with it all. (G6 Thumb Camera)

The saga about the red gate is towards the end of this post about converting my garage to a workshop.

Chris Glass posted about getting a G6 Thumb Camera to use for the challenge and it looked fun and sounded a bit more capable than the toy camera I'd been using, so I got one. This is taken with that.

8th July

Close up of the central part of a St John’s Wort flower. A ring of anthers around a central stamen with four tendril type things at the end.
St John’s Wort, like a ray gun prop, sorta. (iPhone 5S + Olloclip Macro)

9th July

Alucita hexadactyla at the top of a wall
Li’l moth! (iPhone 5S)

10th July

Small very unripe apples on the branch, surrounded by leaves, against a blue sky.
Apples! The toy camera did ok with this one, most of the time it’s a blurry mess. (G6 Thumb Camera)

11th July

A pear tree in bright sunshine with a red gate behind. The lens flare from the sun has given things a purple cast.
More toy camera fun. Messed about with this one, it already had shifted colours, I just boosted them a bit. (G6 Thumb Camera)

12th July

Toy camera photo of sun shining through leaves.
Blaze! (G6 Thumb Camera)

13th July

A grapevine stem reaching out against a bright blue sky. Photo taken with a toy camera
This vine is everywhere in the garden now. The grapes all get eaten by wildlife in autumn, so I guess it does some good. It’s all Gewürztraminer, so not ‘eating grapes’ as such, they’re about 50% seeds by volume. (G6 Thumb Camera)

14th July

Mostly green maple leaves with a patch of red ones in the middle of the image. Photo taken with a G6 1984 toy camera.
Maple, regaining some colour now I’ve trimmed the overhanging branches smothering it. (G6 Thumb Camera)

15th July

Ivy growing up a wall.
Going to remove this before it gets too embedded, but for now, a photo! (G6 Thumb Camera)

16th July

Dug out the Olloclips for the iPhone 5S, a telephoto and a fisheye. I put the fisheye on wonky to see what effect it would get and quite like the result. (iPhone 5S + Olloclip Telephoto + Fisheye)

Four photos! Such extravagance.

17th July

A fisheye lens photo of roses and a fatsia shrub in my garden, with the sun shining through a gap in the leaves at the centre of the lens’ circular field of view.
More fun with fisheye! (iPhone 5S + Olloclip Fisheye)

18th July

A pair of peach and pale yellow roses, facing away from the camera with a grey wall behind. Taken with a toy camera so the colours are more vibrant than reality and the focus is off.
Love this rose. Still no idea what variety it is, but the flowers are huge and flouncy and fragrant. (G6 Thumb Camera)

19th July

Man in trees (G6 Thumb Camera)

20th July

Pointing the toy camera through a regular camera lens and a magnifying loupe.

21st July

Small unripe apples on a dwarf apple tree, lit by late afternoon sunshine. Everything has a warm feeling to it.
Thinned the apples the other day so hoping these will ripen properly this year. (G6 Thumb Camera)

22nd July

Pink roses against a pale blue sky with lens flare from the sun washing the contrast out a bit, it’s all slightly out of focus but has a dreamy summer vibe.
Fuzzy roses. (G6 Thumb Camera)

23rd July

Grapevines growing through the open top window of the greenhouse.
Bursting out. (G6 Thumb Camera)

24th July

A macro photo of a Great Willowherb flower backlit by the low sun. Photo taken with an iPhone 5S with an Olloclip Macro attached.
Great Willowherb! Lots of it around at the moment. I didn’t get a photo of it but there was a Hummingbird Hawk-Moth feeding on the flowers too 😍 (I didn’t even try, I just wanted to look at it, and anyway, they move fast!) (iPhone 5S + Olloclip Macro)

25th July

A small fly on the glass roof of a greenhouse. It’s creating both a shadow and a reflection on the glass.
Bzzt! (iPhone 5S)

26th July

Not autumn, but 3 heatwaves in a row.
Not autumn, but 3 heatwaves in a row. (iPhone 5S)

27th July

Looking up at a birch branch silhouetted against a cloudy sky. Edited to remove what little colour there was.
It was cloudy and cool today. No rain though, and the water butts are nearly empty. (iPhone 5S)

28th July

Purples and blues (G6 Thumb Camera)

29th July

A bunch of unripe grapes, taken with a macro olloclip lens. One of the grapes is brightly lit.
Playing with the macro, and some sunlit grapes on the vine. (iPhone 5s + Olloclip Macro)

30th July

A rosette of leaves on a shrub in a patch of sunlight, the sunlit areas are bright white and the leaves nearby are bright green. More leaves are visible in the shade beyond as dark green patterns.
A little patch of sunshine (G6 Thumb Camera)

31st July

A selfie taken with a toy camera, with bookshelves behind
I think I took one every day, but I don’t think I posted them all. (G6 Thumb Camera)

Fin.

And that's that! A month of low-ish resolution, overly-compressed, strangely coloured photos. I have a soft spot for this kind of thing, my very first blog was a photoblog of photos taken with one of the very first camera phones, a Sharp GX10i. For posterity I keep a version of that site online, though I changed the design to suit higher-resolution photos. Originally it was a photo-a-day in a design that resembled the spaces on a Monopoly board, I wish I had some screenshots/designs of it from back then! Anyway, start at the beginning here: Paperpixel April 2003.