Camp Snap CS-8

The Camp Snap CS-8 ($199) is a love letter to Super 8 cameras. It takes its design cues from an old Bolex and leans into nostalgia with analog dials, control wheels, and vintage video filters. Its video is definitely lo-fi, which is …

The Camp Snap CS-8 ($199) is a love letter to Super 8 cameras. It takes its design cues from an old Bolex and leans into nostalgia with analog dials, control wheels, and vintage video filters. Its video is definitely lo-fi, which is understandable given the Camp Snap 8's low price, but is elevated by a configurable engine that lets you create and load your own filters onto the camera. I wish that there was some digital stabilization to curb the jittery look that's prevalent in the footage, but otherwise, the CS-8 is a good fit for kids from middle school on up and for creators going for a retro vibe.

The fun factor is high, but not enough to edge out the more versatile (albeit pricier) Fujifilm Instax Mini Evo Cinema ($409.95), which i our Editors' Choice for its diverse video filters, smaller size, and built-in Instax film printer. There's no question about where Camp Snap got the idea for the CS-8. It looks just like an old Super 8 movie camera, the type that families used to capture memories in the 1960s and '70s, before VHS camcorders took over the market in the '80s.

Camp Snap embraces the style with enthusiasm, giving the CS-8 an old-school silver-and-black finish and analog gauges to show battery life and memory card capacity. The size also follows Super 8 cameras—by digital standards, the CS-8 is pretty big. It measures 8.3 by 2.8 by 8.8 inches (HWD) and weighs 1.1 pounds, it's roughly twice the size as the Fujifilm Instax Mini Evo Cinema and many times larger than an action cam like the GoPro Hero13 Black.

I think it's pretty comfortable to hold, as its large pistol grip fits naturally in my hand and its Record trigger sits naturally under my index finger, but I worry that kids will have a hard time. Camp Snap started as a brand for summer camp kids, and the CS-8 feels like a natural movie-making machine to catch memories of youthful exploits, but it seems too cumbersome for small hands. The size is not the only form-over-function concern either.

The CS-8 has large W and T buttons to set its digital zoom, but they're awkwardly placed at the top of the right side panel. If you want to adjust them when you're recording, you'll need to hold the camera with your left hand—that's not a problem for southpaws, but it's easier to hold a camera steady with your dominant hand, and we live in a right-handed world. The left side also has Mode, Up, and Down buttons below the Camp Snap 8 logo—you won't use these much; they're only there to set the camera's internal clock.

The remaining controls are small, knurled dials, all located on the left side. On/Off is self-explanatory and is joined by an aspect ratio control that switches between 4:3, 16:9, 1:1, and 9:16, and another to switch between the five built-in filters (Analog, Black and White, Standard, Vintage 1, Vintage 2). The dials are attractive, for sure, but they're also pretty tight and narrow, so they require some effort to adjust.

The built-in microphone is pretty typical for a digital camera; it sounds a little hollow and picks up plenty of background noise. You can attach an external mic via the 3.5mm jack, and there's a cold shoe on the top plate for easy mounting. Camp Snap started out making digital still cameras with optical viewfinders only. The CS-8 bucks that trend by including an electronic viewfinder but omitting in-camera playback, so it's pretty close to the original concept.

The viewfinder itself is pretty decent; it's easy to see the LCD's grill pattern, but it's large and clear enough to see a good preview of the scene. The eye relief isn't good, though. When wearing my eyeglasses, I can only see about half of the viewfinder. When I take them off and jam the eyecup to my face, I still struggle to see the bottom portion without peeking down and missing what's going on up top.

The Instax Mini Evo Cinema also shows the LCD pattern when using its eye-level viewfinder attachment, but makes it easier to see the whole frame. The CS-8 is powered by a built-in battery and charges via USB-C, and comes preloaded with a 4GB microSD card. The battery is sure to outlast storage; I recorded enough video to fill the card to capacity in about 30 minutes, and the battery stayed above 90%.

It's worthwhile to swap out the 4GB card for one with a larger capacity (the camera works with cards up to 128GB), but this requires some work. You'll need to use a Philips-head screwdriver to remove the two screws around the USB-C port, then slide the back panel down to access the card slot. The CS-8 doesn't have Wi-Fi, so you'll want to plug it into your device via USB-C to offload video—it mounts as a disk on computers, smartphones, and tablets.

The Camp Snap 8 uses a 26mm wide-angle lens with a fixed f/2.0 aperture. It covers about the same field of view as the main lens on most smartphone cameras. It's backed by a Type 1/2.7 sensor, which is well behind phones and action cams in picture quality, but does a better job in dim light versus the Fujifilm Instax Mini Evo Cinema's tinier Type 1/5 chip. The Evo has a built-in video light to compensate.

Neither can touch any iPhone from the past five years or a quality action cam like the DJI Osmo Action 5 Pro in any kind of light, but you don't pick up a camera like the CS-8 and expect to get superlative footage. The CS-8 doesn't include digital stabilization either, so handheld clips show some jumps and jitters. If you're a content creator who works handheld and wants top-flight video quality, consider saving your pennies for the DJI Osmo Pocket 3, the best small vlogging camera I've used.

Additionally, the lens shows some chromatic aberration around the edges of its image—a fancy term for halos of false color. I'd also recommend using its digital zoom feature (there's no optical zoom) judiciously. You can punch in a bit without too much worry, but video quality steeply drops off starting around 4x, and at 8x it has a garbled look. Video is captured at 2.7K resolution and 30fps in most modes.

The Analog filter drops to 20fps to capture motion closer to the 18fps of Super 8 film cameras. The footage looks decent enough at the widest angle, but I see some evidence of heavy sharpening with most profiles—repeating patterns like blades of grass can shimmer, and the hairs in my beard are way too defined in selfie clips. The Analog filter dials this way back and delivers a softer, more natural look that I prefer, but also adds animated film scratches and hairs that fall short of spectacular—they're not nearly as charming as the filter effects that Fuji puts into its Instax Mini Evo Cinema cam.

The CS-8 doesn't limit you to its built-in profiles. Camp Snap has a website that lets you create your own filters, so you can experiment with different looks for the camera. You can adjust brightness, contrast, saturation, and hue; tweak red, green, or blue color balance; and set the frame rate. Once you create a profile, download it to your device, then drag and drop it into the camera's root folder.

You can't adjust the sharpening, however; the Analog setting is the only one where that's dialed back no matter what. Camp Snap doesn't provide any editing software with the camera. Creative pros are sure to already have a setup, but kids and family historians will need to seek out their own. Windows Movie Maker and iMovie are good starting points for cutting together short clips into long-form projects for desktop systems, and there are plenty of editing apps for phones and tablets on both Android and iOS.

The Camp Snap CS-8 is a charming Super 8-inspired digital camera with customizable filters and genuine retro appeal, but its lack of stabilization and bulky design undermine the analog magic.

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