Gotta Catch Every Frame

Way back in 1999 through Tiger Electronics, The Pokemon Company launched a 35mm film camera. It has no official title or namesake, but today it is just known as “the Pokemon camera,” for lack of any better description. So now that it has been a little over 2 decades since it released (that makes me feel so old), how does the pokemon camera 22 years later hold up?

Well, from an aesthetics standpoint, the camera certainly stands out from the crowd. With the pokeball flash to the golden pikachu coloring and design, this will certainly turn heads. With an obvious lack of subtlety, it is very obvious that this camera was made for kids who really just wanted something simple to take photos around the house or on vacation. It is really just a glorified disposable camera that you can use as much as you’d like to.

Not that there aren’t some features inside the camera. As anyone who has taken pictures with this camera should know, the biggest defining aspect of it is the amazing Pokemon vignette that surrounds every photo taken. It is at once charming while also fighting you with every new exposure. Unless you get all the lighting exactly on point, you will either have a tremendous amount of white border to your picture or barely visible pocket monsters at every corner.

That is the fun of such an oddity though, you simple point, shoot, and see how it comes out. That is really where all the fun lies. That and trying to take a magnum opus photo with Pokemon around it (my goal of a frame from this camera in an art museum will happen one day).

If you have been following my progress over the last few years, you will recall an episode of the series Inside the Lines where I sat down with Isaiah Robert Winters and we talked about this very camera.

Fast forward to right before the pandemic and I purchased the one you saw above from eBay for about 30 bucks, if that. I immediately started snapping away and here we are, pretty much two years later, fulfilling that promise. So, Isaiah, if you come across this article, thank you for humoring me back then and I am here today to show off the first roll of developed film from the camera itself.

There must have been something in the air last year because since I discussed the camera in 2019, there have been a lot written up on it. The video you see at the end of the blog is a great visual dive into it and another blogger has some great photos from his time with it as well here.

I plan to do more photos with this camera and will post them on my personal Instagram and Pinterest pages, so please share away if you like it at all.

Cheers!

Daniel Hess

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