I bought a Game Boy Camera shortly after it came out, and managed to take some interesting pictures. I thought it was a fun little distraction for a time before I shelved it. I recently pulled it out of mothballs and made it into a kind of a webcam.
Imagine my surprise when I happened across this interesting guide and gallery devoted to the thing. I had no ideas that there were people out there that took their low-end photography so seriously.
“The Game Boy camera is not a conventional camera, and you won’t get much out of it if you use it like one. To use it effectively, try seeing the world the way it does. Your world is black and white. Contrast is accentuated. Detail is blurred. You can’t see very far ahead, so you must get close to things to see them. Wide angle distortion creeps in. You tilt sideways to see as much of objects as you can and still be close to them. Familiar and boring objects often look surprising and different viewed througth the Game Boy camera’s fuzzy, greyscale eye. Rows of seats on a train become seats on a spaceship in an old sci-fi movie. A glowing phone booth becomes a teleportation pod. Ordinary buildings become bombed out ruins. People’s faces dissolve into grey dots, remaining eerily recognisable.”