Launched again in 2023, the unique Camp Snap camera has rapidly established itself as a minor cult traditional. Whereas I wouldn’t name it one of many best compact cameras round, this ultra-affordable, ultra-simple and ultra-pocketable screen-free snapper is a refreshing return to images’s old-school rules: simply level, shoot and take a look at the outcomes sooner or later sooner or later.

Now, with the brand new Camp Snap CS-8, the corporate has introduced that very same ethos to video. Styled after the Tremendous 8 movie cameras of the Sixties, full with classic textured plastic, pistol-grip operation, knurled dials and analogue meters to point out remaining battery life and space for storing, the CS-8 is a retro camcorder for a era bored of utilizing smartphones for all their video wants.

The CS-8 is giant and chunky, and felt reassuringly weighty in my hand. I’m not in love with the abundance of plastic right here – regardless of the traditional appears, there’s little or no of the metallic you’d discover in a real unique Tremendous 8 digital camera – however I get it.

That is an ultra-affordable trendy simulacrum of a classic digital camera relatively than the painstaking recreation offered by Kodak’s own 2024-released Super 8 (price ticket: north of $5,000), and it’s awash with apparent fakery: there are imitation screws on the bottom of the deal with, a dummy chilly shoe on high and, regardless of the rubbery grip wrapped round its barrel, there’s no option to really modify the lens. I can reside with all that, as I don’t count on it to be a “actual” 8mm digital camera – simply to appear to be one from a distance.