Testbench
CAMERA TEST
The camera has done okay here, with a little help from golden-hour light
1/580sec at f/2.8, ISO 100
A decade ago, you could buy cheap-but-good point-and-shoot digicams from all the main camera makers. But now, smartphones have killed off these cameras. Instead, if you search for ‘cheap digital camera’ on online marketplaces, you’ll find an array of no-name models. These are often styled to look like they come from one of the ‘real’ camera brands.
But might any of these cameras actually be any good? To find out, I decided to try this silver-and-black retro-styled model, which is clearly trying to make unwary buyers think it’s the popular Fujifilm X100VI. It tends to be sold on Amazon for about £110, but can be bought from AliExpress for under £40, including shipping from China. That probably isn’t a good sign.
On the box, it’s labelled simply as ‘Digital Camera DC202’, with the small print revealing it’s made by the Shenzhen Sonida Digital Technology Co Ltd. I wasn’t expecting it to be particularly good, but nothing could have prepared me for quite how bad it turned out to be.
Missing specs
Obviously, the first thing I’ll look for when assessing a camera is its main specifications. But that’s not so easy here. Yes, there’s a spec table in the instruction manual, but it’s missing key information. Worryingly, this includes anything to do with the sensor size, type, or resolution.