A DIY retro digital camera project - Blog #5 China trip + Prototype 1.0

If I had to sum up my China trip in one word, it’d be this: People.

There’s a Chinese saying that gets translated into Chinglish as “People mountain, people sea.” Which sounds goofy, but wow, it’s dead-on. Imagine every train station, every street crossing, every noodle shop operating at “crowd density: maximum.” It’s like the country itself is running a stress test on your personal space bubble.

Before jump into the camera development. I would like show 2 pics I took in China to show case some uniqueness about this country

1 - A secured state

The picture above just an example. A handful of HD security cameras — maybe even the AI-integrated kind — perched over a little street intersection. Standing watch. Guarding the “safety” of ordinary people. So I guess somewhere in the monitor showing real time reality show daily. 

2 - A vampire state

A young woman waling under the sun in Shenzhen street, not in Chernobyl. Umbrella and sun protection hoody are the standard outfit to fight against global warming I guess. 

Oh, not to mention the good food. I gained 3-5 pounds every time during my 10 days business trip in China. I considered the food in China (not Chinese food) as top tier high tech that dwarfs the whole world.  

Seven months into this whole “digital film camera” madness — and three solid months of sweat, tears, and probably premature aging courtesy of a Chinese factory — I finally had something real: my first 3D-printed, fully working prototype. So of course I booked a ticket back to China to go kick the tires on it myself. 

Pic above: Beige color prototype 1.0

When I first laid eyes on the prototype, I’ll admit it — my eyes got a little sweaty. Months of grinding through this ridiculously difficult stretch had finally paid off. And there it was: a real, physical, working chunk of camera that proved I hadn’t just been yelling into the void for half a year.

The prototype didn’t just work — it basically resurrected my beloved Agfa Optima 1035 and leveled it up. Same vibe, same soul, but improved. Simple, minimalist, unapologetically industrial. Honestly, it feels like Bauhaus picked up a camera body

• Square shape with built-in strap mount. No dangling “ears” like every other screen-free digital camera out there. Those things ruin the clean look, and this design keeps it seamless.

• Slightly projecting housing for the Xenon flash and viewfinder. That bump isn’t just cosmetic — it solves the structural requirement and flexes the oversized viewfinder. (Biggest one on the market? Maybe. Biggest hole in my pocket? Definitely.)

• Generous lens hood with a 43mm thread. Perfect for throwing on a black mist filter — like the one you see in the pic — or whatever flavor of glass magic you want to try. And there’s a bonus: with this bigger lens hood, your finger will never again get mistaken for a mysterious UFO in the corner of your photo. 

I’m not showing you the back just yet — because there are still a few structural gymnastics needed to balance usability and functionality. But rest assured, it sticks to the same minimal design philosophy. Only this time, the simplicity hides some sneaky tricks:

• Wi-Fi ON/OFF switch.
  Since the camera comes with a companion film-simulation app, we gave it a Wi-Fi module that spins up its own hotspot when turned on. Why Wi-Fi instead of Bluetooth? Speed. In “film mode,” the camera might need to blast 36 photos at once over to the app, each in the 3–5MB range. Bluetooth would cry uncle. Wi-Fi just gets it done. (Wi-Fi does eat up a lot of power, so the battery capacity is on the larger side)

• Mode switch.
  The camera has two personalities: in-camera filter mode and film filter mode. To make flipping between them dead simple, there’s a mode switch right by the thumb grip. One-handed operation was the whole idea — because, let’s be honest, we modern Homo sapiens need at least one hand free to doom scroll our phones 24/7.

• Filter slider.
  Why settle for one filter at a time? This little switch lets you toggle between three pre-loaded filters while shooting. Behind the scenes, the app lets you build your own “film stock” pool, which means — in theory — endless filters. Today you’re in a Kodak warm mood, tomorrow you’re channeling Fuji cool. Whatever your mood leads you, your call!

So yeah, the back of the camera might still be a secret… but only in the “don’t look behind the curtain yet” sense. Functionally, it’s a Swiss army knife dressed like a Bauhaus sculpture.

And yeah… the image quality is a secret for now too. Not because I don’t want to share it — c’mon, I’m building a camera, not a paperweight. Image quality is the thing. The real reason? It’s ugly. Like, “don’t-show-this-on-the-first-date” ugly. Early prototypes always are. The guts are there, the soul is there, but the looks? Let’s just say it’s not ready for Instagram yet. 

The IMX258 turned out to be an ISP-tuning nightmare. This Sony CMOS sensor is basically like an aging lady trying to dress up for the first time in a decade — still classy, still got the charm, but wow, she’s not making it easy. Which means my job is to play stylist: amplify the beauty , disguise the wrinkle, and somehow make the whole thing red carpet-ready.

And on top of that, she has to be fine-tuned to play nice with the filter effects I’m chasing. Because it’s not enough to just make the images “acceptable” — the goal here is a true film look. 

So I’ve just got to patiently wrestle it into shape. At the end of the day, this whole “screen-free” digital camera family — Rewindpix included — isn’t really about pixel counts. It’s about the vibe. For now, at least.

After I got the beige color prototype (the other color is in black or gunmetal black, "black" color is the hardest color to choose, oddly), I brought it with my to "Huaqingbei", a cyberpunk hardcore zone in Shenzhen that show case the entire electrical civilization. 

And I wasn’t just there to wander. I wanted to introduce my newborn prototype to its ancestors: the true retro digital cameras. The point-and-shoots from the last century. The legendary CCD cameras. Think of it as a family reunion, except half the relatives are pixelated ghosts from the 2000s and the other half are wondering why I bothered making a new kid at all.

I was floored. Everywhere I looked, camera shops were stacked high with CCD point-and-shoots, and every single one of them was packed with customers. Younger customers huddled around tiny two-inch screens like they’d just discovered fire, grinning at blown highlights and muddy shadows as if it was the coolest thing ever.

And then it hit me: this whole CCD/retro digital/film-vibe trend isn’t some random nostalgia wave. It’s because an entire generation — the Y2K crowd, Gen Z — never actually experienced photography before cell phone or AI processing. For them, these clunky old point-and-shoots aren’t outdated junk; they’re like fossils from the mammoth age, freshly dug up and buzzing back to life. And of cause, I felt like I am a piece of fossil as well. I am so old that I even experience the first world war of "Film vs CCD".

Since here was basically overflowing with my future customers, I figured: hey, perfect time for my first market test. So I did the sneakiest thing possible — I quietly slipped my Rewindpix prototype right into the middle of a display of CCD cameras, then hid myself in the corner of the shop like a nervous parent at their kid’s first recital.

My goal? Measure the PUR — Pick Up Rate. (Yes, I just invented a new KPI. Patent pending.) Would anyone actually pick it up, hold it, poke at the buttons? Or would it sit there like the world’s most stylish paperweight?

 

And the results? In just ten minutes, 15 out of 25 customers picked up my baby, turned it over in their hands, and even asked the shop owner (with that “wait, what’s this thing?” look) how much it cost. That’s a 60% PUR! Which, in my totally biased opinion, is a roaring success.

The shop owner, with the kind of business radar you can’t teach, eventually spotted me lurking in the corner and called me out:
“Hey, has it hit mass production yet?”

“Not yet… but soon,” I said.

He nodded, grinned, and shot back: “Send it to me when it’s ready. I’ll sell it.”

And just like that — boom. I accidentally scored myself an offline product experience shop.

Already, this is my first factory trip after the prototype, there will be more down the road I hope. 

Thanks for reading so far and stay tuned, half way there!