Tag Archives: AOL PhotoCam

The AOL PhotoCam has gone from “my curiosity” to “my nemesis” to “my fairweather obsession I somehow now own five of”. I know more about the PhotoCam than AOL did. I’ve seen the way these things break. I can tell when I got each of them by their specific damage. The search for a single working unit has been going on six years now, and I think we’ve found the end of it–because I now own two working units, one complete in the box.

If you know the story, I have more to update you on. If you don’t know the story, strap in! I’ve got a tale of temperamental retro tech, operator error, Redditor intrigue, and new perspectives on the futility of 30-year-old cameras and perhaps life itself. Yes, there will be photos. Hopefully, you find this a satisfying end to the saga.

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Longtime blog readers will remember a post I did in July 2019 called “Cammy vs. the PhotoCam”. It was a cute little lark into trying to score some retro tech on eBay and failing miserably. I didn’t have a job or a lot of money to spend on impractical hobby stuff back then, and the entire thing left a sour enough taste in my mouth that I didn’t bother looking for a working unit.

We’re in September 2022 now, I have a job now, and I figured it was time to go hunting again. I got a lot more than I bargained for. On offer today: storytelling! Burning hot batteries! A showdown between three similarly-spec’ed cameras! But first, we start with…

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I’ve long liked early digital cameras. There’s a really specific era of 95-98 or so where digital cameras were, by some measures, atrocious, and by others, absolutely fantastic. Their bad CCDs, chunky design, and inconsistent featureset makes them fascinating and … Continue reading →