Street Photography Challenge with a Clunky 0.3 MP Camera Watch

Photography Tips  •  Street Photography

What if the best camera for the job was a pink watch-camera with only 0.3 megapixels? Photographers can sometimes get caught up in the equipment they use and think that only the best cameras can take the best photos, but DigitalRev TV shows us that even with a low cost and low quality camera you can still achieve excellent photos. Photographer Gary Tyson tested out a cheap VTech watch-camera on the streets of Hong Kong—and the results are surprising:

Tyson is an experienced photographer. After working as a videographer and a photographer for the British army for 18 years, he moved to Hong Kong and created his own company that does commercial photography around Asia. He also likes to focus on street photography and portraiture. The challenge for him on this day was to do a shoot with a pink VTech Kidizoom Smartwatch camera with a whopping 0.3 megapixels, 128 megabyte card, and only two hours of battery life.

Walking around the streets of Hong Kong, Tyson found plenty of interesting subjects to shoot. A huge advantage of the camera was that no one knew he was taking their photo; it simply looked like he was just checking the time. This gave him the opportunity to get close without drawing suspicion, and he got a lot of candid shots.

Verdict

Tyson enjoyed using the watch and found the automatic exposure to work quite well. It gave him an opportunity to connect with his subjects and pique their curiosity which resulted in less rejection. He may start using the watch in some of his street photography workshops.