More and more, I find myself considering what makes a “good” camera. As the old adage goes, the best camera is probably your phone since it’s always with you (or something to that effect). In the last decade, social sharing, smartphones, and “the feed” have all turned everyday photography into a disposable commodity. And while there is still a need for serious equipment for “serious” photography, most people will do just fine without all those bells and whistles. That’s what the JGIPL 4K Digital Camera offers – a camera that isn’t your phone.
The Big Picture: Is a $60 Amazon Digital Camera “Enough”
The long and short of this review is that for $60, you will not get much in the way of technology, but you will get a dedicated camera that delivers images that come from a decent phone. The menus are basic yet somewhat convoluted, the functions are straightforward, and the images look like they came from your phone from 5 years ago, but chances are that you expected as much from a $60 impulse buy that included garbage bags, toilet paper, and snacks.
Want one for yourself? Check it out on Amazon.
A New Camera Category: The Digital Disposable Camera
At The Phoblographer, we recently looked at the rise of a new kind of camera – the digital disposable camera. At its core, the JGIPL 4K Digital Camera is one of many digital disposables that are flooding Amazon’s Best Sellers list for Digital Cameras – this one is currently ranked eighth. The images are typically produced by tiny sensors that are the same size or slightly larger than modern smartphone camera sensors, and allow you to make images that feel like something out of an iPod Touch.
While I would not call this an innovative feature, it is very much in tune with what consumers are looking for—cheap cameras with low ownership stakes for capturing memories, with no editing required. That’s really what makes this category of camera stand out. They turn no-frills into a feature, not a flaw.
Speaking about the Amazon Product Details on the JGIPL 4k Digital Camera, there are a number of inconsistencies that potential buyers should be aware of. For starters, the listing notes that this is a 16x Zoom digital camera – it is 100-percent digital zoom. When we initially purchased the camera for review, it was not made clear that the zoom range was a digital zoom range; the post originally only read “16x telephoto,” which is no longer in the product name line…
JGIPL DC101 Hardware
Let me be clear: This is a sub-$60 camera, and some of the more obvious places where you can cut costs are in the camera’s build. With the JGIPL DC101 4K Digital Camera, these compromises are obvious. The camera itself is all plastic, and by estimation, all the way down to the lens element in the front (there is no information available about the camera’s build materials anywhere in the Amazon product details). The DC101 sports a 48-megapixel 1/3-inch CMOS sensor that produces 17:9 images (odd default aspect ratio). That said, there is some heft to the camera, and it isn’t terrible to hold.
The camera also includes a screw-on wide-angle adapter that is intended to be used for selfies or hand-held when shooting vlogging-style videos (yes, it shoots 4K video and has a flip-out screen). Above is a sample image illustrating the difference between taking a photo with the adapter off and with it on.
Product Images
Speaking about the Amazon Product Details on the JGIPL 4k Digital Camera, there are a number of inconsistencies that potential buyers should be aware of. For starters, the listing notes that this is a 16x Zoom digital camera – it is 100-percent digital zoom. When we initially purchased the camera for review, it was not made clear that the zoom range was a digital zoom range; the post originally only read “16x telephoto,” which is no longer in the product name line and moved down to the product description bullets just above the “About this item” section. Additionally, in multiple places within the product description, JGIPL describes this as a “Micro Four Thirds” lens mount – it most certainly is not. While it’s a bit concerning, offering the seller a bit of grace, I think this is a weird language issue where JGIPL means that the camera has a quarter-20 thread mount at the bottom of the camera. This is consistent with the product descriptions of similar disposable digital cameras.
In terms of controls, there are five buttons and a d-pad disguised as a click wheel at the rear, and a power button and shutter button at the top. These controls allow for all the controls you’d need to operate the camera in any mode, which, given how convoluted the menu system is, is a great touch.
Image Quality
What does a $60 camera buy you in terms of image quality? That really depends on who’s using it. If you’ve bought a phone in the last 3-5 years, you probably will get better quality images from your phone than this camera. While that may be an immediate turn-off to some, there is a growing interest in the “digicam” look. Depending on how much you’re willing to invest in this aesthetic, you could start hunting for cameras of yesteryear on eBay, some going for well over $200, or you could just fake it for a fraction of the cost.
Although this is an autofocus camera, be warned that it is sluggish even in the best lighting conditions and often is susceptible to wobble/shake when shooting at low shutter speeds, even with digital stabilization turned on. Another quirk we found was that images became extremely muddied when using the digital zoom. It’s hard to give an exact focal length – the camera does not appear to include that information in its metadata – but guesstimating, it starts at about 10-15% of the total zoom range.
Overall, I found that the images the JGIPL DC101 produces are more than fine for social sharing and maybe even printing a handful of mementos as 4×6 prints.
No One Needs to Buy This Camera, but it Can be Fun
The truth is that this camera isn’t anything that anyone will be giving much thought, but it can be a lot of fun. While reviewing this and another similar super cheap camera, I found that I was having fun taking random snapshots instead of thinking about whether or not I’d share the final image. That can be really liberating and has helped me rethink what I aim to accomplish with my photography. Sometimes, the point is to have fun.
Image Samples
Unlike our typical camera review, this review did NOT edit the camera’s images beyond adjusting the picture’s orientation and adding our watermark in Lightroom. All results are straight from the camera.
Declaration of Journalistic Intent
The Phoblographer is one of the last standing dedicated photography publications that speaks to both art and tech in our articles. We put declarations up front in our reviews to adhere to journalistic standards that several publications abide by. These help you understand a lot more about what we do:
- At the time of publishing this review, JGIPL isn’t running direct-sold advertising with the Phoblographer. This doesn’t affect our reviews anyway and it never has in our 15 years of publishing our articles. This article is in no way sponsored.
- Note that this isn’t necessarily our final review of the unit. It will be updated, and it’s more of an in-progress review than anything. In fact, almost all our reviews are like this.
- None of the reviews on the Phoblographer are sponsored. That’s against FTC laws and we adhere to them just the same way that newspapers, magazines, and corporate publications do.
- The Phoblographer purchased this product from Amazon. There was no money exchange between us or JGIPL’s 3rd party partners and the Phoblographer for this to happen. Manufacturers trust the Phoblographer’s reviews, as they are incredibly blunt.
- JGIPL knows that it cannot influence the site’s reviews. If we don’t like something or if we have issues with it, we’ll let our readers know.
- The Phoblographer’s standards for reviewing products have become much stricter. After having the world’s largest database of real-world lens reviews, we choose not to review anything we don’t find innovative or unique, and in many cases, products that lack weather resistance. Unless something is very unique, we probably won’t touch it.
- In recent years, brands have withheld NDA information from us or stopped working with us because they feel they cannot control our coverage. These days, many brands will not give products to the press unless they get favorable coverage. In other situations, we’ve stopped working with several brands for ethical issues. Either way, we report as honestly and rawly as humanity allows.
- At the time of publishing, the Phoblographer is the only photography publication that is a member of Adobe’s Content Authenticity Initiative. We champion human-made art and are frank with our audience. We are also the only photography publication that labels when an image is edited or not.
More can be found on our Disclaimers page.
