Say hello to the Bonzart Ziegel. It’s the result of a Kickstarter campaign and it is allegedly a toy camera for adults who are serious about their toy cameras. I would have to say it is part camera, part fashion statement, and part … something. The wife and I made a quick trip out to Nightingale, Alberta to gather some shots around the community hall and see if the Bonzart could go banzai.
It is the darndest little thing to operate. The menu system is poorly designed and mostly in Japanese. I figured out how almost everything worked by experimenting. The only thing I had to look up was how to get the frames you see above applied to the images in camera. The frames function (the F button) is only available when the resolution is set to five megapixels. I had set it at eighteen megapixels and was left wondering where the frames were.
Alberta, 2024-02-25
Alberta, 2024-02-25
The two frame styles are clunky and basic. The 35mm faux film border is always exposure number twenty-three. It would be nice if it changed randomly, but it doesn’t.
Nightingale, Alberta, 2024-02-25
Nightingale, Alberta, 2024-02-25
Nightingale, Alberta, 2024-02-25
You’ll notice the 120 faux frame border shown above is always exposure number six. It is what it is. The camera is quirky by design. Literally, by design.
You can see that the Bonzart Ziegel looks almost teardrop-shaped from the side. There is no concern with weatherproofing at all as the SD card slot is completely exposed. And the buttons. Oooooof. The turquoise front on mine can be removed and swapped out for black or rose instead, but I’ll pass. First, it’s a hellish job to do and second, buying a new front would exceed the cost of what I paid for my used Ziegel (winning bid at an online estate auction).
There is an LED ring around the lens that lights up in lieu of a flash. It has medium and bright settings easily accessible from a dial on the left of the camera. It’s not powerful enough to substitute for a flash in my opinion, but it could throw good catchlights into your subject’s eyes.
The build quality is just okay. Not horrible and not wonderful. It has a light, cheap plastic feel to it, but then so did the Kodak Instamatics and no one bitched those up back in the day.
Alberta, 2024-02-25
Alberta, 2024-02-25
In addition to a choice of frames, you have a choice of styles. As a Lomo-style camera, you get eight Lomo-ish colour modes: Standard, Vivid, Emerald, Retro, B&W, Sepia, Comic, and Duo Blue. I haven’t tried all of them yet, but I will. They are all also easily accessible from a second dial on the left side of the camera.
The Ziegel’s image quality is extremely good in my daytime shots. I have no idea what it is like at night and I’ll have to do a lot more testing. Everything in this diary entry is from a rushed test shoot. I have the camera set to five megapixels to access the frames feature, but the eighteen-megapixel high-quality JPEGs looked pretty darn good in Photoshop on my system.
Yes, it saves to JPEG. There’s no RAW option. This is a camera where you don’t worry about settings and you don’t worry about focusing. It’s just point-and-shoot.
It is powered by three AA batteries, which I like. I’m tired of having to have a separate battery and charger for each freaking camera I own. I say this as someone who owns a lot of freaking cameras, too.
The Bonzart Ziegel is now my new Favourite Thing. It’s small, it fits in my pocket, and it forces me to think differently than I do when I use my phone. My phone takes such a large image that I can crop and adjust perspectives as needed. The Ziegel, especially when using frames, forces a more honest style of photography where what you see in the viewfinder is what you get in the final image. The results are obviously quite variable, so it’s like the sign above says: Use at own risk.
Note: All images in this post were produced using my new to me Bonzart Ziegel with the turquoise front, which I must say brings out my natural highlights rather nicely.
