Here’s a camera the interweb hasn’t heard about. It’s not listed in the Canon camera museum. Perhaps it’s not even a real Canon. (Update: It isn’t. See below.)
It’s a point and shoot zoom labelled ‘Canon Lucky Z-85’. It’s even got a ‘Lucky’ branded case.
There is a Canon Z85 in the Canon camera museum, but it doesn’t look like this one. There’s a tiny sticker on the bottom that says ‘Ju shoP’ – perhaps that’s a clue.
As far as controls go it’s got an ambitious ‘bulb’ setting as well as two self timer modes (one marked 2s, the other not specified). The flash has four modes: Auto, redeye, on and off.
It’s all let down by the shutter button. Press it twice as hard as you’d normally have to to take a picture and that’s a half press. Exert all your strength and it takes a picture, sometimes.
Sometimes it waits 3 or 4 seconds then takes a picture – long enough for you to point the camera somewhere else.
Sometimes, but not often, it takes a picture straight away without much effort.
Quite often nothing happens and you have to look at the camera with puzzlement and disappointment.
All in all, a mysterious camera that moves in mysterious ways.
Results
Turns out the end results are pretty awful. Focus is almost always off. Massive parallax issues – or perhaps it’s the shutter, always missing the moment. You never know what your photo is going to be of.
That said, terrible photos are sometimes quite pleasing. I like this one.
More often that not though you get something like this (this is not what the camera was pointing at when I pressed the shutter button).
The pic also demonstrates that while the things you want to photograph are rarely quite in focus, the things you don’t want to photograph sometimes are.
Here’s someone I wanted to be in focus who isn’t.
Update: Mystery solved
I emailed Canon to ask them about the camera, they replied:
“It appears that the camera was made by the Chinese Lucky Film Company and then it has had a Canon sticker placed on the top of the camera. I felt the Canon logo was in an unusual location, however I did not have enough information to say it was definitely not a Canon camera.
If you look on the site below you can see the Chinese Lucky logo matches the one on the camera and case.
http://www.luckyfilm.com.cn/html/MasterSite/EN/VIofLucky.html
I am sorry it is not a super rare Canon camera, however I hope you are happy the mystery has been solved.”
Shame it isn’t a rare Canon, but that does explain why it doesn’t work very well. And top marks to Canon for helping me out.