LGR - Nick Click Digital Camera from 1999

Oh man, I had a camera that was very similar to this! I saw it in a catalog--one of those direct sales catalogs that they used to send to homes with kids when we were young. It was $40--just within my reach if I saved my chore money for a while. My parents, after seeing me ignore their advice about whether it was really a good deal, wisely decided to let me learn from my own mistakes. I ordered the camera and it came just before I was going to summer camp. The camera I had had a little bit more space--it could hold 20 whole photos! But the resolution was about what you showed here. Alas, all of my camp photos came out terrible. There was one photo I tried to take of a large group of butterflies. You could not tell they were butterflies. Still, lesson learned--if something is unusually cheap, it's probably for a good reason!

Elizabeth Sullivan-Burton

The Nick Click XD

AnoBanoJano

I anticipate one or two LGR 3D model memes.

LGR

Never used it when it was new, but yeah I seriously dig those kinds of software packages! It's when I enjoyed American Girls Premiere and Storybook Weaver so much, was fun to do videos on those a while back :)

LGR

It's an oddly charming thing. Actually found some amusing articles about the trend while researching the Nick Click: <a href="https://www.forbes.com/forbes/1999/1115/6412062b.html" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.forbes.com/forbes/1999/1115/6412062b.html</a>#7b114c056218

LGR

Haha 😀 best specs ever!

PhotoSvein

Oh my gosh, seeing your face on those 3D models was something I didn't know I needed in my life before now.

Sayaka's Soul Gem

Were you ever a fan of Microsoft's 3D Movie Maker, Clint? That and Muppets Treasure Island are some of my fondest PC memories as a child.

zephyrmo

I don’t know how others feel but I totally dig the clear colored plastic tech of the 90’s, Imagine if they still did that today

Zachary Outen

That rap was more white than Vanilla Ice

Lolz, I didn't expect 160 x 120, I figured QVGA at least, maybe even VGA itself. I had an EyeModule for Handspring Visor PDAs and it was the first camera I ever had, it took 320 x 240 (or something like that) and I thought it was coolest thing, it was way tinier than this and it used the PDAs screen as a viewfinder so you could actually take a real digital picture like we do today. Oh the memories of it. This was just hilarious and it reminded me of those pictures I took (but are gone now, I was only a kid, i never kept stuff like that)

Sb129

If you ever get the rare opportunity to find the DreamEye, that would make for a good camera review. (Though would be very hard to do since it would also involve getting a NTSC-J Dreamcast (being a Japan-only peripheral, the software is also Japan-only) as well as some way to connect that 56k modem (or if really unlucky, a 33k modem as that's what the older JP dreamcasts had) to the internets of today just to send the pics in emails... or you could do what CGR did (I think) and just use a capture card to get the pics or "video")

Devon the Rogue Supreme

I've archived the whole CD! There will be a link to it in the description of the video once it goes live

LGR

Yeah I skipped over this whole generation of kids cameras myself. First one I had as a kid was a 35mm SLR, albient a rather old one from Pentax. Moved onto much higher res (by comparison) digital cameras in the early 2000s after that!

LGR

I'm sure a few gifs will result once this goes public, heh

LGR

Excellent, happy to bring on some memories 👍 Digital cameras were all magic back then when you were a kid, it's true.

LGR

Nor have I! Really caught me off guard, I was expecting maybe 640x480 or thereabouts considering this was from 1999.

LGR

Happy to be of service.

LGR

That's crazy. I've never seen a dedicated digital camera with less than 320x200.

The 8-Bit Guy

You have a wonderful gift for turning things boring and lame into cool and fun. Thank you!

Retro Viator

Clint, This was seriously a massive dose of nostalgia. It was my very first digital camera (granted, I was eight at the time). I know the resolution is trash, but it really wasn't that big of a deal when you're that age. Just having the ability to aim a device and capture something that represented a moment in time felt like magic. And then of course, the software was actually fun to play with. Good stuff. Thanks for reactivating some neurons in my skull that haven't fired in quite a while.

Eric Barch

3:09 😂

Eric Barch

Nah, my first digicam was a tad bit better, a Kodak DC-40. 756x504 glorious pixels, good enough for the Internet of 1998.

BastetFurry

You got to love pixels. They're awesome. We need that "donkey kong" LGR on gif 😁

Deckard Games

Both my mother and father had actual, professional-grade cameras back when I was young, so I never had the experience of using the crappy kids cameras. ;)

Kris Asick

I had a Nick Click! I still have the CD, but I have no idea where the camera or cable may have disappeared to over the 20 years since then. My gosh I suddenly feel old.

Stephen Staver

That was hilarious. Thanks! Also 11:20 ...

Alexander Gräf

And it is the best because of it!

LGR

That is maybe the most obnoxiously late-90's tech design I've ever seen. :/

PUKE SKYWALKER (formerly 410,757,864,530 GAY COPS)

I think I had one of these as a kid. I remember having a camera with a green serial cable! I actually think I remember seeing it last time I was at my parents house.

Eric Siegel

Clint “Angelica” Basinger

Joon Choi

Completed the video now... Would be fun to see the pics put into waifu2x-caffe or some other GPU/Ai upscaler :p Can't be any worse than that... 😛

Out of curiosity, could you upload the rap at 10:50 in full? I'm kind of drawn to corny stuff like that and I want to listen to the whole thing and I can't find it anywhere.

ChrisFratz

The 3.5mm Jack brings back some bad memories from the iPod Shuffle 3rd Gen...

Even my first flip phone camera wasn't this bad! It's impressive really.

LGR

I have never had a camera this bad. As a kid my folks got my brother and I a 110 camera, and after that a point and shoot 35. I never really had a digital one until I got a flip phone.

JennaKay

Ha! Not intentionally, but I mean. The evidence is clear.

LGR

He was barely recognizable, hehe

LGR

Not that I could find, although Mattel certainly released a ton of related packages around this time. Likely using the same codebase is my guess.

LGR

That is some awesome pixelation. And I love that using the Nick Click apparently inspires a partial re-emergence of Xmas Clint. Sweet.

Could be. Intel was in that sector back then and I know this uses several Intel chips inside. Didn't inside the teardown section I filmed in the final render but yeah, quite curious to know if this was a repackaged product or not!

LGR

Glad you liked it!

LGR

That was great. Thanks.

evistre

Another problem with lo resolution like that is that the RGB pattern of the sensor is quite visible especially where different colors meet and on the edges. And of course, they try to make it look better by applying a sharpen filter in the camera when taking the picture.

I get the impression they took the guts of a midrange color webcam and stuck it in a "camera" for kids. I haven't seen low res color like that since the time my friend got a USB color Quickcam.

Man. That resolution would have been small even in 1999. And only 6 photos of storage?! A kid would go through 6 photos in about 30 seconds. But the software included is kinda awesome. I wonder if it ever got sold on it's own back in the day.

The Enforcer

I can't wait to see the picture of that big gnome you always use as model for your camera tests! This looks like that cheap camera for kids my parents bought for my daughter a couple of years ago...

Frederic St-Georges