Getting Analog Vibes by Upgrading a 20-Year-Old Barbie Camera
Max Vega converted a Barbie camera from 2001 into something that is useful today.
If you take a peek in any photography or videography community, you’ll see a lot of people asking how to achieve a particular look. In most cases, that “look” is that of low-quality digital cameras from about 20 years ago. In a world where even smartphones capture exceptionally high-quality photos and videos, the low dynamic range and resolution of cheap old cameras is appealing to many young people. Anyone intrigued by that concept should check out Max Vega’s most recent video in which he upgraded a vintage Barbie camera from 2001 to make it more usable today.
Before we can explain what Vega did, we need to cover the terminology. In the world of photography, people tend to use the term “analog” to refer to film cameras. But analog can also refer to signal transmission. Aftermarket automotive backup cameras, for example, tend to use digital sensors, but then convert the video signal to an analog composite format for transmission to the stereo head unit, which then converts the analog signal back to a digital video for display on an LCD screen.
The Barbie camera worked in a similar way, but with short-range wireless broadcasting in place of a composite video cable. Users could plug the receiver unit into a TV to view the video feed or into a VCR to record it. At a time when digital cameras were still new and expensive, that workaround brought the cost down enough to sell the Barbie camera as a toy.
But Vega wanted this to operate more like a handheld camcorder capable of recording video without being wirelessly tethered to the receiver unit. He very cleverly achieved that using a mini DVR (Digital Video Recorder) unit.
DVR units, as you might remember from the TiVo days, traditionally record videos as digital data (ones and zeroes) on hard disks. This mini DVR does the same thing, but with a SD card instead of a hard disk. That, plus modern miniaturization, results in a device small enough to fit inside the Barbie camera’s plastic housing (an SD card extension cable makes the slot accessible from the outside).
That mini DVR records the analog video feed coming from the Barbie camera’s original digital sensor. Power comes from a lithium battery, with a simple charger/distribution module. In practice, this mostly works like an old handheld camcorder — just recording onto an SD card and without a live view.
The video looks pretty bad, but it might be “bad” in exactly the kind of way that is popular right now. And Vega can brag that his video was analog …for at least a few inches of the journey.
