Younger Gen-Xers and just about every millennial will remember disposable cameras. In the days before digital cameras and smartphones, folks would grab a throwaway 35mm camera on their way to an event and capture moments with lo-fi plastic lenses and grainy analog film. The Pocket Dispo ($49.99) takes the lenses from these old cameras and rehouses them in a 3D-printed enclosure that works with modern mirrorless cameras, so you can get a similar aesthetic today. It snaps dreamy photos that are sharp in the center and soft toward the edges, and proves to be a lot of fun to use, plus you can't discount the nostalgia factor. If you dig its images, it's an affordable add-on for your camera that's worth picking up.
Design and Features: 3D-Printed Plastic Fantastic
The Pocket Dispo is about as basic as lenses get. It puts a small optical block into a tiny 3D-printed housing, making for a optic that measures just 0.6 by 2.6 inches (HD) and weighs a mere 0.7 ounces. Construction is entirely extruded ABS plastic. The plastic makes for a cheap, light lens, but it does introduce some questions about longevity and durability. I don't know how well it will hold up over the years.
The lens is largely free of markings and it's a little too easy to miss the indented square on its scalloped exterior. The indent is your visual indicator for mounting the lens—line it up with the corresponding dot on your camera body and twist to mount. The mounting marker could do with some paint to make it easier to see.
The Pocket Dispo is available for all major mirrorless camera systems. I took the Nikon Z edition out with the full-frame Z 6 III for review, but you can also get it for Canon EOS M, Canon EOS R, Fujifilm X, L-Mount Alliance, Micro Four Thirds, and Sony E cameras. With a full-frame camera, its angle of view is moderately wide (28mm), but it narrows to a standard angle if you pair it with APS-C (42mm equivalent) or Micro Four Thirds (56mm equivalent) systems.
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As you'd expect given the concept (and price), the Pocket Dispo omits any upmarket features like weather protection or filter support. It doesn't support auto or manual focus either, instead it matches a wide view and smaller aperture (f/11) for fixed focus—basically everything that's further away from about five feet (1.5 meters).
As for competitors, there are plenty of lenses that lean into artistic rendering, though none are quite as affordable as the Dispo. The Lensbaby Sol 45 ($200) and Composer Pro II (starting at $300 with a lens insert) are popular picks for their tilting, selective focus capabilities. Lomography goes further back in time with its series of 19th-century-inspired lenses: The New Petzval 55mm F1.7 Mark II ($300) is the most recent, while its LC-A Minitar ($250) is another repurposed film camera lens, but with adjustable focus and more refined optics than the Dispo. The Viltrox AF 28mm F4.5 ($100) also qualifies. It includes a brighter optical formula and autofocus to realize defocused backgrounds, is just as small, and draws images with plenty of character and flare.
Image Quality: The Dream of the '90s
I took the Pocket Dispo out for a gray day at the New Jersey State Fair and a couple of other favorite haunts to get a handle on its picture quality. I didn't see any point in our typical resolution tests—they'd only show that the lens is soft, which is expected given its disposable camera optics. In this case, imperfect rendering is the point, not a detriment.
And boy, is the Pocket Dispo delightfully imperfect. Its pictures show good detail and sharpness at the center—clear enough that I can make out the text in the signage that made it into the frame. But if you look toward the edges of the frame, you'll see blurred details, a strong vignette, and some chromatic aberration. The latter draws blue halos around areas of high contrast toward the edges and corners, and can introduce a very slight cyan color in flatly lit scenes.
Contrast is pretty low in general, so you should expect to see a bit less punch to photos. You can always swap to your camera's vivid image profile or edit Raw images to get richer blacks and punchier rendering from the lens.
As a flare test, I tried it for some photos pointing into my iPhone's LED flashlight. The Dispo handles flare pretty well, even when taking photos directly into a bright light source. I am able to get a general glow to photos by placing the light just out of the confines of the frame, so try and find compositions with the sun toward the corner if you want some flare in your pictures.
Verdict: An Inexpensive Lens for Lo-Fi, Nostalgic Pics
The photo world is rife with highly corrected lenses with bright f-stops, blistering fast focus, and incredible sharpness. The Pocket Dispo serves as a counterpoint for creators who are looking for something else. Its lo-fi optics act as a time machine to the '90s, and bring the soft, dreamy 35mm disposable compact to digital. At around $50, it's practically an impulse buy, so don't hesitate to grab one if you find its rendering compelling.
The Pocket Dispo brings '90s-style disposable camera optics to digital systems for less than the price of a spare camera battery.
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