Review: Camp Snap CS-8

The Camp Snap CS-8 doesn’t care about frame rates, bit rates, or whether your footage is stabilized to unerring levels of steadiness. It doesn’t want to replace your iPhone or compete with your mirrorless camera setup. What it offers instead is something far simpler and more deliberate: the feeling of shooting video for the sake of it.

Much like Camp Snap’s point-and-shoot still camera from 2023 (the company’s only other major product), it’s a throwback to when cameras didn’t think for you and when you didn’t expect to review the images you just captured until later—sometimes much later.

Inspired by the Super 8 camcorders introduced in the 1960s, the CS-8 is unapologetically retro in both appearance and function. The body is mostly plastic, with faux-metal detailing and leatherette texture meant to evoke the mechanical era rather than mimic it convincingly. It’s chunky and solid in the hand, albeit in a distinctly toylike way. If you’re looking for authenticity, you’re not going to find it here: There’s a fake cold shoe up top and imitation screws at the base of the pistol grip. But that’s not the point—this isn’t Kodak’s $5,000 Super 8 revival but rather a $199 camera meant to live in the real world and get passed around at parties, slung into backpacks for day trips, and used without a second thought.

Lights, Camera, Action

There’s no screen, no playback, and no Delete button. Here, what you shoot is what you get. The settings and options are stripped back, with one dial for selecting aspect ratio (4:3, 16:9, 1:1, or 9:16) and another for the video effect. These include standard color, monochrome, and three lo-fi filters, including one that simulates the grainy, jerky look of 8-mm film.

I found that last one, labeled Analogue, was the star of the show. It drops the frame rate to 20 fps (it’s 30 fps with the other modes) and sprinkles in digital scratches, resulting in footage that’s imperfect in the most deliberate way. The rest of the filters feel a little flat by comparison, though the monochrome setting can conjure up its own punchy charm in the right lighting.

Using the CS-8 is refreshingly physical: Power it on by flicking a dial, press your eye to the rubber-cupped viewfinder, and squeeze down the trigger to record. There’s no focusing to worry about here. The 8X zoom is handled with buttons labelled “W” and “T” for wide and telephoto, though it’s digital-only, and resolution drops off quickly when you push in too far.