An 11 dollar digicam, there must be a catch right? Well sort of. The Dakota Digital Single-Use Camera is a digital camera intended to be used only once for 25 pictures then returned for processing. The camera is then recycled and resold. However there is no agreement to sign so that after you pay for the camera it's yours to do with as you like. It also happens to be very easy to connect to a home computer. More than that with a little work you can add a manual focus wheel, a standard usb port, and remove the 25 photo restriction.

I first heard about this camera on slashdot when it was only available as a trial in a couple states. I then got busy with other things and didn't think about it until a newer version with an LCD came out (which sadly has yet to be hacked). Fortunately by that point these little beauties were everywhere and the software to access them was finished and working fine. I purchased mine at a local Wolf Camera, but you should be able to find one at Ritz Camera, Kits Camera, Inkley's Camera or The Camera Shop. One word of warning though, there is a newer version out now that is functionally the same, but has not been hacked yet. Make sure you're buying the orriginal blue and silver version unless you're very technically inclined.

The camera and various ways to modify and connect to it have been very well documented at www.maushammer.com and www.cexx.org. Because I couldn't track down an old palm sync cable I ended up making a connecting cable out of a very old floppy drive cable and a broken Apple Pro Optical mouse. Although it works quite well I would not recomend doing it this way.

Some details I haven't seen before/don't see too often. The actual resolution of this camera appears to be 1280 x 960 and my pictures have been averaging around 300kB. The camera DOES work with rechargable batteries. The physical dimentions are aprox. 62x98x34mm (2.5"x3.75"x1.3").

It's quite small and light, but feels sturdy. The shutter has very little tactile feedback and even without flash there's a noticable shutter delay. On the good side though, it's very easy on batteries and the recycle time (time between pictures) is very good, between 2-5 seconds (I'm guessing here, I haven't measured). The picture quality is actually quite passable. Within the focus range detail is quite good indeed and colour balance could be better but isn't too far off. Anyway nothing I've seen so far is outside the range of easy touch up in photoshop and for 11 dollars it could be a good deal worce. Bottom line, the images is takes are at least as good and generally a good deal betteras I've seen from film one-time-use cameras.

I'll write more later and post some pictures of my cable, but till then here are some sample photos. I know they look like crap, but I just got the camera and was messing around. Also keep in mind that your milage may vary. It seems some people have been getting cameras with missaligned lenses.