Five years ago, I suggested that Apple get into the dedicated camera game again by turning its long-neglected (and now officially dead) iPod touch into a sweet connected camera. It didn't happen, but apparently there are some folks who appreciate iPod cameras just the way they are.
Becca Farsace, formerly of The Verge but now venturing out into her own tech-focused YouTube channel, is one of those folks. But she takes it back even more old school. Her camera of choice is the 5th generation iPod Nano. Yes, you read that right - the music player that Apple introduced in 2009.
The 5th generation iPod Nano has the distinction of being the first, and only, iPod Nano to ever get a camera built-in. To be clear, it's only a video camera, one that shoots standard definition video at 640x480 resolution. Not impressive by today's standards but back then the competition was early smartphones and Flip Video cameras. The iPod Nano was thinner and lighter than all of those, truly a go-anywhere camera as Farsace shows.
Farsace puts it up against an iPhone 12 Pro, a not-at-all-new phone, and it's clear the difference 11 years of technical improvements makes. But it's not always about that. Sometimes, it's about embracing the shadows, the blown-out highlights, the "imperfections" as Farsace puts it.
All that said, I can't help but wonder if Farsace will feel the way I do about capturing so many of my memories with such low tech devices. I had no option back in those days but to capture photos on floppy disks with small file sizes and resolutions, and I regret that I can't get decent enlargements out of any of them. I know that AI enlargement exists, but in my experience, the files still don't quite look real to me when you do that. I would imagine this issue is compounded for video.
If you're thinking about buying one of these, Farsace points out a lot of things you should know before you watch the video, so that you go in with all the facts. Check out the video above for what those are, as well as to see how the footage holds up today. It's certainly fascinating to see this kind of use-case for an iPod.
