I'll be the first to admit, I'm not entirely sure how the TikTok Shop works, but apparently, like Amazon, it is also now home to some of the world's most awful digital cameras for sale.
UK-based photographer and videographer Tom Calton took it upon himself to try out the "48MP Super HAD CCD Digital Camera" that is available for $14.79 on TikTok Shop, and, surprise surprise, it's quite the, um, experience.
He takes a deep dive into the menus and the body, noting that most of it is molded plastic and not actually buttons or dials, as they appear to be at first glance. Also of note is the fact that the camera is advertised as a 48 MP camera, but the body notes it as 64, while the actual files are 44.2 upon examination. This is a little nuts because if you look at the shop listing, the discrepancy is right there for anyone to see:
A bold proclamation on the front of the camera that's blatantly wrong. The warning page is comical for its mangling of the English language, and I guarantee none of the photos or videos depicted in the listing were taken with that camera. It's pretty obvious as Calton disassembles the camera and it appears to be a cheap webcam masquerading as an actual camera, with images that are simply upsized from a lower resolution, by his estimation. This is not even considering the second camera on the back that appears to be a viewfinder but is actually a selfie camera, for some odd reason.
There's a lot more to unpack here from this camera, but the long and the short of it is that you shouldn't expect any quality photography to happen with this camera. It's almost exactly the same experience I had when I reviewed Amazon's cheapest camera. This low-quality junk is flooding so many retail channels on the internet, it's mind-boggling. Selling this as a way to document family memories is just criminal.
How do companies get away with this stuff, and what kind of uninformed consumers are buying it?
If nothing else, at least it can also play Pac-Man.
