Godox Transparent Viewfinder Camera C100
Comments
juancn
makeitdouble
You're right on the principle, and this camera is purposefully aimed at a subpar viewfinder experience.
As a comparison point, many people shoot street photography "from the hip", aiming the camera at the rough spot they want to get with a forgiving aperture setting (around 8 or more). This help either for speed, or engage with the scene without having to stick a camera on one's face.
I think this camera is basically aimed at the same crowd, those who will want some idea of what the camera is pointed at, but want to stay "in the moment" and no fully focus on the capturing process. This is pretty close to a phone camera perhaps, but I'd assume it's a lot more fun and carefree.
I'd totally love to play with one.
juancn
I still don buy it.
The from-the-hip cameras typically have a waist-level viewfinder, which still is a good approximation of the optical path or you don't and you shoot completely blind. In that case any camera does the trick and so does a phone.
Usually the hip part is so you get a better, more candid, portrait due to being inconspicuous. There's some composition advantage due to the perspective difference too.
Daneel_
Given how cheap this is, I feel like this makes for a great camera to give to a kid. The camera gets out of the way (no built-in games like a lot of kiddy cameras have) and the focus is placed on framing and taking photos, then reviewing later.
I'll probably pick one up just for my kids to experiment with.
King-Aaron
I literally cannot see the point to this thing. The transparent display is cool I guess. They don't state the camera specs on it though which seems odd for a camera.
newtwentysix
Nitpick I guess. I feel none of the pics in that page is clicked using this camera.
1-6
Transparent viewfinder cameras aren't anything new. If you've ever used a disposable camera in the past--congratulations, that is it.
oliculipolicula
This seems to be a Shenzhen ahem "fair-use" of Escura's much better looking (imho) 2025 camera. That was more obviously a self-referential "joke" on these disposables that you refer to.
https://petapixel.com/2025/03/04/escuras-50-instantsnap-toy-...
It's skeuomorphism, too? Lol
Same Thai(-HK?) design shop has other hits, like
https://happeningandfriends.com/article-detail/136?lang=en
(Is that the same font as on Mastrena espresso machines at Starbucks? Which reminds of classic American cars of 1950s)
How it looks like in action https://youtube.com/shorts/kJ8xUSTcOaY
monitron
Waitasec...wouldn't you have to hold it at a very specific distance from your eye for the "viewfinder" to be accurate?
omoikane
It's probably not that different from rangefinder style cameras[1]. I don't think the problem with this one is with its transparent viewfinder, it's more that its output quality just aren't that great according to someone who tried it[2]. Seems like a neat toy at $45 though.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rangefinder_camera
[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/Godox/comments/1urlp8u/first_test_s...
mrheosuper
The quality is much better than expected, a little too sharp but still passable for me.
I was expecting another "retro-like" throwaway toy camera.
natas
pretty much the worst of both worlds: a non-working viewfinder and a terrible camera.
RIMR
Correct me if I am wrong here, but isn't this just a low-quality camera sensor attached to a gimmicky transparent LCD? This is an interesting novelty, but as others have mentioned already, the function of the viewfinder doesn't make a lot of sense.
dcrazy
Yep, but in fairness I paid more for a version of this in the mid-2010s. The Fujifilm X20 was a rangefinder-style camera with an optical viewfinder with embedded LCD. Based on the focal length of the integrated zoom lens, it would attempt to illustrate the parallax using the LCD.
Optical viewfinder cameras see through a lens and force-align your eyes, so when you change the lens, what you see is different but highly aligned to what the sensor sees.
Here, depending on where you place the thing you see a different thing than the sensor does, the optical path is completely uncontrolled, unless they're doing eye tracking and post processing?
This seems somehow worse than a cell phone camera.