Accessories

MyFirst Insta Wi camera quality follow up

As I mentioned before, I have problems with the quality of the photos produced by the 12mp MyFirst Insta Wi. I attempted to get answers before posting, but didn’t get a response (for over a week I believe,) until I posted that the photo quality was really really low. They’ve posted a response to my criticism here, so I went ahead and shot outside and videoed myself doing so.

Update: we went to Cheekwood, had the kids take a BUNCH of photos, have added them to the Dropbox link

I’ve added a tag for the MyFirst Insta Wi issues/reviews. Click here to see all of ’em.

Below video is the two cameras taking photos – you can see what a pro camera sees, which is effectively what I was seeing. I do not expect the MyFirst Insta Wi to produce this. You should not either. This is a kid’s camera vs a 4K+ beast.

TL;DR – take a look at the photos in the dropbox link – you like ’em, great, you don’t that’s fine. It’s a kid’s camera that’s making 12MP 400K files out of 0.3MP 26K data. It’s fixable with firmware, whether they’re going to don’t know.

What I am seeing on both the Insta Wi and the original MyFirst Insta 2 cameras are extremely blocky photos saved in 4000×2248 resolution with effective resolutions of about 0.3MP – once again, they say it’s a production sensor I was given in the first unit. Pictures with first and second unit in the dropbox link below.

It should be noted that a 12MP camera I don’t expect it to produce 12MP pixel perfect images, on a kid’s camera you produce 2MP that’s fine. If you produce 1MP that’s fine. For their thermal printer what it’s doing is fine.

Here’s a video of me taking photos with the MyFirst Insta Wi, both the one they claim I had a production sensor, and the replacement. The original photos can be found at this Dropbox link. The ones in the Aerin folder should be the old camera, the ones in the Maggie folder should be the new camera. The images in the main directory are images I have sent from the new camera back to the MyFirst contacts I have asking what the deal is. The dates and time were not set on either camera so EXIF information if any is there will be wrong.

As with last time I waited, my goal is not to tank this product launch. It’s been 47 hours at this point and no response.

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Picture taken with the one they think had a dev production sensor
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Picture taken from unit they replaced it with (different aspect ratio?)

The above pictures are interior, light meter says 57l at ~9 feet from light source (LED). Photos taken from about 2 feet and cut at 1×1 pixel ratio for blog post – originals are JPG7 and JPG69 respectively in the dropbox link. I mean please do not think the above is the full picture – WordPress modifies it, it’s a screen clip, your original is on the dropbox.

From the replacement cam, here’s a pixel to pixel blowup of a spot on the mums (should be 100%):

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Same basic area original

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In both – effective resolution of the entire photo is about 667×377 (or about 700×400)

I’m going to stress very much here, this is not a terrible thing. What I take issue with is advertising a 12mp kid’s camera, saving 12mp resolution photos using extremely bad compression.

In the original MyFirst Camera back May 2020, I’d talked with them about the same issues and was told a firmware update was incoming to address some of this. Posted such, moved on and didn’t think about it much because, as stated, this is a kid’s camera, I’m not attempting to print movie posters.

As a note, I have no way to prove that I didn’t add that the firmware update was incoming, my ITB email got swiss cheesed, but here’s a Wayback Machine link from March 1, 2021 that shows the last line said a firmware update was incoming. I had reason to believe this was a firmware issue with the previous camera, I had corresponded with someone about said issue, was assuming a fix was coming in, wrote it most likely May 28th, 2020. Same issue, different camera, and I swear we emailed about what the issues were.

Anyway, I’m going to continue on with the review of other things with the MyFirst Insta Wi. It’s surprisingly fun, my kids love it. Oh, yeah, I should note that here – they adore these. They care not a whit that effective resolution is low. That’s me harping on something that was supposed to have been fixed.

They can do better with a firmware fix, I guarantee it. The board they’ve got in the unit is more than capable. The sensor they’ve got in the unit is more than capable. The hardware is there. This is a potentially great product as was the MyFirst Insta 2.

You expected me to bash it? Nah. It needs work. It’s fixable. You can decide if the quality of photos is good enough to buy it at launch or wait until a firmware fix is sent. I just want the firmware fixed.

Oh yeah, in the end understand I do not hate this. I am slightly annoyed, and more so when I feel that something is being misrepresented (pic below is from their site)

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It says 16MP on the website? Yup. And guarantees picture quality. Manage expectations is all I’m saying.

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Paul E King

Paul King started with GoodAndEVO in 2011, which merged with Pocketables, and as of 2018 he's evidently the owner. He lives in Nashville, works at a film production company, is married with two kids. Facebook | Twitter | Donate | More posts by Paul | Subscribe to Paul's posts

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