The Radwood Car Show, Viewed Through the Game Boy Camera
Photographer Paulo Acoba captured the recent Radwood event using the period-correct digital camera.
Radwood is an ever-growing event that celebrates cars and culture from 1980 to 1999. Much like the show's namesake, the Goodwood Revival, period dress is encouraged. One Radwood attendee, Paulo Acoba, thought it would be apropos to capture the event using the Game Boy Camera, an obscure piece of Nintendo hardware first manufactured in 1998. The Drive reached out to Acoba to find out what it's like shooting on the novelty camera.
Unlike a previous Game Boy Camera story by The Drive, Acoba shot with a standard unmodified camera. This meant that there were no zoom options, aside from just standing closer to the subject. The Game Boy cartridge's limited memory also only allows it to store 30 images. The photographer in our previous story, Tim Binnion, pulled his images from the cartridge by using an SD card adapter. Acoba had the more simple solution of just snapping photos of the Game Boy screen with his iPhone.
On the challenges of shooting with the Game Boy, Acoba had this to say, "The fixed focal length meant that panoramic type of shots with multiple subjects were out of the question, everything just looked grainy. Without a caption, no one would know what they're looking at. Challenges aside, it's super fun shooting with limitations. No one's expecting Ansel Adams levels of photography."
On this shoot, the photographer also had to deal with an additional degree of difficulty. The camera was designed with the original Game Boy in mind, while Acoba had to use the later model Game Boy Advance SP. Unlike the original system, the SP's cartridge slot is on the bottom, meaning Acoba had to capture his images upside-down.
While Radwood was his first real experience with the Game Boy Camera, Paulo Acoba hopes to make use of it in future. He plans to experiment with zoom lenses and purchase an additional camera to store more photos. The full collection of Acoba's shots from the show can be found over on his website.
