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Kandao’s latest point-and-click camera, the Kandao QooCam EGO, is the first of its kind and aims to be the first-ever 3D camera with its own viewer which allows you to see your 3D photos and video almost instantaneously after capturing them. This alone has the potential to be incredibly cool and really open up some innovative doors for creators, photojournalists, and others. But how practical is it really?
We got our hands on the Kandao QooCam EGO camera and spent a few days with it walking around the city and on a hike in the Pacific Northwest to figure out just how essential this 3D camera is to your toolkit.
What I Love About The Kandao QooCam EGO
After receiving this item in the mail a couple of weeks ago, I spent a few weekends taking this camera out and about to discover just how well this thing handled itself out in the wild (aka, walking around downtown and also on a hike in the Pacific Northwest).
And after a couple of jaunts around, I found a couple of things that really made this camera stand out! Here’s what they are.
The 3D Imaging Is Incredible
The camera’s image quality was super impressive, and watching some of my shots, especially the video, in 3D was a really enjoyable experience. Putting on the viewfinder and pushing play showed me images that really felt authentic, like I could literally reach out and touch the space I had captured on the camera.
Kandao lists the video quality as 3,840 x 1,080 when captured at 60 fps 3D video and 1,920 x 1,080 when captured at 60 fps using the single-lens video. The end result was a surprisingly detailed and colorful recreation of the moment I had captured. I felt as if I was really there all over again!
At least after you got the lighting and focusing just right; this proved harder than you would expect (which I will get to here momentarily).
Solid Build and Design
This thing feels sturdy and handles itself just as well. Measuring 94x53x22mm and weighing 160g, it feels like the point-and-click style camera that it claims to be!
The camera doesn’t come with a manual in the box, which is fine enough as it is fairly easy to understand right out of the box. Just open it up, get it charged, and follow most of the prompts that you are given to start shooting. Anyone with a bit of photography experience should take to this camera easily.
Things I Wasn’t Crazy About
It’s Slow
Cameras like the Kandao QooCam EGO and others at its pricepoint are usually targeted at the average consumer; who you can only assume mostly uses the camera for casual shoots around the city, out on a hike, or other “capturing a quick moment” types of scenarios. But spontaneity is not one of the Kandao QooCam EGO’s strong suites.
In fact, I think it’s its most glaring shortcoming.
The user interface is operated primarily through the 2.54-inch touchscreen (1600×1440 pixels, 2.3 megapixels) touchscreen that takes up the majority of the camera’s back panel. From here the user can toggle between 3D photo and 3D video capturing and can view the playback by attaching the red-colored viewer. But switching between 3D photo and 3D video can be painstakingly slow, with an average load time of about 3 seconds with higher load times being five or six.
This led to many occasions where my favorite moment had passed by the time the camera itself was ready to capture it, which was far from ideal.
No Autofocus
There are a handful of static focus options on this camera that can help quickly get you in the ballpark when you want to dial in a shot, but the lack of autofocusing with this camera is a substantial missed opportunity when trying to snap photos (I did not experience such issues as noticeably when capturing 3D video though).
For a camera that prides itself on being a point-and-click style device, the lack of autofocus further removes all sense of spontaneity in the shooting experience. I understand that 3D photography, and especially videography in a device as small as this, are still in their naissant stages right now, but the glaring lack of autofocus makes this reality ever more obvious.
It’s Good In Theory But…
I will admit that I was incredibly excited to check this camera out and the potential I saw in its application was through the roof. But after using this device for a week or so, the wind left my sails fairly quickly.
The camera hardware far outpaces the firmware’s potential, both in the camera and just in life overall. Sure, the camera can take clear and cool 3D photos and videos (once you get the settings loaded and dialed in), but most of the popular photo-sharing platforms don’t support 3D images anyways meaning that the best way to share your work is simply by passing around the camera with its viewer on.
The hardware can make amazing photos once you get used to the camera, I just don’t know what you do with them after that…
Kandao QooCam EGO Specs
Aperture: f/1.8
35mm equiv. focal length: 27mm
Photo resolution: 8000×3000
Video resolution: 3840×1080@60fps
Weight: 160g (camera), 115g (viewer)
Dimensions: 94x53x22mm (camera), 97x53x48mm (viewer)
Run time: 1 hour
My Favorite Kandao QooCam EGO Review Videos
Will Vance is a professional music producer who has been involved in the industry for the better part of a decade and has been the managing editor at Magnetic Magazine since mid-2022. In that time period, he has published thousands of articles on music production, industry think pieces and educational articles about the music industry. Over the last decade as a professional music producer, Will Vance has also ran multiple successful and highly respected record labels in the industry, including Where The Heart Is Records as well as having launched a new label with a focus on community through Magnetic Magazine. When not running these labels or producing his own music, Vance is likely writing for other top industry sites like Waves or the Hyperbits Masterclass or working on his upcoming book on mindfulness in music production. On the rare chance he's not thinking about music production, he's probably running a game of Dungeons and Dragons with his friends which he has been the dungeon master for for many years.
