When news of the Yashica EZ521 broke, it was billed as the ‘Digital Holga.’ I am going to go out on a limb here and say somebody at Yashica gave it that nickname. It’s received tons of press, and piqued our curiosity enough that we tracked one down and had it shipped in from Japan. There won’t be US sales of this camera, but google it and you’ll find a few.

Why did it claim the moniker of Digital Holga? It has a plastic lens, and the 5 mega-pixel chip is not that crisp. But a plastic lens does not a Holga make. The Holga is a super simple camera with trademark vignettes and just a few settings. The EZ521 is a 5 mpx digital camera, the only difference is that it has a plastic lens on the front of it. You’d expect it to produce dreamy results, darkened edges and unpredictable shifts of color and saturation. Well, it doesn’t. (unless you pull the lens and install a 10 cent washer…) So what is the EZ521 then?

Its a Digital Camera with a plastic lens. And thats not all: remember how Yashica and Kyrocera are one group? And how Kyrocera makes cellphones (with cameras…) Are you putting the pieces together now? Is this a cell phone chip in a camera body with a lens that actually does nothing? Ya, I just wrote that. And I am not the first person to write it. Remember when I said that I have bought more then one bottle of wine because it had a cool label? Well clever marketing has got me again. In theory it’s a great idea, they have all the parts just lying around, and they can put it in a pretty wrapper and sell it as a new ‘low-fi’ digital product.

One thing we did like was the rolling shutter on the CMOS chip.. while we were sitting on the train, we shot a bunch of shots that bent all of the foreground objects. I actually really like the effect, and shot a whole bunch of them.

Clever marketing aside, there are some good points to this camera. It’s small, under $100, has a flash.. and you can change modes to a half dozen different colors. It’s pretty well built, has a nice size viewfinder, and will actually interpolate the images up to 12 mega-pixels.

Then there are some not so good features of this camera. It’s not small enough, the flash can illuminate your entire city block, the video quality is dodgy, and it can go up to 12 mega-pixels. That the same size as my D300s. How is that a toy? And worst of all, it really has no chance of being a ‘Digital Holga.’ Everything this camera does, you already have in your iPhone. So why carry another thing in your bag? If you are a collector, it’s worth it. They probably won’t make too many, and it is a cute little cam. If you are buying it thinking you are going to get Holga-like results, save your money and just use your cell phone.

But in the end it was all worth it to get one shot of the toughest Ice Skater ever. While we were relaxing with some Tapas watching the ice skaters at Rockefeller Center, this guy was macking on the ladies with more gold then King Tut. Beautiful, just beautiful.