The Playstation Portable camera adapter, also known as Chotto Shot in Japan, is a fun little peripheral that lets PSP owners turn their portable game machine into a digital camera. By simply inserting the small device into the USB adapter on top of the PSP and loading up the included UMD software known as Edit youll be taking pictures and capturing video in no time. The only problem is that you probably already have nearly all this capability already built into your cellphone.
The whole package.
Once you have everything plugged in and turned on youll be greeted by an annoying little character that looks like the love child of Microsofts Clippy and a camcorder. This little dude will help you do anything and everything that Edit has to offer, that is if you know Japanese. Though never fear as if youre somewhat competent with computers you shouldnt have any trouble figuring out how things work. Now if only I could find the option to turn this little bastard off.
Video taken with the camera.
Once Edit has loaded, you can press Enter at any time to return to the main menu. From the main menu the first two most basic options are on the left hand side of the screen and are thankfully in English. One says Photo and the other says Video. Select one or the other and youll be ready to capture some media. The circle button captures a picture and starts video recording and also confirms if you want to keep your recent capture. The X button does the opposite by canceling capturing and deleting your media on the spot. You can capture video up to 15 seconds long and that little bit requires around 9MB on your memory stick. So with that in mind be prepared with a decent size memory stick duo.
Once you have some pictures or video captured you can screw around with it in many ways. On the right side of the main menu youll see the options called Template and Edit. Edit allows you to run pictures through around 10 different wacky filters that I would honestly never touch. Though you can type, arrange, and distort text on top of your picture or video which might be somewhat handy. In Template you pick from one of around 10ish video filters to apply to one of your videos. One makes it look like a newscast, another pixelates it, and yet another simply adds a frame. Nearly everything available in these two modes feels somewhat tacky and useless. Though I guess removing and rearranging bits from a video is nice, but how much do you really need to edit in a 15 second clip?
