Despite the low resolution, bit depth, lack of color, and dithering, I like how using a better lens can make the seagull picture somewhat aesthetically pleasing.
Of course the better lens in this case has really narrow depth of field, so you get a very smooth background in basically all situations. This helps a lot.
I can't help but wonder how these would look if the GameBoy Camera had a better dithering algorithm...
I tried punching this in on an online DoF calculator which has 1/4" sensors, but it only goes to 1200mm@F/45[gameboy], which is the equivalent of the 70mm@F/4[fullframe] end of this lens. Even then, focusing at something 40 ft away you have a 0.2 ft depth of field, so a background 10 ft behind your subject will be pure blur.
Out of focus blur is a function of focal length and aperture. The sensor size only dictates the crop.
In this case, the lens widest setting with a 1.4 extender is 98mm @ f/4. On a full frame sensor, something 10ft behind a in-focus 40ft away thing would still be very recognisable. Since a crop sensor is just a crop, I don't think it would have a different effect.
The 1200mm focal length equivalent only applies to the fov radius, not to the blurriness.
So, the really cool part of this is the raw sensor used, I believe, supports up to 256 levels of brightness (I could be wrong on this, been a long time since I read some hacking articles), but the GB Camera itself limits it down to several because of display limitations!
This camera and sensor was so ahead of its time that it blows my mind!
I can't help but wonder how these would look if the GameBoy Camera had a better dithering algorithm...