You Can Help Make a Real-Film Lego Camera a Reality

In a satellite wherever a Lego NES and Lego Pac-Man arcade furniture exist, I’m amazed we inactive haven’t seen Lego merchandise a moving movie camera. But there’s hope. The Lego ZH1 is simply a afloat functional 35mm point-and-shooter that incorporates existent movie and has each the buttons you request to run the shutter and upwind to the adjacent shot. The camera sports a retro aesthetic that uses the achromatic and achromatic Lego logo from 1934. If you’re into the retro camera revival, it’s harder to get much old-school than that.

The ZH1 has a classic-looking shell, overmuch similar the caller Fujifilm X100VI single-lens point-and-shoot camera. The lens is really a Lego magnifying glass, and the backmost screen is acceptable connected a hinge that allows you to load a ream of movie into the camera. There’s a winding knob, a rewind knob, a shutter button, and adjacent an accessory shoe. Project creator Zung Hoang showed connected his Instagram leafage however elemental it is to use.

We archetypal spotted the Lego camera via Hackaday successful 2023. In the intervening year, creator Zung Hoang has been trying to propulsion the task connected Lego Ideas. As of writing, it has little than a small much than 9,000 supporters and has 30 days near to scope 10,000. After that, it’s up to the Danish artifact institution to reappraisal it and see whether it’s worthy producing arsenic a afloat set. Lego presently sells a recreation Retro Camera with 261 pieces. Instead of a existent rotation of film, that $20 acceptable comes packed with a magnitude of simulation movie with tiny representation windows. 

You tin besides spot the camera moving from an aboriginal prototype from Hoang’s YouTube channel.

When you deliberation of DIY cameras, you mightiness deliberation of thing similar the $40 Konstruktor Flash SLR DIY that comes successful a sprue framework you request to clip and past physique yourself. The quality of Lego means that if you’re already acquainted with different kits, creating a brick-based camera should beryllium a cinch. It is simply a alternatively ample design, however. It is astir 10 inches wide and acold larger than immoderate analog oregon digital camera from Leica, Sony, oregon Fujifilm. 

The lone happening to see is however light-proof the brick-based camera tin be. Hoang told Fast Company that aboriginal versions of his plan did person micro-cracks that could fto successful light, but he’s utilized a telephone flashlight connected the backplate to spot if it ruined the film, and present it should alteration casual captures. The existent images aren’t astir arsenic elaborate arsenic you mightiness get from a instrumentality with controllable aperture and shutter speed, not to notation expensive, high-quality refraction lenses oregon mirrors. 

Based connected the camera, it volition fundamentally instrumentality pictures equivalent to a DIY pinhole camera with the added payment of the Lego lens piece. The images Huang shows person galore distortions, lens flare, and different unusual effects that make a precise creator look. I can’t beryllium the lone 1 who wants to bent a fewer of these developed snapshots connected their wall. Hell, present I privation to usage immoderate Legos to make a framework for a Lego camera collage.