Holga D is a concept camera by India-based industrial designer Saikat Biswas that brings the plastic, medium-format Holga camera into the digital age.
The cheap toy camera design retains the optical jankiness that lures hipsters to this type of camera (i.e. vignetting, blurring, and light leaks), but a DSLR-caliber sensor inside ensures that the anomalies are optical rather than digital.
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What if you could have a rubber stamp that had a built in camera, allowing it to instantly change the stamp design to “print” a photograph? Would it be a stamp camera or a camera stamp? Either way, we think it’s a nifty idea!
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Two weeks ago we shared a futuristic concept Sony DSLR designed by Tecnofotografia, and now they’ve done it again, with a concept design for a compact Samsung camera.
One of the main selling points of this concept is the fact that the external electronic viewfinder has a hot shoe of its own, allowing an external flash unit to be stacked on top:
What do you think of this idea? Should accessories that use the hot shoe have hot shoes of their own to allow stacking?
Prototipo de compacta con óptica fija desplazable (via Photo Rumors)
Here’s a new Sony Alpha concept DSLR camera that features a slanted LCD to keep your face away from the screen, similar to the Sony a352 concept camera that we featured last month. Unlike that one, which had a solar and rounded design, this one has a lot of edges and sharp angles, like what you might see in futuristic concept cars.
There’s also a concept flash unit that uses metal arms to make the flash extendable, allowing you to not only adjust direction but height as well.
What do you think of this design? Should camera makers design cameras to keep it away from the face, or do eyecup extenders suffice?
Here’s a concept design of the “Nikon D4x” by San Francisco-based industrial designer Marc Levinson. Levinson tells us,
This was a student project at California College of the Arts in San Francisco. During my research on DSLRs I ran across some interviews of Giorgetto Giugiaro, the designer of the current top of the line flagship model for Nikon. He claimed that his product “has value as a sculptural work” and his objective was “to create a product with a value that everyone can understand at a glance.” Although I greatly respect his objective and the way he executed it, I wanted to try my own rendition making it even clearer, even to the untrained eye, that this was an object of great value and significance.
I broke away from an overly common form that was derived from film cameras and was dictated by the way that the film fit inside. I went through several physical foam renditions to get to a shape that had more to do with ergonomics, comfort and style than tradition. Although this concept is very different from its predecessors, I made sure to still maintain the overall design language Nikon maintains across its brand using color, detailing and surfacing.
The design is unlike anything we’ve seen here before, especially the placement of the mode dial on the bottom of the camera.
Do you see anything in this design that you think is an improvement on existing DSLR designs? What do you like or not like about it?
Forget complicated kite photography kits that actually require skill. UK-based industrial designer Matthew Clark has a fun solution for taking photographs from high up: the Aeriel Capture camera.
This concept camera has a 3 foot balloon built into the back of the camera itself, and has a 20 meter chord that doubles as the shutter release. Photographs are taken by simply flipping a switch in the hand reel.
The idea is great in that it would allow anyone to easily take some aerial shots of an event without wind or fancy aerial vehicles. The downside to the idea is that you need to have helium on hand to get it floating.
If this was on the market for a low enough price (i.e. $20), do you think it’d be a useful camera to have around?
Aerial Capture (via Wired)
P.S. For those of you technically inclined, here’s a tutorial for how to actually build a balloon cam.
The “Sony a352″ is a concept camera design by Ryan David Francis, a Industrial Design Student at the California College of the Arts. His aim in the design was to create a camera that focuses on how people hold cameras:
The design of the Sony a352 focuses on how a camera is held and how the user takes a picture. By allowing the user to have a multitude of hand positions, the end result is ultimate creative control.
Another designed feature of the a352 is the sloped angle of the LCD viewing screen. This feature creates a comfortable eye to viewfinder interaction by allowing greater clearance between the user and the camera.
In other words, the design keeps oil off your LCD by keeping from being pressed against your face when you’re staring through the viewfinder.
What are your thoughts on this design? What do you like or not like about it?
Image credits: Photographs by Ryan David Francis and used with permission
Buttons is a concept camera by Sascha Pohflepp that lacks traditional camera functionality. Rather than taking photographs, it displays photographs that other people took at the moment you pressed the button. Pohflepp explains,
Buttons takes on this notion of the camera as a networked object. It is a camera that will capture a moment at the press of a button. However, unlike a conventional analog or digital camera, this one doesn’t have any optical parts. It allows you to capture your moment but in doing so, it effectively seperates it from the subject. Instead, as you will memorize the moment, the camera memorizes only the time and starts to continuously search on the net for other photos that have been taken in the very same moment.
Essentially, it is a camera that – using a mobile communication device – takes other’s photos. Photos that were created by someone who pressed a button somewhere at the same time as its own button was pressed. Even more so, it reduces the cameras to their networked buttons in order to create a link between two individuals.
So how does it work? Flickr, of course! The SonyEricsson K750i inside the device contacts a server that searches Flickr for photographs taken at the requested moment. As soon as a match is found, it is transmitted to the “camera” and displayed on the screen. The press-to-view process could take a “few minutes or hours”.
(via Trend Hunter)
