Photographer Matthew Nicholson created this paper Leica M3 that’s a working pinhole camera. It’s loaded with 35mm film, and even the strap is realistic and made with paper!
Read more…

Here’s a fun bit of photo history: did you know that back in 1982, Kodak attempted to introduce a cartridge film format that resembled a floppy disk? Each rectangular cartridge contained a circular film disc with 15 exposures, and the disc was rotated 24 degrees after each exposure to line up the next frame.

Disc film did not prove hugely successful, mainly because the image on the negative was only 11 mm by 8 mm, leading to generally unacceptable grain and poor definition in the final prints. The film was intended to be printed with special 6-element lenses from Kodak, but many labs simply printed discs with standard 3-element lenses used for larger negative formats. The resulting prints often disappointed the consumer. [#]

Disc cameras were made until 1989, but the film remained in production until 1998. With over 8 million Disc cameras made in the first year alone, it’s no wonder there’s plenty for sale on eBay for just a few bucks.

Image credit: Photograph by D. Meyer

How do camera makers describe their cameras? To answer this question, we took the press releases of some popular cameras and made word clouds with them that are based on the number of occurrences of non-common words. The above word cloud is for the Canon 5D Mark I.
Read more…

This animation was created by students of the Engineering 128: Advanced Engineering Design Graphics course at UC Berkeley during the Spring 2008 semester. The first part shows a Canon 10D DSLR exploding into its individual parts, and then those parts coming together again to slowly rebuild the camera, while the second part does the same for a Canon 24-85mm lens. Pretty dang impressive considering that it’s for an undergraduate course.

When two photographers got engaged in Japan, they asked their jewelry-maker friend to create wedding rings based on the Leica 50mm Summilux lens. The groom’s ring was the focusing ring while the bride’s was the aperture ring. The friend also created a stunningly realistic miniature Leica M3 to hold the rings (they slide onto the lens)!

(via Tokyo Camera Style)

Update: Here are some new photos of the rings:

This one shows the scale of the mini M3 next to actual Leica cameras:

Bryce Bell of cardnetics created this business card design that features a built-in aperture mechanism. Pull the lever down and the aperture opens up. If you run a photography-related business, this could be a neat business card to pass out to your clients. Pre-assembled cards start at $6 each, while you can buy kits that you put together yourself for $2.50. If you want to try printing and laser cutting the card yourself, the design templates are available here.

Small Iris (via Reddit)

Did you know that you can turn any wall magnetic by painting it with magnetic primer? Communications company M Booth did this with one of its walls, then sent out employees onto the streets of NYC with Fujifilm Instax cameras. The result is this impressive wall displaying 800 instant photos!
Read more…

Here’s an idea for a quick photo activity (perhaps on a rainy day?): pick a random color, walk around your house and collect things that match that color, neatly arrange them, then take a picture.

(via Things Organized Neatly via Laughing Squid)

This compact camera is only one dollar… literally. Won Park, an artist that does origami using money, folded this camera using a dollar bill without cuts, glue, or tape. You can find more of his creations here, though this is the only photography-related one.

Image credit: One Dollar Camera by Won Park

There’s plenty of time lapse projects documenting the passage of time and the process of aging with human portraits, but how about with animals? This video going viral on the Interwebs right now was creating by making a photo a day of Dunder, a German Shepherd, and shows him growing from an 8 week old puppy to a 1 year old adult. If you have a pet, this concept could be a fun project for getting it involved in your photography!