This DIY Camera is Like if IKEA Met Photography

Remember when I said retro was making its comeback? In the past, people could (and often would) build their own tech with a few parts lying around here and there. My grandfather had built his own radio at the age of 14, and he had it all along up until I was a child. Building your own technology is truly remarkable for a few reasons. It A. Gives you the ability to understand the products around you better. Building your own speaker helps you understand how your Amazon Echo works. Putting your own camera together helps you understand why phones with powerful cameras have camera-bumps, or more importantly, how images are captured. It also B. gives you the potential to create and fix your own tech. My grandfather fixed, modified, and augmented his radio for a good half-century before retiring it away and using the radio on his Nokia phone.

Mastery of your own tech is something that got lost with time as technology grew more and more advanced… but some enthusiasts are still trying to keep that spirit alive, by giving us technology/appliances/products that we can put together, disassemble, modify, and fix whenever necessary. Take a look at the Woodsum DIY 35mm camera. Entirely made from laser-cut pieces of wood that you assemble, the camera comes complete with a pinhole lens, shutter, viewfinder, film-holder and winder, camera grip, a tripod mount, and even an eyelet to tie your camera-hanging leash around! It uses no lenses (thanks to the pinhole construction) and works completely without batteries.

The Woodsum looks and functions exactly like an analog camera would. Press the shutter button down and the shutter opens to let light onto the film. The pinhole lens allows for some eerily beautiful color pictures that have a true vintage feel (something that Instagram cannot quite mimic yet), and the overall process helps you understand the basic tenets of photography, like aperture, exposure, shutter speed. It also looks like a wonderfully vintage camera, with a solid build thanks to the laser-cut wood, and the ability to allow the user to put together the camera from scratch, letting them own a camera that they fashioned quite literally with their own hands! A perfect camera for shutterbugs, hipsters, analog-lovers, the curious kinds, and people with a knack for DIY!

Designer: Suhyun Hwang

Click here to Buy Now: $49 ~~$67~~ (27% off)