A new camera that doesn’t take pictures!

Usually, when a new camera is launched, there is a huge fanfare with a press release full of mega-pixels, quad-cores and frames per second. That’s not been the case with two cameras from a new entrant to the camera market. Unless you look in the right places, most photographers will have missed two camera launches at the start of January. So, why was there a waiting list for cameras that don’t take photographs? Especially when you have to build the camera yourself from parts provided by the manufacturer. If you haven’t realised yet, Lego has just launched two new sets, allowing you to build your own camera.

Lego Retro Camera

The first of the two Lego camera models isn’t just one set. The Lego Retro camera is one of the 3-in-1 Creator kits. These kits use the same set of bricks to create three different models. It’s sold as a Retro Camera and takes us back to the old days of film photography. There are plenty of moving parts, including a film lever that rolls the ‘film’ to the next frame, an eyepiece you can look through, and a lens that has a barrel for you to rotate. You even have six photographs pre-taken on two rolls of film.

The camera took about an hour to build, so it’s at the easy end of Lego builds. It looks great on one of the shelves in my office and is worth the £17.99 price tag. Even more so, when you can break the camera down and build a retro video camera (think Super 8 videography) and a retro analogue TV set from the days when you had to stand up to change the channel.

Lego Polaroid SX-70

The second Lego camera launch recreates one of the most popular cameras from the 1970s. For those old enough to remember, once you’d taken a photo on a film camera, you had to process it yourself in a dark room or send it to the chemists, then wait a few weeks to get your snaps back. The Polaroid SX-70 took most of the waiting time away. A press of the shutter button and the picture popped out of the front of the camera. Initially, it was just a grey piece of card, but over the next 60 seconds, the image appeared as if by magic!

The Lego model brings back the feeling of a picture sliding out of the front of the camera. Three illustrated Polaroid photos, including a Legoified shot of Edwin H Land, the founder of the Polaroid Corporation, can be loaded into the model and will eject after a satisfying click of the shutter button. This second kit has about twice the number of bricks as the Retro Camera but is much costlier at £69.99 – I guess because Lego has to pay a whopping licence fee to Polaroid. Even so, I have this on my wish list for future birthdays, Christmas, etc.

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About the author

As well as running Edinburgh Photography Workshop, Rich Dyson is a professional photographer. His photographs are regularly used in newspapers such as The Times, Guardian and Daily Telegraph. He also had two solo exhibitions and was featured in a members-sponsored exhibition in the Scottish Parliament. You can see and buy his photography at richdysonphotography.com.