Camera technology has come a long way since the early days of thecamera obscura.
Manufacturers and inventors have tried and tested a multitude of different camera designs some quirky, some bonkers, some incredibly successful. Over the years, there have been plenty of weird andwonderful camerasin all shapes and sizes.
From battle-ready machine gun cameras to sci-fi designs and bizarre storage mediums, we round up a selection of the strangest, rarest and most usual cameras to be created.
Apple Quicktake 100
The Apple QuickTake was one of the first and last digital cameras developed by Apple.
This camera looked more like a projector than the classic camera design and could take 32 photos at a staggering 0.08 MP or eight snaps at 640x480. Originally released in 1994, it was marketed by Apple until 1997 but failed to catch on and was abandoned in that year.
Sony Digital Mavica
In 1981, Sony launched the Mavica as the world’s first electronic still camera. It wasn’t a digital camera in the current understanding as its sensor produced an analogue video signal captured on Video Floppy discs. The captured images could then be viewed on a TV.
Things have come a long way since then.
The Lecia DMR was the world’s first hybrid 35mm SLR camera with the option for either digital or analogue photography.
In typical Lecia fashion, it was priced at $6,000 and didn’t make much financial sense but was seen by many as the holy grail of the transition between film and digital photography.
This Lecia camera was interesting not only for its shape and design, but also for the fact that it offered lens mounts for Nikon, Contax, Canon FD, and Minolta lenses.
The unusual design meant it captured square images using 35mm lenses.
The Rollei 35 was a miniature viewfinder camera that was originally introduced to the world in 1966 and was the smallest camera of the time.
Over the years that followed around two million of these cameras were manufactured and the design even continued on until 2015.
Lytro is a light-field camerathat was originally developed in pocket-sized format and was interesting not only for its unusual shape but because it was capable of refocusing images after being taken.
Later models would also be intriguing, with a fixed aperture it measured resolution in mega rays instead of megapixels and was capable of focussing from 0 mm to infinity.
George Lawrence’s Mammoth Camera
In 1900, George Lawrence built the world’s largest camera in order to take a photo of a train and capture all the carriages in one single shot - a ground-breaking panoramic for the time.
George Lawrence made a name for himself with stunts like this and also took steps in aerial photography innovation that included taking photographs from hot-air balloons and with camera-carrying kites. Another of his famed panoramic images showed the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake with the ruins of San Francisco.
The Light L16was a quirkily designed camera that used 16 camera modules to capture multiple high-resolution snaps at varying focal lengths, all at once. The idea here was to create a camera that worked as a nice middle ground between a large DSLR for quality and acompact camerafor portability.
The captured images were fused together into a 52-megapixel photo which could have its focus edited afterwards and offered “exceptional low-light performance”. This one certainly looks like it was inspired by a fly and stands out on our list of unusual cameras.
Konishoruko (Konica) Rokuoh-Sha Type 89 Machine Gun Japanese WWII Camera
During WWII various battle cameras were built by military forces around the world for training purposes.
One of these cameras was manufactured for the Japanese airforce by Konishoruko, a camera manufacturer who would later go by the name Konica.
These sorts of cameras were mounted to planes in place of real machine guns and helped with testing and training of pilots by confirming kills and evaluating their accuracy. When the pilot pulled the trigger on his weapons, footage was taken of what he was aiming at and the captured film could then be analysed after the plane landed.
If you like the look of one, it’s currently available topurchase from eBay.
HARMAN TiTAN
This pinhole camera was made from injection moulded ABS, stainless steel and finished with a non-slip coating that made it extremely durable and capable of withstanding both natural elements and rough handling.
In the era of the digital camera, the HARMAN TITAN pinhole camera is keeping one of the oldest forms of photography alive with traditional film capture through a pin-hole device.
