There’s a lot of ways to make your own DYI cameras, but we never thought we’d see an actual working camera made out of LEGOs!
Taiwan-based photographer Helen Sham has made a Hasselblad 503CX medium format film camera replica made out of LEGO pieces, and it’s impressively accurate to the design of the original. Sham didn’t just make her LEGO 503CX accurate on the outside, she also made the interior mechanics functional, as well.
Sham’s includes a mirror, a frame counter, a film winder that can actually wind real film, and a spring-based shutter button. There’s also a folding waist-level viewfinder that lets you frame a scene through a piece of glass Sham added into the lens. And all of the main components of the camera can be disassembled, just like any other LEGO build.
Check out just how crazy accurate this LEGO 503CX is for yourself:
All together it to about 2 hours for Sham to build the camera, taking 1,120 different pieces to construct. Nevertheless, Sham had a blast making it.
“I Lego-designed this camera because I am also a photographer and this camera has been one of my favorites,” Sham writes. “I love the manual mechanisms of this particular camera very much.”
But this project isn’t just a side project for Sham. She’s submitted her Hasselblad design to LEGO Ideas, which is LEGO’s crowdsourced system that accepts suggestions for future LEGO kits, and it’s already been selected as a “Staff Pick.” However, for her design to be submitted for LEGO Review, where it could be potentially picked to become a new official LEGO Ideas set, she needs 1,000 supporters for the build. Sham’s build has about 850 supporters.
If you would like to help Sham’s LEGO Hasselblad 503CX be sold in stores, go to its support page on LEGO Ideas and support it.
Sham says that she hopes she’ll be able to create a camera system in the near future that can create photos using the LEGO Hasselblad camera and a smartphone. Getting her designed approved for review and selected will help make that become a reality.
