Photo credit: Dycus
Dycus started digging through a box of old electronics on a lazy afternoon and pulled out a dusty circuit board from an optical mouse that had long since been forgotten. That seemingly worthless bit, tucked away a few years ago on a hunch, ended up sparking 65 hours of late night modding and more soldered connections than he cares to count. By the end of it all, that old scrap had turned into something completely new: a tiny camera that snaps pretty terrible, yet somehow charming portraits and sweeps panoramic scenes that seem to capture the whole world in a single sweep.

Henry Kidman thought to himself, ‘why not try building a 16mm motion film picture camera from scratch?’, and went about it using only a 3D printer, an Arduino, and a stubborn refusal to accept that there are some things that just might be too difficult to get done alone. His project shows what’s possible with the tools most of us already have on hand, and what he came up with is a device that against all the odds, actually captures good quality film footage.