Lomography wants you to build your next camera with its new Konstruktor SLR kit

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posted Thursday, June 13, 2013 at 10:00 AM EDT

 
 

For the last week or so, Lomography has been teasing a new toy camera for all you lo-fi film shooters out there — and today the company has announced the Konstruktor, a build it yourself film camera for just $35. And even more impressive, this DIY camera is an honest to goodness SLR.

According to Lomography, it'll take an hour or two to assemble (probably more if you have clumsy hands like me), and it features a top-down viewfinder for accurate framing. There's a plastic, detachable, 50mm f/10 lens, with a shutter speed of 1/80s, and longer with Bulb mode. It can focus from 0.5m – Infinity. Since it's an interchangeable lens camera, theoretically you should be able to mount something else on the front, so you could doubtless even modify it into a pinhole.

With a pricetag of just $35, the Konstruktor will be great for people who want to play with film, and like to build things, but don't want to drop a lot of cash. It'll also allow you to play with and modify the Konstruktor camera, without worrying about ruining some expensive equipment. It even comes with stickers so you can make it look just the way you choose.

This isn't the first DIY camera on the market. You can pick up the plastic TLR Receskyfor $10-$15 (though the instructions can be pretty badly translated). You can also build your own cardboard pinhole camera from a kit pretty easily, but some plastic cameras are a bit more complex to assemble. But the Konstruktor is the first one we've seen that's an SLR, which is pretty impressive.

Check out a demo video, some product shots, and a sample image captured with the Konstruktor below.