Artist and designer Kelli Anderson has released her latest work, "This Book is a Camera." It's a so-called "pop-up book", and when you open the page, the camera pops up. And this camera can actually take pictures as a pinhole camera (needle hole camera).


"This Book is a Camera" comes with photographic paper, so you can shoot immediately after you receive it. To shoot, open the page and pull the "shutter". After a certain period of time, release the shutter to complete the shooting. It takes about 10 seconds to open the shutter on a sunny day and about 20 seconds on a cloudy day. It takes 70 seconds at dusk.








Development work is required after shooting. You need to prepare the darkroom and developer required for development by yourself.


The developed photo is a so-called negative. Black and white must be inverted and converted to a positive image. Anderson recommends using the smartphone app here. If you take a negative image with your smartphone and flip it with an image processing application, a tasteful black-and-white photo will appear. If you modify the brightness and contrast to your liking, you will have one photo collection taken with a pinhole camera.





Anderson explains why he created "This Book is a Camera."

"I wanted to make an educational and practical camera with a pop-up book. It's a camera that connects" design and science "and" structure and function ". [[ Omitted ]] This picture book is foldable. It is possible to clearly show the process of making a photo using the characteristics of light with just a piece of paper and explain the mechanism to children. "


For today's children, a camera is probably a "smartphone." It is said that an increasing number of children have never touched even compact digital cameras, let alone film cameras. It would be interesting to give such children "This Book is a Camera" as a Christmas present. Some children may be interested in the mechanism of cameras and smartphones that have become completely black boxes.

Also, "This Book is a Camera" is a perfect tool for adults' hobbies. This is because there is endless room for ingenuity in order to take a satisfactory picture with a pinhole camera, such as changing the exposure time and retaking the picture many times, or searching for a development method. With such ingenuity, when you go out of the room, you may be able to guess the brightness numerically, such as "Today is 100,000 lux." It's up to that point, but it's a hobby's joy to enjoy something that ordinary people don't have.



"This Book is a Camera" can be purchased from Anderson's website. The Book is a Camera costs $ 29. A separate shipping fee of $ 14 to Japan is required.