- Hear me out.
In 2020,
I think cameras are boring.
Every season new cameras come out.
They all have new specs,
new features,
new this,
new that,
but they all do the same thing!
Nothing's really being innovated on.
What if you could create your own camera?
What would it do?
What would it look like?
In this video I'm gonna explore that.
I'm going to assemble
the whole thing myself.
I'm gonna code how it works
and we're gonna design what it looks like.
I'm super excited to
tell you guys this story
about if Kent can build a camera.
Let's go.
(light clap)
My first reaction to
watching this commercial
in years.
This commercial is what sparked the idea
because it is absolute chaos.
Let's do this.
(triumphant orchestral music)
Oh.
Yes!
- [Male Narrator] You are
about to behold a miracle.
- A miracle!
- [Male Narrator] A
miracle in photography!
- Photography?!
Four suns!
- [Male Narrator] Introducing
the most important
new camera in your lifetime.
- My lifetime?!
- [Male Narrator] The Nimslo 35 millimeter
three dimensional camera!
- Oh! 3D!
- [Male Narrator] Nimslo
gives you the utterly lifelike
photographs in three dimensions.
- No! Never!
- [Male Narrator] The Nimslo
camera is fully automatic
- Okay.
- [Male Narrator] and uses
regular 35 millimeter film.
- Okay, I don't like that.
[Male Narrator] You get
extraordinary three dimensional
photographs
- (loud groans)
- [Male Narrator] that make
your family look so real,
you feel you could reach into
the picture and hug them.
- I don't wanna do that!
- [Male Narrator] The
Nimslo 35 millimeter,
three dimensional camera.
When was the last time
you preformed a miracle?
- Wait, what?
(loud ripping)
Uh, yeah!
When was your last miracle?
They have a point.
They have a great point.
Awhile ago I fell down a rabbit hole of
this weird camera that
had four lenses on it
and it would take these weird photos.
Then this like, trend
kinda came back around
where people were re-buying them.
Some people were buying them
for three dollars at a thrift store,
or you're buying it on eBay for $300.
But it's all on film.
So you take one photo,
it takes up the space of
Does it take up the space of four photos?
You have to pay to get that developed.
They send it back to you.
Hopefully on a CD
so that you don't have
to scan it yourself.
And then put it into photoshop.
Create your animation
and then post that on Instagram.
That is the most complicated photo ever.
Well maybe not complicated.
Maybe just inconvenient.
So as I sat there browsing,
scrolling and scrolling
and looking at all these wiggly photos.
Wiggly, squiggly, twigglies.
I don't know what to call them.
We'll figure out what to
call them in this video.
But what if I could build my own,
but I could make it digital?
To better understand this idea,
I feel as if we need to
consult Kent of the past
because this isn't a new idea.
I actually had the idea a couple years ago
when I saw that commercial.
It was just like,
good lord!
But I was not smart enough
at the time to do it.
Am I smart enough now to do it?
Also no,
but I'm a littler braver now
and I'm just gonna send it.
I just moved
but this
box here contains what we're looking for.
(light scraping)
(low grunt and thud)
(chill techno music)
Oh. Oh. Oh!
This is it!
(chill techno music)
It's not the quality that matters.
It's the sharing.
Every camera has a different use
and every camera is for
something different.
Mostly meaning,
in this sense,
this camera isn't gonna be that practical.
It's not for making YouTube videos.
It's not for taking
portrait, beautiful,
landscape, magazine photos.
It's just for taking this
specific type of photo
and I think that makes it a unique camera.
Okay.
So looking through my notes reminded me
of exactly where we should
begin building this camera
and it starts with three categories.
I worked for a year and a half
at a start up in San Francisco
and I am going to apply
probably zero of the things
that I learned at my time there,
to this project.
(hip hop techno music)
Hardware.
Software.
And design.
These are the three categories
that I need to focus on
to finish this
and actually make it.
Because I really, really think I can.
Hardware.
All of the things that
go inside the camera
and that are gonna make the camera work.
The brain.
The lenses.
The cables.
The battery
and then the software.
When the camera does take a photo,
what happens?
Does it send it somewhere?
Does it apply filters automatically?
Obviously the idea is in the software.
I wanted to push a shutter button
and be able to spit out
one of these 3D photos
in like a second.
But what if it could do so much more?
What if it did this four square filter?
Or this weird one?
Or it changed the colors like this?
Or it made it all funky and colorful?
There's just so many cool
things that this could do
and I kind of wanna just try all of them.
And then the design.
What is the camera
actually gonna look like?
For this I wanna look at cameras currently
that I think look cool.
I wanna look at other
weird things that look cool
and combine them!
Make something that fits
inside my aesthetic,
but is super interesting.
Because why not?
I have one goal before we
finish this episode today.
Part one is going to end
with me taking a photo.
100%.
Put it down in the book.
Is there a book?
What do you even?
(light ripping)
(sharp clap)
(light ripping)
I don't know how long this is gonna take.
I'm just gonna start recording stuff now.
So I wanted to kind of challenge myself
to do something bigger
and I had this idea for so long.
(chill techno music)
I got this Raspberry Pi as a gift.
I don't think it's the newest one
but it's really never been used for much.
I've ran a couple bots on here.
I did a couple of other weird projects
and I was looking at it for a long time,
because I was like,
what could I possibly
do that isn't boring?
That hasn't already been done.
And then I noticed
this slot here.
This slot here says camera
and that got me thinking.
This thing can take a camera?
And so I looked it up
and I found that you can
buy a five dollar camera
Liar, liar, pants on fire!
That plugs in to this thing
and turns it into a
digital disposable camera.
But then I was like, wait.
So in terms of what I actually
needed for this project,
it didn't end up being as
complicated as I expected.
That's the camera!
That's my fingernail.
Oh my goodness!
That is literally exactly
what I was hoping for.
Oh my god.
I just bought four cameras
and one four to one camera adaptor.
Theoretically,
that should just work.
Theoretically.
I've got mouse and keyboard
both plugged into here.
This is my guy,
so I can get internet on this thing.
HDMI goes into here.
Now I'm going to try and install
one of the cameras
and we're just gonna
do one camera for now.
(gasps)
Oh that fit nice!
Very snug.
Okay.
I've got the pi up.
This is so exciting!
If I can take a selfie
with this tiny little
thing attached to a ribbon,
that is the biggest victory.
Rasptstill.
Press enter to run the command.
When the command runs,
you'll see the camera preview
open for five seconds,
when the still picture is taken.
(hard click)
Oh yeah!
First image, baby!
Yeah it's kind of wack
cause the photo takes ten seconds late
cause there was an accidental timer
and a bunch of other things went wrong,
but we did it!
It's a photo!
I'm not gonna stop there.
Next we are attaching the
four to one camera adaptor
and we are going to take four photos
with one shutter button.
(hip hop techno music)
So this is also the part where
I wrote some creative coding.
You have to take each photo individually,
so I put them all inside the same loop,
so that when I push enter
it takes photo one, two, three, four
all in succession.
(hip hop techno music)
Okay.
So it's Tuesday night.
This video goes live tomorrow morning.
All right.
I cannot believe
I can actually hold
this thing in my hands.
It's been a ton of off camera work
just to get it to this point
but look at this.
To see all these lenses lined up,
ready to go,
is just so exciting.
And on that note,
we are gonna take the first
photo with the quad cameras.
Frick!
(light thud)
I was supposed to come up
with a name for this camera,
but I don't have one.
But this episode is gonna conclude
once we take that photo.
But part two
is going to begin.
I am so excited to really
bring you guys along this journey with me
because it's a lot of unknown for me.
I still don't quite know
if all the things I wanna
do are even possible,
but that's why we're trying it.
In episode two
we're gonna work on more
software for this thing.
We're gonna implement your guys ideas
that you leave me down in the comments
and we're gonna start thinking about
what a proper case for this
camera could look like.
So thank you guys so much for the support.
The love on Twitter has been outstanding!
I just feel so blessed
that you guys still follow along.
Let's take this photo.
(light smack)
So ready!
(hip hop techno music)
This feels right.
This feels good.
(loud squeaky whistling)
Dammit!
It's four A.M.
I stayed up for that?!
That sucked!
I've tried like,
a thousand different things
and this is the only one
I can get to look good.
Here's the learning.
In part two
we have to focus on the
design of the things
because those lenses need
to be lined up perfectly.
None of this crazy test job.
I'm so sorry if I ruined the payoff.
But I'm gonna make you
watch part two I guess.
Thank you for watching
if Kent can make a camera.
By the way,
he can!
♪ Uh. Yeah. True sound now ♪
♪ Uh. It's the outro ♪
♪ It's my freestyle ♪
♪ I don't know ♪
♪ Please subscribe ♪
♪ Do it now ♪
♪ I will cry if you don't. Uh ♪
♪ I'm not good at this ♪
♪ Please do what I asked for ♪
Um. Oh no.
Times up.
