I wanted a camera that doesn't exist, so I built it

https://medium.com/@cristi.baluta/i-wanted-a-camera-that-doesnt-exist-so-i-built-it-5f9864533eb7

by cyrc • 7 months ago

466 139 7 months ago

medium.com

tshanmu• 7 months ago

Wow! This is the kind of news that we want on hacker news in 2026. Amazing hacker ethos.

The article could have been better with sharing some photos taken with the new camera.

satvikpendem2• 7 months ago

You're saying you don't want to hear how someone then stuffed AI into their camera?

SchemaLoad3• 7 months ago

Imagine a camera that uses one AI to transcribe the image the sensor picked up, and then another one to use the transcription to generate the image.

sho_hn• 7 months ago

Agreed, this is some proper nice tinkering writeup that we get far too rarely now.

Lovely project! I'm a software guy who in recent years does lots of CAD for hobby projects (mainly robotics) and orders custom machined parts (lots of sheet metal construction, occasionally milled parts) along with 3D printing.

I find parametric modelling very zen. Stacking operations is very Lego-like, like stringing up pure functions. Plus I can listen to podcasts while I model, but not while I write code - it engages the brain differently.

Now that LLMs are sapping some of the joy out of programming (I use the tools, they're productive, achieving goals and delivering user value is still satisfying, etc. - but the act of writing code is just more enjoyable than prompting, so it's a tad dispiriting that it's getting harder to jusitify) I also find that I get a lot of satisfaction from doing something with my hands. In some ways it's a safer space for technical creativity.

Can highly recommend hobbies like this.

amelius• 7 months ago

the lens should be as centered as possible. I wanted to avoid that horrendous look of cameras with the lens as close to the left edge as possible (Sony a6000, I’m looking at you here).

Funny, the things some people obsess about :)

neogodless• 7 months ago

When I was shopping, I was comparing the Sony Alphas with the Fujifilm XT line.

And in reviews, complaints were made that the lens (and view finder) being centered in the XT means you squish your nose against the screen in the back.

But... I just liked the look and dials of the XT-5 so much more than the barebones boxy look of the α6700.

(Sony has meaningfully better autofocus too, I'll be sad, but I wanted the nice looking body...)

And yes my nose squishes against that back screen.

kiddico• 7 months ago

A6000 and A6600 owner checking in : I love the boxy look! The viewfinder on the left makes lining up long shots kinda hard though. I have to zoom out to 50mm find my subject (birds) then zoom back to 400mm+, so I have been eyeing the more expensive models just to have it in the center. Idk if it would even help lol.

Latitude7973• 7 months ago

I just got the XT-5 too - not for the form but because the feature set is so good. However, I don't get this obsession on centred viewfinders - they could be anywhere on the camera body now they are digital; they may as well be on the left side where my nose isn't going to be smudging the screen.

The camera is fantastic, though.

ge96• 7 months ago

Also funny the opposite preference, I like the offset lenses looks cool

theSuda• 7 months ago

Going from mostly centered lenses on dslr and m43 cameras to Sony with lens on mostly left side, I do prefer the offset lenses. Ergonomically and looks-wise both.

blindstitch2• 7 months ago

Practically and ergonomically I prefer a centered lens. Your hand has to reach less far to reach the focus ring and aperture control. Most slr cameras have buttons on both sides of the lens, so developing muscle memory is easier when those actions are split between each hand. Rotation of the camera is also much more natural. It also centers the lens' pov between your eyes, matching their parallax, which is really important for composing the photograph outside of the viewfinder.

CarVac• 7 months ago

Huh? You reach towards the lens from the bottom left and thus a centered position puts a corner of the camera body in the way.

vladvasiliu4• 7 months ago

It also centers the lens' pov between your eyes, matching their parallax, which is really important for composing the photograph outside of the viewfinder.

The compact sonys have the viewfinder in the top-left corner, so having the mount to the side improves the paralax situation, although doesn't remove it.

wibbily• 7 months ago

The loveliest part of making your own gear is picking all your nits.

izzydata• 7 months ago

My only camera is a Sony a6000 and I bought it partially because I thought it looked great. If it causes some issue I wouldn't even know it because I've never tried something else.

petre• 7 months ago

It only makes sense if one wants boat a left and right handed camera st the same time. But then it's got the dials on the wrong side.

cmxch• 7 months ago

The only thing really wrong about the Sony a6000 is the lack of weatherproofing. With even a 55-210 kit lens and maybe a good filter, you can still get amazing quality from far away - such as being able to pick apart finer architectural details of a monument that’s about 5-6mi away.

Zababa2• 7 months ago

a6000 is APS-C, so 1.5x crop factor, 55-210 therefore is equivalent to 72.5-315 full frame. At 5-6 miles away that would mean each of your pixels (24mp sensor I think?) are something like, a 16-19cm square. I don't know if it's enough for architectural detail. I feel like it wouldn't, I have a cathedral I often take pictures of, at 1km it's okay, kinda fills the frame on the 55-210, at 3 miles (~5km) it's really small in the frame.

ayoubd• 7 months ago

This is awesome! Great work. The "do first, ask questions later" mindset is inspiring as it's so easy (for me at least) to get stuck forever in a preparation / ideas phase.

I would also love to see some photos taken with it.

Topgamer7• 7 months ago

Not sure if any use this camera. But dude hangs out with a lot of ballet dancers it seems

https://www.instagram.com/cristi.baluta

Zak5• 7 months ago

Unless something went terribly wrong, they'll look just like photos taken with a Panasonic G9 II. Samples from that camera are readily available online.

cromulent• 7 months ago

A triumph. I love this.

srean2• 7 months ago

Any chemists or crystallographers out here?

I recently got curious about whether nature solves the Bayer pattern problem and if so, how.

Are there any 3 element crystalline compounds with the formula A_2BC with roughly same sized atoms for A, B and C ?

If they have a 2D tiling that would nature's Bayer pattern.

_aavaa_2• 7 months ago

Natured solved it in our eyes by doing non-uniform placements of rods and cones (rather than uniform fixed pattern) and then fixing it in “software”.

srean2• 7 months ago

Agreed.

IAmBroom2• 7 months ago

Yes! As an optical engineer, I heard endless complaints about how the camera doesn't "see" like our eyes do.

Even the 1990s cameras were far superior to a "static picture" from our eyes: color everywhere, instead of mostly in the fovea, no blind spot, etc.

What they lacked was: higher resolution wherever you chose to concentrate within the scene at one moment, jagged lines if they weren't perfectly aligned (your eyes correct near-lines to be LINES), and (in the 1990s) lower peak resolution.

(Weirdly, people used to argue that "digital would NEVER have better resolution than film, even though it was clearly trending upwards to and past that static goal...).

NooneAtAll32• 7 months ago

more like wetware :)

dsego• 7 months ago

What about the x-trans pattern?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fujifilm_X-Trans_sensor

solarkraft• 7 months ago

Oh, that effort.

I’ve been thinking about putting an MFT mount on my RX100 to use it with more interesting lenses (I have it for the high frame rate capability) but concluded it to be way too much effort and risk.

And then along comes a person with enough determination to build an entire custom case! Truly impressive.

dylan604• 7 months ago

I saw footage someone captured when they modified their Canon 1D to use a PL mount. They then mounted a 17mm, iirc, that in a slow shutter could capture as many photons as my shitty 20mm EF mount could do in a 5s long exposure in bulb mode. The front piece of glass on that 17mm was ginormous. I really wish I could remember the guy's name to find a link. He mounted that camera to the front of a fishing boat down the canyon river pushed by the current navigating in the dark with night vision goggles. The resulting timelapse was glorious.

There was something specific to the body of the 1D that allowed for the proper flange depth of PL lenses that the other Canon bodies did not work for this mod.

SilentM68• 7 months ago

Wow, that's cool.

If there is anything that can be patented, I'd make sure to patent it.

Zak5• 7 months ago

Something is terribly wrong with the patent system if anything about sticking the innards of a commercially-produced camera into a different-shaped metal case is patentable.

_aavaa_2• 7 months ago

If Nintendo can patent game mechanics despite prior art, anything’s possible.

zipy124• 7 months ago

There are design patents specifically for looks[1], in other countries such as the UK where I am from this is known as registering a design rather than using the word 'patent'[2].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_patent [2]: https://www.gov.uk/register-a-design

ionelaipatioaei• 7 months ago

Why would you even give a shit about patents for a hobby?

s1mon• 7 months ago

As someone who's been doing mechanical product engineering for 30+ years, doing this as a first project is way more than jumping off the deep end. Impressive.

buildbot6• 7 months ago

I’m just a hobbyist 3D user but I feel like I have good experience, been using Autodesk Inventor then Fusion since early high school…

I saw the level of detail in the model and am shocked. If this is truly their first experience with CAD/CAM they are a natural.

For example - here’s my home built camera. It’s massively more simplistic: https://blog.maxg.io/phase-one-swc/

properbrew• 7 months ago

It may be simplistic, but that's a cracking photo you've taken on it.

aaronbrethorst3• 7 months ago

Wow super cool. I’ve always wanted a Hasselblad SWC, but now I think I want what you built even more ;)

m4rtink• 7 months ago

BTW, if you want to design some models for 3D printing but the only thing you know to do is to code, you can use OpenSCAD & program the obejcrs into existence:

https://openscad.org/

Also recommend using the BOSL2 library with OpenSCAD - it turnes an already very powerful tool into something insane:

https://github.com/BelfrySCAD/BOSL2

alansaber• 7 months ago

Agreed, both the pcb and 3d design was very well done. I'd love to do something similar (on a smaller camera lol)

Zak5• 7 months ago

The Panasonic GX series of cameras was very similar to what we see here, and prices for them remain elevated years past their discontinuation. I'm a little surprised they haven't introduced a new model in that lineup.

The Fuji X-E5 also seems similar to this, though obviously with a different lens mount.

yabones• 7 months ago

GM-5 is probably the greatest pocket-size mirrorless, and maybe the last. The GX-85 is also great, but it does have a larger grip and more of a shoulder at the top.

The G-100D is also quite small, but the faux pentaprism at the top makes it just a bit too big to justify being MFT.

https://petapixel.com/2025/06/28/the-panasonic-lumix-gm-5-is...

6gvONxR4sf7o• 7 months ago

If they just remade it with modern AF software, I'd probably carry mine around most every I went. Not to mention what they could do by updating hardware.

jeswin• 7 months ago

I have a GM1, it's truly a standout camera. GM5 makes it even better. It's quite funny nobody wants to attempt similar sizes, even when the market has voted for pocketable cameras.

Especially OM - with all their troubles, if it were me I'd have pivoted the company to sizes that do justice to the mount's inherent size advantage. They have a rich legacy of amazing small cameras (Trip, Pen, XA series, and the overrated mju ii) - yet it's fuji selling an order of magnitude more x-halfs than anything OM is producing.

criddell3• 7 months ago

In December I bought a GX-85. I love it even though it's 9 years old and still uses micro-USB. I got a great deal on it - $300.

It doesn't seem like it would take a lot to keep this line going. Bump the sensor, change the USB cable, add GPS, etc... but keep the form factor.

I guess the market just isn't big enough.

Glyptodon3• 7 months ago

I have a GX-8 and I still like it...

davidjytang• 7 months ago

Still using GX1 here.

_0xdd• 7 months ago

This is amazing. It's such a shame that Olympus and Panasonic have largely abandoned the small camera market within the M43 system. I really wish another manufacturer would step up and build something similar to the GX85, which is still one of my favorite walkaround cameras.

zokier• 7 months ago

Fujis X-E5 seems on paper very comparable to GX85? https://www.dpreview.com/products/compare/side-by-side?produ...

criddell3• 7 months ago

That looks amazing. I wish I could justify it (I'm a terrible photographer).

alistairSH3• 7 months ago

FWIW, Olympus spun-off/sold their consumer camera division. It's now operating as OM System (1) and has released a few new cameras over the past few years. As the article mentioned, the latest is the OM-3, which is sort of similar form factor, but not exactly compact. They also have the smaller Pen EP-7, but it's not available in the US (though they're readily available on Ebay or via KEH etc). I bought an EP-7 for an earlier Xmas gift to myself, but haven't had much change to use it (previously had an EP-5 and E-M5ii).

1 - https://explore.omsystem.com/us/en/

hypercube333• 7 months ago

They are no Pentax Q which is ridiculously small and maybe not the best design lens / shutter wise as a lot of the in-lens shutters seem to fail...

vladvasiliu4• 7 months ago

Meh, I love my Olympus cameras, but I wouldn't call the latest models exactly small. The OM1 is pretty huge, even though it's smaller than the ridiculous Panasonic G9. I think it's close to the Sony a7 line and the canon r6, which are full-frame. Of course, if you're into long lenses, it wipes the floor with them, if the compromise works for you. On the wide end, the advantage isn't as clear-cut, though nobody else has anything comparable to the 8-25.

What I'm hoping to see is a new penf. When it came out, they somehow managed to cram into that small body almost everything the em1 had at the time. The om3 is pretty small, too, but for some reason they decided to keep the faux-pentaprism bump. It would have been great if it had the viewfinder to the side.

goochwart2• 7 months ago

I just bought a GX9 5 years after selling my whole system cause I missed the form factor so much. M43 really is the best compromise between size and image quality imo, with the caveat that I'm not a professional. No other mount lets me casually EDC an 80-300 equivalent lens.

There's Esquisse (https://esquisse.camera/) trying to step up, but it's still in the very early stages.

abetusk2• 7 months ago

A weird contradiction for the licensing [0]:

This project is open-source under the MIT License. Feel free to modify and use — but no commercial use without permission.

[0] https://github.com/cristibaluta/Leica-G9ii?tab=readme-ov-fil...

jagged-chisel• 7 months ago

I wouldn’t call it weird. But it’s unenforceable.

This kind of thing works better with GPL. General use falls under GPL. If that doesn’t suit your commercial use, contact the copyright holder for another license.

As it stands, I can use the MIT licensed project anyway I like, including handing it to a commercial entity for their use.

actionfromafar2• 7 months ago

It's no more unenforceable than GPL is unenforceable.

But MIT + weird condition is radioactive to anyone who takes licensing seriously.

Might just as well write "for hobbyist use only".

abetusk2• 7 months ago

What's unenforceable? The non-commercial clause or the commercial clause? It's a contradiction.

The intent is not at all clear.

Does the author not mind people making money so long as they give back to the community? If so, then copyleft with exceptions by the license holder could be a compromise.

Does the author not want people making money at all without explicit permission? Then no open-source license will suffice and it should have been put under a non-commercial license or left without a license at all so that the default copyright restrictions apply.

You say that this project is MIT licensed and therefore available for you to use commercially. Is this true? The license section in the README clearly says not to use it for commercial purposes. Which takes precedence?

cristi_baluta2• 7 months ago

Thanks for pointing out, it is AI bullshit, I generated the structure of the readme and didn't look what it wrote there. I'll fix on my next push.

nancyminusone• 7 months ago

Pretty neat that you can do this nowadays and it only costs $3,000 instead of $30,000

buildbot6• 7 months ago

This is an amazing project and level of effort, and I empathize deeply with this photographers desire for a clean, simple, beautiful camera.

I so deeply want a modern EVF camera, doesn’t even have to be a rangefinder, with a mechanically wound shutter so the film advance lever has a reason to exist.

I’m aware of the Epson R1 but 6MP is too low.

alistairSH3• 7 months ago

The Fuji X-Half has a wind lever.

https://shopusa.fujifilm-x.com/x-half-x-half/

buildbot6• 7 months ago

Yes it does - I have one - it’s simply a button basically. Not the same feel as something like a Leica

the_arun• 7 months ago

This is an incredible project! Thanks for sharing. Love to see some photos taken in this camera!

poppafuze• 7 months ago

Gives a sense of how infuriating the G9ii update was to G9 users. The guts are ergonomically better off in a rangefinder body than what Panny shipped.

tormeh• 7 months ago

I have to say I'm a bit unimpressed with the efforts of the MFT consumer system camera manufacturers. Panasonic creates excellent cameras, they're so big it lessens the appeal of the smaller mount. OM makes cameras of the right size, but it's releasing new models really really slowly, with mediocre sensors. The OM-5 mark II is a lame rehash. Only the OM-3 is somewhat exciting, but it sacrifices too much in terms of ergonomics to achieve an aesthetic I don't care about.

On the other hand there's no other class of camera that really works on vacation/travel and is meaningfully better than a smartphone. Oh, well.

james_in_the_uk• 7 months ago

The OM-3 is fine ergonomically, for me at least. The thumb pad on the back is very comfortable and balances the body very well. I held off buying one for a while because of ergonomic concerns but in practice it’s been great.

hypercube333• 7 months ago

I'm super happy with my OM10 mark3 and z9. the first is super fun to use and gives a really satisfying shitter kachunk when you shoot and the z9 though a chonker makes adjusting stuff easy having a billion buttons

Retr0id• 7 months ago

I'm very happy with my thoroughly behind-the-curve E-M10, and I'm secretly glad the newer ones aren't all that great because I don't have to spend money on upgrading.

Glyptodon3• 7 months ago

I think people really underestimate how nice it is for the lenses to be smaller and not just for the camera to be.

Nextgrid2• 7 months ago

I wonder if there's a marketing reason for not shrinking the lenses. A big lens screams "better" more than a smaller lens at a casual glance for the uninitiated user.

SchemaLoad3• 7 months ago

The volume for physical cameras is low and shrinking. The companies can't justify putting nearly the same investment as smartphone companies selling 100x the units can.

bigstrat2003• 7 months ago

The volume for cameras like this was always low. Even in the days before you had a camera on your smartphone, people were buying Polaroids, compact cameras with a small lens built in, or disposable cameras. They weren't buying something more complicated unless they were hobbyist photographers.

ngcc_hk2• 7 months ago

Olympus is one of the few camera (I literally have hundreds as this is my side hobby) I love to use. Until every time I want to change anything. As a guy who can do 8x10, gfx, 907x, z9 etc I still find the menu system totally confusing.

It is not the hardware, it is the software …

vladvasiliu4• 7 months ago

I don't know, man. They're very customizable, and some models have memory banks. I never need to go in the menus of my pen-f. And The OM-1 has a much improved menu system, with a customizable "my menu" page, which opens directly, on which you can stick your most used menu items (but, sadly, it's not included in the saved memory banks).

Furthermore, I find the physical buttons on the om1 are so customizable and can do so many things, that I never go in the menu, either. I haven't tried new models from the other makers, but the olympus models I have are much nicer to use than my old canon 40d and nikon d80.

hypercube333• 7 months ago

I had to think about this a while since my Olympus is my go to camera just because I love using it but I agree some of the menus are mildly confusing....though leaps ahead of sony

vladvasiliu4• 7 months ago

Only the OM-3 is somewhat exciting, but it sacrifices too much in terms of ergonomics to achieve an aesthetic I don't care about.

I was very disappointed with the om3. I love the aesthetic, but I feel it's half-assed. The faux-pentaprism bump is the specific point I hate. If it had the body of a pen-f, I would have been all over it. As it is, it's just a prettier om-1 with worse ergonomics.

I should note that I already have a pen-f, and don't have any issue with its ergonomics (I used it yesterday on -5ºC with big gloves, it was fine). Since I don't lug around foot-long lenses, the lack of grip isn't a problem.

Zababa2• 7 months ago

On the other hand there's no other class of camera that really works on vacation/travel and is meaningfully better than a smartphone.

My a6500 is serving me well, though I guess it depends what you mean by "meaningfully better than a smartphone". I do end up with a lot more photos that I like when I go on vacation with a camera than with just a smartphone

Edit: also applies to commuting, but I'm always a bit uneasy about having my camera with me when comutting.

relaxing• 7 months ago

Title is misleading — if you read to the end, he did not end up with a usable camera.

ted_dunning• 7 months ago

Yet.

tristor• 7 months ago

The camera they want is also the camera I want. I say this as someone who still regularly shoots with an Olympus Pen-F and also has a Fuji X100VI, and primarily shoots a Nikon Z8 but wishes there was a more compact entry into FF. I actually really like the m4/3/MFT format, especially for travel photography, but it's a struggle because the best lenses are Pana/Leica and the best bodies are OM/Oly, and neither has done much to really develop the technology in the last 10 years. MFT feels dead, but even as a dead format, nothing compares to the size/weight flexibility it gives you.

erghjunk• 7 months ago

incredible project but unless I'm misunderstanding what he is comparing it to, this is only a few hundred dollars/euros less than a used leica m digital body per a quick ebay search.

criddell3• 7 months ago

Maybe, but that camera isn’t what they wanted either (other than the body shell).

cristi_baluta2• 7 months ago

Thanks! I'm comparing with the latest Ms, I'm not gonna buy old tech. I want also autofocus which this cameras don't have. It might be fun to manual focus with their lenses (also expensive) but I don't see myself doing this all the time.

ebbi2• 7 months ago

Amazing work, and so inspiring! The size difference compared to the G9ii made it all worth it!

Lately I've been converting a few old 5k iMac's to work as external displays, and I had a thought about making my own housing for the display instead of using the iMac chassis. This gives me some motivation to look into it further!

Yaggo• 7 months ago

Care to share what driver board you have used?

ebbi2• 7 months ago

Sure. The exact seller I purchased from doesn't have the product, but in AliExpress if you search...

"For iMac A1419 A2115 5K LCD Screen Driver Board LM270QQ1 LM270QQ2 Retinal Control Motherboard 5120*2880 QQHD HDMI DP Type-c"

...it will come up with what I have used in the last few conversions.

Though I have seen Quinn Nelson (Snazzy Labs on YouTube) released a video recently that shows his process which is a bit more involved, but better. Apparently his method is better to remove risks of power surges from the controller board (I haven't experienced it yet...!), but his method also retains the speakers, and relocates the I/O inputs to be more accessible.

flakiness• 7 months ago

No picture from the camera. Stoic.

Kon5ole• 7 months ago

The hobby of caring about cameras sometimes overtakes the hobby of taking pictures.

mjb2• 7 months ago

Indeed. Collecting cameras, and talking about cameras, is a very different hobby from photography. That's OK! Both can be fun.

Inspired me to write this blog post: https://brooker.co.za/blog/2023/04/20/hobbies.html

mcdeltat• 7 months ago

It's kind of a meme within the photography community though. People will spend many thousands of dollars on a camera that's supposedly "the best" (pick your fave reasons, ideally as obscure as possible) and then not actually shoot with it. Looking at yall, Leica fans.

Nextgrid2• 7 months ago

There's a saying about how typical people use their audio system to listen to music, but audiophiles use music to listen to their audio system. An equivalent should be made for photography.

KaiserPro• 7 months ago

This is batshit insane, and I fully fully endorse this person's madness to do such things. This is what the internet is _for_

Going straight into making a camera is very much a bold move.

my next comment isn't for the author, as they have strong enough opinions on cameras to do this. But for everyone else, I have greatly enjoyed fujifilms line of cameras.

I borrowed a gfx100s from work, and my word is a wonderful machine. (it should be for the price) for more normal budgets, the x series is great. Unlike a canon what you see is what you get, and the autofocus works on objects rather than the closest fucking thing it sees.

twic• 7 months ago

the Lumix lenses are crippled on Olympus bodies

Are they?

rdlw• 7 months ago

As mentioned in the next clause of that sentence, the aperture ring does not work on Olympus bodies.

goochwart2• 7 months ago

A lot of the Leica-branded lenses have an aperture ring that doesn't work on Olympus bodies. Besides that, both brands have proprietary lens + body stabilization that only work if the lenses and bodies match.

Suppafly2• 6 months ago

Don't they have adapters for all that now?

XCSme• 7 months ago

Off topic: why do people keep posting on medium?

analog312• 7 months ago

>> …them myself with a manual tapping tool. Well, that didn’t go well, it was hard to keep the tool straight, the threads were loose, and broke few taps rendering the holes useless.

Cheap taps from Amazon?

mjb2• 7 months ago

The haters will hate, but tap guides are great (e.g. https://biggatortools.com/v-tapguide-faqs, but even a block of hard wood with a clearance hole drilled in it works fine).

Unless you're tapping something super tough (306?), Amazon taps are fine for hand tapping. Go in straight, use a good lubricant.

analog312• 7 months ago

I've got two of those tap guides, one for US and one for metric. They're great. Also for drilling since I don't have a drill press at home.

I've examined cheap taps under a microscope. Maybe they are of varying quality, but the ones I got had burrs all along the cutting edges. A tap that I borrowed from a machine shop was flawless in comparison. So maybe the middle ground is caveat emptor.

Another trick for tapping is to use something pointy in the drill chuck to center the tap after drilling, assuming you've clamped down your workpiece in a drill press or mill. This works for really big taps when you don't have a guide for them. Likewise the tailstock of a lathe can be used for this purpose.

NooneAtAll32• 7 months ago

reminded me of camera-from-a-scanner project I saw not so long ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSvjJGbFCws

m463• 7 months ago

I still don’t have the camera I imagined,

lol. Sounds like every passion project, ever.

I have friends who have worked on their car project, their bathroom project, their workshop project, their custom pc build, even the home they built.

I wonder if anyone has ever built something and said... "It is perfect, I am satisfied!"

Maybe just from the outside. Like the casio f91w, the ak47, the porsche 959 or the hersheys bar.

DoctorOW• 7 months ago

So what else qualifies me to do this camera?

I understand the urge to say this to potential blog readers. But you're not actually selling us anything. Who cares if you're qualified or not? You built it and you're telling us what you learned.

flerchin• 7 months ago

I appreciated the context.

alexpotato2• 7 months ago

This post, where someone from one field decides to do something they love but in another field, reminds me of the below:

At my kids' elementary school there is a yearly "Dad's Night" show where the dads get up and do skits, dance, sing and/or make funny videos.

You get to see dads who sell insurance or are lawyers do dance numbers that look professionally choreographed or make music videos that look like they could have been on MTV.

It's a reminder that "The Sort" pulls people very strongly into certain fields but there is always that question, from the movie Up In The Air and asked by George Clooney, "How much did they pay you to give up your dream?" [0]

Part of me is VERY excited to see AI/LLMs help facilitate this for the people who always thought "I have always wanted to write a piece of software but didn't know how and now I can!"

0 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TkX-TPaodoM

q-base• 7 months ago

I do not know if the author/creator is a user here on HN. But if you are, then absolutely amazing work. I love everything about it! You really did create a much more aesthetically pleasing camera and must have learned a ton along the way. I applaud your courage and/or naïveté to even undertake a project like this for no other reason than because you want it to exist.

mrb• 7 months ago

Very impressive build! It's amazing what one can do thanks to CNC and FLPCB manufacturing services readily available to any motivated hacker.

One tip for the author who noticed the camera being warm: measure its power consumption, and compare to an unmodified G9ii. Especially because you noticed it drains the battery relatively quickly(!) This is a glaring "connect the dots" situation to me. The root cause might be something very stupid. For example when you removed the microphone jack, the camera thought a microphone was connected, so it activated a microphone nenu. But given the extensive number of mods you made, it's possible you are making the firmware think some accessory is connected—could be anything: (light) flash, external screen, USB gadget, JTAG reader, SD card, etc. So it's taking a code path to initialize the device, but it fails because the device is not present, and it retries repeatedly, thus entering a retry loop that's causing excessive CPU usage... That wouldn't surprise me. You are running a G9ii that's unique therefore a rare software code path like this would not happen on a standard G9ii and would never have been fixed by the developers.

Edit: I see the author measured power here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Lumix/comments/1oif3jp/how_much_doe... and to my eyes, these seem really high numbers. For example in video playback mode he measures 340mA, so 2.45W (battery is 7.2V nominal). The standard G9ii battery is 16Wh that means it would last only 6.5 hours playing back video. Compare this to a Pixel 9 phone: 18.3Wh battery and can playback video for 15 hours (I believe these are benchmark numbers reported playing back 4k H264 video, probably in a similar-ish format to the G9ii in terms of bitrate, etc). Plus the phone is at a disadvantage as it has a bigger, more power-hungry display. So it seems to me his G9ii consumes twice as much power as it should, if not more... If anything a pro camera should be more optimized than a general-purpose consumer device when playing video!

theodric• 7 months ago

It's a nice build, but there is a baffling discordance between putting all this time and money into making a CNC body and ripping the ports off a $1900 camera's motherboard with pliers when the soldering iron didn't do the job rather than waiting until you could get a hot air rig, which could easily have destroyed the motherboard by peeling a trace or cracking layers. I guess at a certain point you just have too much money to behave rationally.

Suppafly2• 6 months ago

It's crazy that it costs like 3x the cost of the camera to do a fancy case swap, and that's still cheaper than the camera it's designed to look like.

I wanted a camera that doesn't exist, so I built it

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