DIY Photography

Your one stop shop for everything photo-video

  • News
  • Inspiration
  • Reviews
  • Tutorials
  • DIY
  • Gear
Search

Submit A Story

This instant camera turns everything you shoot into cartoon doodles

Jul 4, 2018 by Dunja Djudjic 1 Comment

  • Share
  • Tweet
  • Flipboard
  • WhatsApp

With cameras getting more and more advanced, we constantly aim to capture more details and higher resolutions. Even instant cameras are getting some new features, such as interchangeable lenses. But a Melbourne-based engineer and visual artist Dan Macnish has turned things the other way around. He has designed an instant camera that lets you shoot and print images – but instead of real-life scenes, you’ll get simple, crude carton doodles.

Dan writes that he wanted to “take the concept of a polaroid one step further” and make the camera not create a faithful photo, but reinterpret it.

Do you remember Google’s Quick, Draw! game? It uses a neural network to try and guess what people are trying to draw in under 20 seconds. This game produced a database of over 50 million identified stick figure drawings, and Dan used them to power his camera. The camera he named Draw This incorporates a neural network for object recognition and Dan mapped the categories available in the Google dataset with the categories recognizable by the image processor. The camera runs on a Raspberry Pi and the doodles are printed with a thermal printer. All this is combined with some electronics and wrapped up in an instant camera we have never seen before.

Unlike Polaroid, this “doodle-camera” doesn’t have a viewfinder. You blindly point the camera at the scene, press the shutter, and wait for your doodle to get printed. As Dan writes, the result is always a surprise:

“You point, and shoot – and out pops a cartoon; the camera’s best interpretation of what it saw. The result is always a surprise. A food selfie of a healthy salad might turn into a enormous hotdog, or a photo with friends might be photobombed by a goat.”

We’ve seen before how to make your own instant camera with a Raspberry Pi and a thermal printer. But Dan’s Draw This camera is definitely one of the most creative instant cameras I’ve seen. If you are into making your own, he has kindly shared a code and instructions for making on GitHub. If I were more tech savvy, I know I’d sure make one.

[via Gizmodo]

FIND THIS INTERESTING? SHARE IT WITH YOUR FRIENDS!

  • Share
  • Tweet
  • Flipboard
  • WhatsApp

Related posts:

Lab2Cam turns Impossible Project’s Instant Lab into a manual SX-70 instant camera This AI turns rough doodles into realistic landscape photos This AI-powered app turns your doodles into realistic “photos” Leica Instant M: the first instant camera designed for Leica M lens

Filed Under: Gear Tagged With: Dan Macnish, doodle, Instant Camera, Raspberry Pi

Dunja Djudjic: from diyphotography.net

About Dunja Djudjic

Dunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.

« Nikon’s new mirrorless will actually be two new mirrorless cameras
NameThatLens is a cross-platform tool to inject EXIF data into vintage lens photos »

Submit A Story

Get our FREE Lighting Book

DIYP lighting book cover

* download requires newsletter signup

Recent Comments

Free Resources

Advanced lighting book

Learn photography

Recent Posts

  • This is why you should stop shooting music videos
  • First look at the Laowa Proteus Flex interchangeable flare optics
  • The Fotodiox RhinoCam Vertex shoots medium format images on L mount cameras
  • San Francisco filmmaker tracks stolen camera gear, police do nothing
  • Nanlite announces powerful AC-powered FC500B and FC300B LED lights

Udi Tirosh: from diyphotography.netUdi Tirosh is an entrepreneur, photography inventor, journalist, educator, and writer based in Israel. With over 25 years of experience in the photo-video industry, Udi has built and sold several photography-related brands. Udi has a double degree in mass media communications and computer science.

Alex Baker: from diyphotography.netAlex Baker is a portrait and lifestyle driven photographer based in Valencia, Spain. She works on a range of projects from commercial to fine art and has had work featured in publications such as The Daily Mail, Conde Nast Traveller and El Mundo, and has exhibited work across Europe

David Williams: from diyphotography.netDave Williams is an accomplished travel photographer, writer, and best-selling author from the UK. He is also a photography educator and published Aurora expert. Dave has traveled extensively in recent years, capturing stunning images from around the world in a modified van. His work has been featured in various publications and he has worked with notable brands such as Skoda, EE, Boeing, Huawei, Microsoft, BMW, Conde Nast, Electronic Arts, Discovery, BBC, The Guardian, ESPN, NBC, and many others.

John Aldred: from diyphotography.netJohn Aldred is a photographer with over 20 years of experience in the portrait and commercial worlds. He is based in Scotland and has been an early adopter - and occasional beta tester - of almost every digital imaging technology in that time. As well as his creative visual work, John uses 3D printing, electronics and programming to create his own photography and filmmaking tools and consults for a number of brands across the industry.

Dunja Djudjic: from diyphotography.netDunja Djudjic is a multi-talented artist based in Novi Sad, Serbia. With 15 years of experience as a photographer, she specializes in capturing the beauty of nature, travel, and fine art. In addition to her photography, Dunja also expresses her creativity through writing, embroidery, and jewelry making.

Copyright © DIYPhotography 2006 - 2023 | About | Contact | Advertise | Write for DIYP | Full Disclosure | Privacy Policy