We love steampunk stuff here at Walyou. We also love cameras. You can imagine our delight in something that combines those two.
If you’ve been on social media for any length of time, you’ve probably seen photos that have had filters applied to them using some service like Instagram. If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you might have taken some yourself.
This cool camera comes to us from Bit Rebels.
The La Sardina Belle Starr camera does those services one better: it actually takes real pictures with a “vintage” look. And by “vintage,” I mean on film. It’s actually what’s known as a “lomographic” camera. The term comes from the old Soviet state-run LOMO optics corporation. One thing the Communists weren’t particularly keen on was quality control. The cameras always let in too much light, overexposing the pictures and causing imperfections. Some photography buffs, however, liked the look (which also influenced Instagram and others) and a collector community sprang up after the fall of the Iron Curtain.
This camera has some detailed design work on the oxidized metal body. You can buy the camera for only $199. You can also get the film, as well as some other cool lomographic cameras. It even comes complete with a ridiculously large flash.
Why does Steampunk have such wide appeal? I think it’s because in our fast-paced technological society, creating versions of modern objects as they might have looked in the Victorian era reminds us that no matter how timeless aesthetics may seem, they’re always changing. Another reason is that a lot of people find modern society and its artifacts unbearably ugly, and Steampunk offers a way of recreating society in the form of an idealized past that probably never existed.
You might also be interested in a pair of light-up steampunk shoes, or the Tworse Key, device that lets you tweet in Morse code.
