Dominique Vankan's Lego Camera
Alternative process photography is as DIY as you can get. If you're complaining about film being expensive and hard to find, try the wet plate process where you coat your own glass with explosive materials like Collodion. Dominique Vankan is one of the brave souls who decided that he wanted to take on a similar process, Autochrome Lumière. This century old-technique involves glass plates that are coated with microscopic particles of potato starch, which are then dyed red-orange, green and blue-violet. These color filters are not the RGB we're used to, but this still resembles the precursor of color transparency film that we know today. Since this is no ordinary task, the Autochrome process requires no ordinary camera. Many Alt. Process photographers like to use old 8x10 cameras with modified film holders to fit their plates, but Vankan decided that this wasn't good enough for him. He instead made his own camera out of cardboard, duct tape, and Legos. Sure, there's been a plethora of Lego cameras, but this is the first functional Large Format I've seen. It looks like he has some ways to go in getting a usable color image, but as with all alternative photography, there's about 200 ways to go wrong at any moment. Check out his flickr page for some test shots.
Autochrome Test Shot[/caption] Via Gizmodo