My Cameras: Konstruktor

This post is fourth in a series about the cameras I use in my new film photography hobby.

Konstruktor Camera front view

For Christmas last year, my girlfriend gave me a Lomography Konstruktor SLR camera. But here's the deal: it's a camera kit that you get to assemble and build yourself!

Konstruktor box

It was like building a model plane. We had to carefully cut out each of the tiny plastic pieces and assemble them following the (sometimes complicated) image-based instructions from the manual.

all the tiny pieces in the box

The instruction manual said it would take 1-2 hours to build the camera. It actually took me around five over two evenings. I started building it, and after about three hours, found myself getting really sleepy and worried that I would make a big mistake, so I set it aside to finish the next day.

Some steps were really difficult, such as setting the tiny springs to connect the shutter. I got confused a few times with the SLR mirror box, but finally got it put in correctly.

installing the light box

What's so cool is that this homemade camera is actually an SLR with a removable lens! It's more complicated than most Lomography cameras, and it's especially cool because I was able to build it by myself! Now I feel like I've got a better feeling of how cameras work inside.

top view

Instead of a normal viewfinder, the Konstruktor has a tiny little mirror on top that reflects the image through a lightbox, just like an old SLR camera. You look down from the top of the camera. Because it's a mirror, the image is reflected backwards, making it a little difficult to compose the shot. It takes a little bit of practice to figure it out, which is all part of the fun.

mirror viewfinder

When the camera was finally put together, I was a little nervous. I was afraid that I had made a mistake somewhere, or that it wasn't going to be light-tight, or that maybe I had done something really wrong and the camera wouldn't even work. I took it out to Lumpini Park to test out a roll of film, and I was very pleased with the results!

Come back tomorrow to see my first Konstruktor Photo Gallery post!

Lumpini Park