The Great, Unuseless Chindōgu Camera Style

SimonSawSunlight

SimonSawSunlight

Simon Fabel
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Through the greatness of the 99% Invisible podcast, I have just been reminded the greatness of chindōgu and the great Kenji Kawakami. It's all quite great you see. From the philosophy to the gadget to the historical irony. I will just leave this here:


chindogu-selfie-stick-12


chindogu-umbrella-camera2



chindogu-360-camera-hat6


"In Europe they treat me as an artist. In Australia and Canada, I’m called a scientist. In China and Hong they wonder why I don’t try to make money from my inventions. But in Japan and the US, they consider me a maker of party goods."


https://www.amusingplanet.com/2018/10/chindogu-japanese-art-of-unuseless.html


https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/mini-stories-volume-5/




I also want that Konica.
 
The panoramic is brilliant. Love her expression. These two were obviously years ahead of their time. My congratulations, belated - from Australia.
 
Excellent!

Do you remember a Minolta disc camera with a convex mirror on the front that was sold with an early version of a selfie pole and a chain for measuring close ups?
 
I want a 360 degree head camera.
No I do not want to take full circle panoramas. I just think the Heath Robinson device which fires all shutters simultaneously is cool. It's the work of a mad genius. With the emphasis on mad. BTW Why is everyone in the photos so serious? Personally I think it is because they are afraid. 🙂

itsalive.jpg
 
Dralowid said:
AhHa!

https://camerapedia.fandom.com/wiki/Minolta_Disc-7
Click to expand...

Interestingly (sort of) I was many years ago given a Minox camera by my father. I never used it - it was not my kind of thing. But if you look at the carrying chain in this photo you will see some little nodules here and there along the chain. These signify set distances so you can use the camera with focus preset at one of these distances for close up copy work. AKA James Bond spy stuff. Or so my old man told but he always was a teller of tall tales. Though in this case I believed him. Not that I expect he ever used it this way. Tho he was a Hungarian emigre and you never know....... 🙂

03102010pic156.jpg
 
peterm1 said:
... AKA James Bond spy stuff. Or so my old man told but he always was a teller of tall tales. Though in this case I believed him. Not that I expect he ever used it this way. Tho he was a Hungarian emigre and you never know....... 🙂
Click to expand...

Research John Walker Jr. He was an American who used a Minox C (given to him by the Soviets) to photograph U.S. Navy secret documents for over 10 years. His camera had over 250,000 shutter actuations based on the number of items photographed. This was described nicely in the SubClub photo pages, but I can no longer find it.

By the way, I'm also Hungarian (and half Syrian).

Minoxen: B, IIIs, IIIs, III II
 

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Pál_K said:
Research John Walker Jr. He was an American who used a Minox C (given to him by the Soviets) to photograph U.S. Navy secret documents for over 10 years. His camera had over 250,000 shutter actuations based on the number of items photographed. This was described nicely in the SubClub photo pages, but I can no longer find it.

By the way, I'm also Hungarian (and half Syrian).

Minoxen: B, IIIs, IIIs, III II
Click to expand...

Cool. Although my father was born in Hungary I never thought of myself as Hungarian as such as it was only later in my life I had the chance to visit there (and loved it). I did at one point think about applying for citizenship but when I researched it online I found something interesting. The Hungarian law on such matters apparently is that if you are born to a Hungarian parent, then no matter where in the world you were born, you are more or less automatically a Hungarian. So I was a kind of defacto Hungarian from the moment I was born - but never new it. Although I imagine there would be some bureaucratic hoops to jump through to prove it.

Your family background is interesting. In general it is kind of interesting to hear people's story on such things which I guess is why TV programs like "Who do you think you are" are so engaging.
 
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