Capella (α Aurigae)
Capella is a box camera made out of lego, exposing onto photographic paper
Motivation
Lego has been the quintessential construction “toy” for kids and adults alike for many decades, being used to make objects of any size, shape or complexity. Inevitably a number of people have used lego to build pinhole cameras over the years, so it was a natural choice for inclusion in this collection of camera designs. The attractive thing about lego is that, provided sufficient bricks are available, a wide variety of camera designs can be constructed, tested, deconstructed, again and again, until the optimal design is identified. The desire was to build a very simple camera predominantly using the common shaped / sized blocks and flat plates, since these are what people are most likely to have available in their collection, as well as being easily available on second hand marketplaces. Given the expected large dimensions of the camera, exposing onto photographic paper was the natural choice, since it can easily be cut to any size needed and is very cheap compared to large photographic film sheets. This also means that the camera does not need to be built a specific size, as the paper can easily be re-cut.