A Cardboard Digital Camera?

Pam Pfiffner

IKEA, a pioneer in do-it-yourself, inexpensive, flat-box furniture, has taken that ethos into a new direction: a cardboard digital camera.
The camera is literally a cardboard box that’s held together with two plastic screws. It’s fueled by two AA batteries and has a pop-out USB connector for downloading images. The viewfinder? A hole in the cardboard.

The camera — called the KNAPPA — is being distributed by IKEA to its customers who purchase goods in its new line of environmentally PS friendly furniture. The idea is that customers who are given the camera will take photos of the new furniture in their living spaces. The camera holds 40 images at a time. To erase the images, insert a paper clip into a reset hole.
Gimmicky? Maybe, but it’s another example of the convergence of design and technology as envisioned by non-traditional technologists. Is a cardboard camera really high-tech? The KNAPPA has a sensor and a circuit board. It represents low-tech (cardboard) meeting high-tech (circuitry), which pretty much means it’s truly a camera for the masses.

The few images taken with the camera that are on the Web show that its quality is poor — at best. But with the rage for Instagram and other techniques of making images look, well, “arty” in a retrograde kind of way, maybe the KNAPPA will be the next big thing.
According to PC World the camera will only be given away in “select” stores worldwide.
You can watch a video of the camera in action by its developers, Teenage Engineering.

Thanks to DigPhoto, The Verge, and Laughing Squid and PC World for the heads up.