Point, Shoot, Run for Cover: Gun-Shaped Digital Camera

Point, Shoot, Run for Cover: Gun-Shaped Digital Camera









How literally do you take the term “point and shoot?” For at least
one designer, that term was an inspiration to create something truly
unique. Franziska Dierschke created this digital camera, which she calls Aimat, to put the fun back into taking pictures.

The Aimat is small and doesn’t have a viewfinder, which takes the
photographer’s mind off of framing the perfect shot and lets them have
fun with the act of “shooting” a picture. Put into the playful context
of a toy gun, taking pictures of friends could turn into a pretend gun
battle.

Although it doesn’t look at all like a real gun, it might be a little
dangerous to pull this camera out unexpectedly in some parts of the
world. But you don’t need to worry – for now at least – since the Aimat
is just a concept and not actually being produced for sale.

Point and Shoot: 5 (More!) Weird Gun-Shaped Cameras










The gun-shaped digital camera
we saw recently seemed like a misguided, if somewhat entertaining, pun
on the phrase “point and shoot.” As it turns out, it wasn’t the first of
its kind. Gun-shaped cameras have been around since at least 1916.
These are only a few of the designs that have come and gone in the last
century.

Believe it or not, cameras that look like guns haven’t always been
exercises in testing limits for design students; some of them have very
useful purposes. This gun camera was used to help military trainees
develop their aerial gunnery skills. The gun was similar in size, shape
and weight to the actual gun they would use later in their careers, and
the resulting photographs were used to assess their “shooting”
accuracy.

There’s not a lot of information on this handgun-style camera
other than it was used by the police at some point. Imagine looking
down the barrel of a police officer’s gun, only to hear him say “cheese”
instead of “freeze.”

The Agent Zero M Snapshot
wasn’t exactly a functional camera, but rather a toy cap gun that could
be disguised as a camera. It was made by Mattel in the 1960s, when
presumably parents were cool with their children carrying around
concealed weapons.

This gun-shaped camera was never produced commercially – rather, it was produced just for a commercial. Visual effects company Modelwerkes
put it together for a Toyota commercial. In the commercial, spies used
the uber-cool gun to get the first pictures of the brand new Celica.

This machine-gun style camera
was used in Japan in the 1940s to train aerial gunners, much like the
English version above. This model does look arguably more intimidating,
though.