Crowdfunding In Photography

Have just watched a YouTube video on the management's time...and am proud of it! Even used shop electricity to do it...and all to good purpose.

The little film was about crowdfunding for a plastic enlarger. Apparently someone wishes to make a little enlarger that accommodates a mobile phone and then projects an image from this to classic B/W enlarging paper. To enable people who only have images on their iPhone or other phone to pull them off for prints.

It's a novelty, Folks. If it gives you a thrill and reminds you of the dear old fume-laden days groping in the dark, well good on them. The video asks for money up front so that they can buy the construction of the actual devices, with the promise that if they get enough they will be able to do the job and you'll get one of the first batch.

Interesting concept. We've see it in the photographic world before - the Russians apparently got enough western cash to make batches of re-designed Petzval lenses for modern DSLR cameras. Sometimes the call for moolah works and sometimes it goes unheeded - I remember one scheme that wanted to develop a tiny wireless flash trigger for mirror-less cameras that seems to have come to naught.

Good ideas whose time have come? Perhaps. Trendy new business models? Perhaps.

E-shellgame? Perhaps.

Note: if you've got a lot of images on a mobile phone you can get a Fujifilm Instax Printer and do the job yourself right now. In colour. In the light. We've got he printers and film right now. No shells. No game.