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Last year, photographer Mark Hiltz showed off the Pioneer, a 3D printed camera he designed, in a popular Reddit post. Now, he’s back – and is offering the files and BOM for free.

The Pioneer is a medium-format, functioning film camera that is largely 3D printed, save for fasteners like screws and adhesive, and the lens. That includes the shutter, which Hiltz calls the “Magna-Flick”, due to the magnets that drive its movement, and which operates similarly to shutters on box cameras.

The results are surprisingly crisp, black-and-white photos with only slight blurring at the corners – and even that, Hiltz says, is the result of his scanner. Regardless, professional image quality isn’t the point; the Pioneer isn’t mean’t for professional applications, and seems to serve its simple purpose extremely well.

Print files, a BOM, and assembly instructions for the Pioneer are available on Google Drive. Build-wise, this doesn’t look to be a walk in the park, but it’s not something that will make anyone with a bit of experience pull their hair out, either.

Hiltz goes into detail about the design and the build of the Pioneer in his most recent Reddit post announcing the files’ availability. PetaPixel has an intriguing write-up on the Pioneer Camera as well, which is also worth your time. It dives deeper than we have room to here, so definitely give that a read if you’re looking for more.

Of course, you should also check out Hiltz’s latest Reddit post documenting the design and build process, as well as his (rather, the camera’s) Instagram @pioneer_camera.

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License: The text of "You Can 3D Print This Film Camera" by All3DP is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.