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Tiny high quality digital camera

iPhone 4s (or better) quality camera in a Minox (or smaller) sized body
 
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Tiny camera, sharp lens, decent picture and build quality like the film-based Minox "spy cameras" of old. Minox make digital cameras, but they've got dreadful sensors interpolating up to something like 5MP.
willard_b_trophy, Mar 24 2012

Minox "License To Shoot" http://www.license-to-shoot.com/
minox digital spy camera [willard_b_trophy, Mar 24 2012]

Minox C film camera http://www.submin.c...minox/cameras/c.htm
This sort of thing. [willard_b_trophy, Mar 24 2012]

[link]






       wibni
po, Mar 25 2012
  

       I'm not sure if combining two widely-available off-the- shelf products without modifying either of them qualifies as inventing something. It's like putting an airplane motor in a boat or putting forklift tines on your tractor. Sure, you can impale a banana on the horn of a rhinoceros, but you've still just got a banana and a rhinoceros.
Alterother, Mar 25 2012
  

       //Sure, you can impale a banana on the horn of a rhinoceros, but you've still just got a banana and a rhinoceros.//   

       [Marked-for-tagline]
MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 25 2012
  

       Depends how much the rhino likes bananas.   

       wibni, yes, but not impossible. Maybe the rapid pace of innovation with digital cameras doesn't justify the cast metal bodies of old.
willard_b_trophy, Mar 25 2012
  

       Phone camera modules are typically cuboids less than a centimetre on a side, and that includes the focusable optics and some level of onboard processing. Just add batteries (and some storage).
MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 25 2012
  

       My first digital camera was not a commercial model as such, but a 5x5x1.5cm thingy that took a single AAA which it needed to keep the memory as well as to operate (if it went flat you had no photos), the memory being a few 640x480 stills.   

       This idea is clearly possible 15 years on from my example, but market forces seem to have dictated that average level digital cameras are included in phones and better quality is dictated by optic size (and how wobbly your hands are when holding something tiny) and are made as separate devices.   

       To summarise, not WIBNI, just no market to make it for, but if you think otherwise, there's a factory in China waiting for you to request it.
marklar, Mar 25 2012
  

       Something on the first link nearly made me spit beer on the keyboard. I'm used to a language selection icon being a combination of a British and USA flag...
marklar, Mar 25 2012
  

       //if you think otherwise, there's a factory in China waiting for you to request it.// Or just hack a mobile phone.
MaxwellBuchanan, Mar 25 2012
  

       I have been asking for this for a long time but as others have said, there's no real market for it.   

       However, if you're interested in mini video cameras, the 808 keychain cameras are absolutely fantastic. They come with essentially no manual or brand name, but are very cheap, very small and usually better quality than cell phone cameras. I have the 808 #11 and it's brilliant.   

       The only downside is that they come in a shoddy plastic case. I honestly considered trying to cram the innards of one into an old Hit camera, but never got round to it.
mitxela, Mar 25 2012
  

       Even the top-of-the-line #16 808 keychain takes only 0.9MP images, and has no viewfinder to compose images.
willard_b_trophy, Apr 22 2012
  

       So glue a 1/2" length of drinking straw to the side of it.
Alterother, Apr 22 2012
  
      
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