Hacker News Reader

Comment by ardy42 | Hacker News Reader

> True factoid: one remarkably useless chindogu was a device that lets you hold a camera at arm's length so you can take a photo of yourself -- now known as the selfie stick.

A selfie stick with a film camera would have truly been useless. You'd probably only get a photo of some random thing behind you, and only learn of your mistake a week later. It took the invention of digital cameras with front-facing screens to make them practical.

View on HN

Lol! It's not digital cameras that created selfie sticks, it's social media. I had a Konica disposable super wide angle camera with a mirror on the front that showed the field of view. And an Olympus with a recessed LED that was only visible if your face was in the field of view. Self portraits are way older than digital cameras!

Self portraits are even older than photography. For example, I saw a self portrait in a gallery painted 200 years ago and realized that it can be called a selfie too.

>You'd probably only get a photo of some random thing behind you, and only learn of your mistake a week later.

Instantly made me think of Buzz Aldrin's 1966 space selfie - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_selfie#/media/File:Buzz_...

> A selfie stick with a film camera would have truly been useless. You'd probably only get a photo of some random thing behind you, and only learn of your mistake a week later.

The way selfie sticks work, you holding it and the camera pointing back at you, they tend to put you nicely into the frame, even though you don't get to look at what you're taking a picture of. It's much much more accurate than holding a camera out with your arm.

So I'd say they'd be exactly useful with film cameras, because you're going to be reasonably sure to be in the picture.

Affix a small mirror to the camera and calibrate it such that if you see yourself in the middle of the camera you’re also in the middle of the frame.

As they really do with some Instax cameras:

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/images/images2500x2500/fujifilm...

Manual focusing and metering means you'd be able to collect the necessary information about exposure, and set the camera up fairly accurately. Once that's done, simply aim the camera properly, and you'll get the shot. Minor corrections can be made in the darkroom.

It takes more work, but that's the nature of film photography rather than the selfie stick.

They could have some kind of alignment mechanism extending behind the camera mount.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com