While it seems like camera companies are willing to experiment again, it’s been a while since I’ve come across a camera with a design that really stopped me in my tracks. That changed when a friend forwarded me a Reddit post from a person named Yutani, who custom-designed what he describes as a “retro-futuristic digital camera” called the Saturnix. Friends, take a look at this gorgeous piece of camera hardware.

I reached out to Yutani, who says the camera started as a passion project purely for personal use. That changed when some friends insisted he share it, and Yutani isn’t stopping at just posting pictures of it and from it online: he also plans on posting all the information you’d need to build it yourself, along with the operating system and custom-built UI to run it for anyone to use.

And the award for most enticing buttons on a camera goes to… Photo: Yutani

Obviously, the most attention-grabbing part of the Saturnix is the case. Yutani says it’s inspired by sci-fi movies and old computers in general, and by the terminals in the video game Alien: Isolation, specifically. Adding to that effect is the fact that the buttons on the camera are mechanical keyboard switches and keycaps, giving them a robust, chunky look and a satisfying mechanical click. “It honestly doubles as a fidget toy when the camera is off,” Yutani says. “Just clicking the buttons during a trip is kind of a stress reliever.”

Even after the design work, bringing it to life wasn’t just a matter of grabbing a 3D printer and hitting go. Yutani says the process involved a resin printer, ultrasonic cleaning baths, a wash station and curing oven, and a lot of time sanding and airbrushing. Most DIYers won’t be willing to spend an entire month on the exterior of their camera, and Yutani says it was the hardest part of the process, but an essential one. “For me, the design was the whole point. If it doesn’t feel like a real camera in your hands, what’s the point?”

The internals – the parts that actually make it a working camera – will probably be familiar to anyone who’s kept up with the DIY camera scene. It’s powered by a Raspberry Pi Zero 2W, has a 2” LCD display, and uses an Arducam IMX519 camera, which has a 16MP Type 1/2.53 (23mm²) sensor and a roughly 27mm equiv. autofocusing lens.

While the images it produces are about what you’d expect given those specs, anyone hoping to build a Saturnix isn’t tied to that specific module; Yutani says he “plans to add support for all major official Raspberry sensors” to the operating system, which unlocks the possibility of using the much larger Arducam Type 1/1.32 (65mm²) 64MP camera.

With that said, the pictures that Yutani has shared from the Saturnix have that classic point-and-shoot charm that’s all the rage these days. That’s even more true of the ones processed with built-in “film simulation” filters, which aim to replicate classic stocks.

The camera’s UI is also custom-built; it’s written in Python, running on top of a minimal Raspberry Pi OS install. Keeping it lean is important, since the Raspberry Pi Zero 2W that powers it is a mere four-core ARM chip running at 1GHz, with 512MB of RAM. Photo: Yutani

Those filters are included in the camera’s operating system, which has a UI that follows the retro sci-fi aesthetic, and which allows for manual control of parameters like shutter speed, white balance and ISO. It can shoot DNG Raws and JPEGs, has a histogram and exposure meter, and can transfer photos over Wi-Fi. Yutani says the interface still has a ways to go. “The UI has gone through a ton of iterations and I don’t think it’s anywhere near final. Once the code is public, I’m hoping the community will customize and build on it too — that’s the beauty of open-source.”

While DIY cameras based on the cheap and modular Raspberry Pi computers are nothing new, Yutani’s is definitely noteworthy for having an incredible amount of style. It apparently took around a year to design and fully get working, a process spurred on by the desire for a small, completely personal camera without the size, weight and feature overload of modern devices. Yutani says he started to get the idea that his creation might be worth sharing when people on the street came up to ask him what he was using while he was shooting with the camera.

Yutani’s plan is to release everything you’d need to replicate the camera yourself in around two weeks, as there’s still some work left to do before it’s ready for the general public. “I want to polish a few things first, there are some issues to fix, and I need to write a detailed build guide covering everything from printer settings to assembly. I’m also waiting on a few components to arrive, like a vibration motor – I want to add haptic feedback for a more tactile shooting experience,” Yutani says. “I want to make sure that when someone decides to build it, everything just works.”

That release will also include a detailed list of all the components you’ll need to replicate the camera, which Yutani estimates will cost around $100. At that price, I’m almost tempted to build one myself – with the nicer, slightly more costly sensor, of course – despite my complete lack of fabrication tools or experience. Even if I don’t, I’ll be excited to see if anyone else does, and what little modifications they do to make it their own.

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