Don’t want to wait for Black Friday craziness to get the upcoming LEGO brick-built camera promotion? Well, today you can build this vintage camera designed by BrickNerd (to be published by BrickJournal) instead! 83 pieces never looked so photogenic! These instructions were developed by BrickNerd in the summer of 2021 for inclusion in BrickJournal’s upcoming Photography issue, due out in January 2022.

Usually, we wait to publish the instructions online when the magazine comes out and is available, but since a certain toy company has revealed a very similar (yet less colorful) promotional set for Black Friday, we made the decision to share the instructions now. You can pre-order the BrickJournal photography issue here. After the instructions below, we also have some thoughts from BrickJournal Editor-in-Chief Joe Meno about how we work together.

How to Build a LEGO Vintage Camera

Capturing a moment in time by looking through a viewfinder and pressing a shutter will never get old – even though for many of us time has moved on and we now use our mobile phones for the same purpose. But what better way to take a trip down memory lane than building a classic camera?

The BrickNerd team has designed a small callback to this iconic companion of the past: a cute little vintage camera, complete with a viewfinder, a shutter knob and a lens. There’s some fancy sideways building going on to capture some of the iconic curves that should make for an interesting model. Oh, and did we mention that you can build it in teal? What a treat! (Or color swap to whatever color you want!)

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You can download the parts list here or get them in BrickJournal’s Photography issue coming in January. This was a fun little model to design—we hope you’ll enjoy building it just as much as we did designing it!

BrickNerd & BrickJournal: LEGO Fan Community Colleagues

Guest post by Joe Meno, BrickJournal Editor-in-Chief

BrickJournal and BrickNerd have worked together in some capacity since BrickNerd’s launch in 2013. Back then, Tommy Williamson introduced a website that talked LEGO and reviewed sets with articles and videos that were a step above the usual web content. I also featured Tommy in BrickJournal for his brickfilm work and MOCs. When BrickNerd was passed to Dave Schefcik, I was a little apprehensive about the direction the site would take, but I should not have worried. The current iteration of BrickNerd may not have the videos that I miss, but it now has dense informative articles from great LEGO builders and community reports that only seek to build up the LEGO hobby.

With this new start, Dave and I have shared information and articles—I wrote an article for BrickNerd about monorails (and will write more) and BrickJournal shares and publishes fantastic articles from BrickNerd in print form. The Diversity issue was the idea of Dave, as well as an upcoming issue all about color featuring his Rainbow Heart mosaic on the cover. Both publications share similar missions—to inform, inspire and grow the LEGO community.

However, we are different in some key areas—each outlet has a different approach: BrickNerd has the ability to post items and content immediately, so news items and time-critical information are perfect for it. (BrickJournal has a website that is mainly used for LEGO-centric news, but doesn’t post daily articles or MOC spotlights.) BrickNerd can also include video and has unlimited space for photos or hefty word counts. In contrast, BrickJournal as a printed magazine has a lead time that is measured in the months but is its own platform—you have a digital or hardcopy issue which is limited to a certain number of pages, but you can browse it easily and the magazine is still easy to get. You can read BrickJournal places where you can’t take your digital device.

Because of these differences in both content and timing, some interesting things can happen. When the Pre-Black Friday LEGO VIP promotions were revealed, we noticed that the “vintage camera” set looked similar in size and style to the vintage camera MOC design that BrickNerd made for BrickJournal 71 (due out in January). To make sure that no one could think that one design inspired the other, we decided to publish these instructions ahead of the publication time for the magazine. BrickNerd’s camera MOC was actually designed in May nearly six months ago sent out to the printers in mid-August for next January’s upcoming issue. These things take time to plan and coordinate, and I wanted to share some of the behind-the-scenes work that goes into creating engaging content like BrickNerd’s instructions features.

Like the LEGO Group, both BrickNerd and BrickJournal have a lead time before products and information are released. BrickNerd’s lead time can be measured in days, BrickJournal in months, and the LEGO Group in years. With that scale of lead time, having designs that look alike and released within weeks of each other is a fantastic coincidence—and will inevitably happen from time to time because there are so many talented builders around the world inspired by many of the same objects around them. I celebrate that creativity, and as an added bonus, now you can start a collection of LEGO vintage cameras!

Which LEGO camera would you want to build first? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Do you want to help BrickNerd continue publishing articles like this one? Become a top patron like Charlie Stephens, Marc & Liz Puleo, Paige Mueller, Rob Klingberg from Brickstuff, John & Joshua Hanlon from Beyond the Brick, and Megan Lum to show your support, get early access, exclusive swag and more.