Superheadz Digital Harinezumi retro-110 camera reaches US shores

Retro-camera addicts may have remembered mutterings of Superheadz's Digital Harinezumi camera a few months back, the unusually-shaped Japanese shooter promising Super 8 style images and silent video.  At the time, finding one outside of its native country was tougher than selling Nokia shares, but now arch-importers AudioCubes have stepped in with a $169.99 sticker price.

What makes the Digital Harinezum special is not its 2-megapixel sensor and microSD card slot, but its ethos of putting some of the surprise back into photography.  There's an LCD display but you can't use it to preview snaps; instead you have to frame stills and video using the flip-up plastic viewfinder window, only getting to see your results after the event.  Superheadz say they "put a lot of emphasis on this 'unseen' and 'unknown' factor" and that "uncertainty in the pictures [is] the most interesting thing in analog photography".

Stills, then, are blurred, dreamy and color-saturated, while video clips are unusually textured and – as if you've recorded them on an 8mm analog camcorder – completely audio-free.  There are a few example shots in the gallery below.