OSU photography students prove that digital sensors and expensive lenses aren’t necessary to produce high quality, thought provoking photographs.

The Great Camera Build Off features OSU student work created this fall during a course called ‘Alternative Camera Systems,’ taught by Department of Art Lecturer and STEAM Factory member Stephen Takacs.

During this upper-level photography course, undergraduate and graduate students explored an a-typical amalgam of photographic systems, including pinhole cameras, plastic lens cameras, and peel apart film.

Every artist participating in The Great Camera Build Off was tasked with creating a new camera using a piece of obsolete equipment distributed by Takacs, in part or in whole. The resulting exhibition features both the handmade cameras (many of which are quite sculptural) and the images produced by each.

Although all of the cameras and images were created using analog (ie. film-based) materials, the output varies and includes digital inkjet prints, as well as those made in the darkroom.

Takacs, whose room-sized camera obscura project Brownie In Motion recently toured the country, hopes that the students in his course leave empowered by the DIY mentality, and armed with the knowledge that it’s the artist who makes an image, not the device.