Kisekae is short for “kisekae ningyou”; a Japanese term meaning “dress-up dolls,” which is what this little toy is: a camera that you can dress up however you like. On the surface, its a point-and-shoot 35mm with a 28mm lens, but that is not really the true purpose of this camera. In fact there is nothing special at all about the camera itself, its your basic stripped down plastic 35mm. What makes this camera special is that the clear plastic cover that snaps off, and exposes the colorful ‘covers’ that you can make to change your Kisekae everyday. I brought the Kisekae along with me while we were shooting this weekend, and ran a roll of 400asa through it, and everything came out just fine. Its a well built little camera, and the exposure is quite good, as is the focus. But to talk about the technical aspects of the Kisekae is to miss the point of the camera itself.

The designers at Superheadz say they like to make cameras for people who like music, for people who want something a little more personalized then just the black plastic point and shoot. The Kisekae is a great example of just that; it’s not directed at you average toy camera user, but more for kids. Like the paper dolls it’s named after, kids can personalize the camera to their every whim. Feel like a bright sunny image? Cut one out and snap it in. Feel like having a picture of your dog on your camera? Trace the template and there you go. Attach it to you belt or your bag with the handy rubber one meter cord, and you are ready for a day of snapshots.

As most of you reading this blog already have quite a bit of experience with 35mm point and shoots, lets skip over the technical details and get down to the fun part. I made a template for anyone to download, open in Photoshop and create their own Kisekae Camera cover. I’ve also uploaded the FourCornersDark Kisekae poster, (about 6mb) so you can print it out and have a bunch of designs that we’ve made just for you. Instructions below…

The Template is a .psd file that will work on Mac or Windows running at least CS2. [Click to download] Simply open it up, paste in your image and use the supplied path to cut out your design. (Select path, invert and delete the image…) For the giant poster, click below, and it will download to your desktop in jpeg format. Feel free to cut out each design, print it up and hang it on your walls.. use it as wall paper, whatever you like. Once you have your design ready, simply cut it out carefully with the sharp implement of your choice and place it in your Kisekae camera. Its that easy. Feel free to email us your designs, or post them to Flickr so we can all see.

…a few quick cuts…

..and I’ll be using the ‘ferris wheel’ edition this week!

Download the 20×28 inch poster here…