Comments
As someone who's been doing mechanical product engineering for 30+ years, doing this as a first project is way more than jumping off the deep end. Impressive.
I’m just a hobbyist 3D user but I feel like I have good experience, been using Autodesk Inventor then Fusion since early high school…
I saw the level of detail in the model and am shocked. If this is truly their first experience with CAD/CAM they are a natural.
For example - here’s my home built camera. It’s massively more simplistic: https://blog.maxg.io/phase-one-swc/
BTW, if you want to design some models for 3D printing but the only thing you know to do is to code, you can use OpenSCAD & program the obejcrs into existence:
Also recommend using the BOSL2 library with OpenSCAD - it turnes an already very powerful tool into something insane:
By awesomebytes 2026-01-079:49 Hey, this is super interesting! Thanks for sharing. I have been playing with using the Python console/scripts/macros in FreeCAD to create 3D models. I found this to be very friendly for my programmer mindset. I have learned a bit of onshape, tinkercad, blender and freecad, but I find it extremely tedious and full of unknowns that I struggle to make sense of and resolve (e.g. contraints in freecad, sometimes I just don't know how to add the missing constraints, or just adding text to a curved face in literally all programs, it's never as easy as click the face add text, there are always gotcha's).
I wonder how does openscad compare to FreeCADs python, if you know. I just found https://pythonscad.org/ which looks interesting, but then, the BOSL2 library looks super interesting and important for a good user experience, so I do not know if the PythonSCAD could somehow just import it and use it.
I guess there's homework for me to do here, but if anyone has the experience to get a hint of "what is the best/easiest python-based programming way of doing 3D modeling", I'd be forever thankful for sharing their thoughts.
LLMs are really good at writing Python, so iterating over a model in code I found is really quick, and I really enjoy the process. Meanwhile clicking so many times in so many menus makes me desist on designing anything more-or-less complex.
By alexpotato 2026-01-0712:511 reply Just got a 3D printer and was curious what the best practice was for generating objects in code and then outputting to a printer.
Thanks for sharing!
By dgroshev 2026-01-0718:16 Another, arguably even more powerful, alternative is Rhino + Grasshopper. Grasshopper is often used for generative designs, but can include arbitrary Python nodes and can even be used for "parametrically" designed functional parts.
Grasshopper can also output gcode directly [1], enabling pretty wild things like [2].
[1]: https://interactivetextbooks.tudelft.nl/rhino-grasshopper/Gr...
By NotMichaelBay 2026-01-074:35 This is really cool, I had no idea this existed. Thanks for sharing!
By aaronbrethorst 2026-01-0622:251 reply Wow super cool. I’ve always wanted a Hasselblad SWC, but now I think I want what you built even more ;)
Thanks! It was surprisingly challenging to get right, in fact that body is slightly misaligned somewhere (possibly the lens…).
By aaronbrethorst 2026-01-073:051 reply Does the Phase One back have a preview screen on it, or are you just sort of eyeballing what's in the frame?
Also, I noticed a lot of photos of the olympics on your flickr page. Are you in West Seattle, too, by any chance?
Most of the modern ones do - anything from the IQ1-IQ4 has a good preview screen, for live view specifically you need a CMOS sensor based one like the IQ3 100 or the IQ4 150. The CCD ones technically do live view but it's really not good. So this only works for backs that are fairly expensive still...
Close to West Seattle! I'm in the North Seattle area and walk around near the water there a lot.
By aaronbrethorst 2026-01-076:08 ah right on, thanks for the info
By properbrew 2026-01-0622:201 reply It may be simplistic, but that's a cracking photo you've taken on it.
By buildbot 2026-01-071:03 Thank you, I appreciate that!
By alansaber 2026-01-076:56 Agreed, both the pcb and 3d design was very well done. I'd love to do something similar (on a smaller camera lol)
The Panasonic GX series of cameras was very similar to what we see here, and prices for them remain elevated years past their discontinuation. I'm a little surprised they haven't introduced a new model in that lineup.
The Fuji X-E5 also seems similar to this, though obviously with a different lens mount.
GM-5 is probably the greatest pocket-size mirrorless, and maybe the last. The GX-85 is also great, but it does have a larger grip and more of a shoulder at the top.
The G-100D is also quite small, but the faux pentaprism at the top makes it just a bit too big to justify being MFT.
https://petapixel.com/2025/06/28/the-panasonic-lumix-gm-5-is...
By jeswin 2026-01-0712:10 I have a GM1, it's truly a standout camera. GM5 makes it even better. It's quite funny nobody wants to attempt similar sizes, even when the market has voted for pocketable cameras.
Especially OM - with all their troubles, if it were me I'd have pivoted the company to sizes that do justice to the mount's inherent size advantage. They have a rich legacy of amazing small cameras (Trip, Pen, XA series, and the overrated mju ii) - yet it's fuji selling an order of magnitude more x-halfs than anything OM is producing.
By 6gvONxR4sf7o 2026-01-077:071 reply If they just remade it with modern AF software, I'd probably carry mine around most every I went. Not to mention what they could do by updating hardware.
By Zak 2026-01-0712:28 I'm not sure there's a lot of improvement possible purely in software with a contrast detect system and an old processor.
By criddell 2026-01-0622:11 In December I bought a GX-85. I love it even though it's 9 years old and still uses micro-USB. I got a great deal on it - $300.
It doesn't seem like it would take a lot to keep this line going. Bump the sensor, change the USB cable, add GPS, etc... but keep the form factor.
I guess the market just isn't big enough.
By Glyptodon 2026-01-071:19 I have a GX-8 and I still like it...
By davidjytang 2026-01-075:28 Still using GX1 here.
I have to say I'm a bit unimpressed with the efforts of the MFT consumer system camera manufacturers. Panasonic creates excellent cameras, they're so big it lessens the appeal of the smaller mount. OM makes cameras of the right size, but it's releasing new models really really slowly, with mediocre sensors. The OM-5 mark II is a lame rehash. Only the OM-3 is somewhat exciting, but it sacrifices too much in terms of ergonomics to achieve an aesthetic I don't care about.
On the other hand there's no other class of camera that really works on vacation/travel and is meaningfully better than a smartphone. Oh, well.
I think people really underestimate how nice it is for the lenses to be smaller and not just for the camera to be.
I wonder if there's a marketing reason for not shrinking the lenses. A big lens screams "better" more than a smaller lens at a casual glance for the uninitiated user.
By bjt12345 2026-01-079:42 It's an engineering reason really, the entire reason why MFTs were so popular when they came out was because people were tired of lugging around their Full-Frame camera's zoom lens, and were sick of missing moments when using a prime lens.
The marketing gimmick for awhile was ultra-zooms which allow for smaller lenses via fixing distortion using DSP, but this degrades the image quality, and so never became a solution for RAW shooters.
By Glyptodon 2026-01-075:59 I think it's directly related to sensor size and given the shape of lenses (cylinders) that means bigger sensors should probably have a non linear relationship to lens size.Though it is probably not quite that simple. In any case, bigger lenses allow for smaller f stops with a given focal length, and people really do love bokeh...
I doubt it. I don’t think anyone is spending $2k on Canon L-series (red ring) lenses based on the size. On the high end, photographers are pretty discerning about equipment’s capabilities. If they made my Canon EF 35mm f1.4L USM II half the size and weight I’d be thrilled.
By bzzzt 2026-01-0711:10 The RF version of that lens is a bit lighter.
By xhkkffbf 2026-01-0716:15 Bigger lenses tend to gather more light and that means better images in darker moments.
By SchemaLoad 2026-01-073:271 reply The volume for physical cameras is low and shrinking. The companies can't justify putting nearly the same investment as smartphone companies selling 100x the units can.
By bigstrat2003 2026-01-074:382 reply The volume for cameras like this was always low. Even in the days before you had a camera on your smartphone, people were buying Polaroids, compact cameras with a small lens built in, or disposable cameras. They weren't buying something more complicated unless they were hobbyist photographers.
By ngcc_hk 2026-01-076:47 Not hobby. Taking photo is always key to life for many.
Before phone for major event like graduation, wedding and baby birth people do buy one camera with one lens for the occasion and keep it as a family heirloom like. And even students gala and performances. Whilst a lot of point and shot, slr and later dslr are common. The key it is not a hobby to them but a life even to record.
Unlike people like us canon and nikon found it hard to sell the second lens or even second body.
By SchemaLoad 2026-01-0722:17 Those compact cameras with a built in lens still funded the R&D for the expensive cameras. They can all run the same OS and software, etc. Smartphones have continuously chipped away at the bottom tier of cameras to the point where even hobbyist photographers use smartphones. And only the absolute top tier of very expensive cameras still exist.
By james_in_the_uk 2026-01-0619:421 reply The OM-3 is fine ergonomically, for me at least. The thumb pad on the back is very comfortable and balances the body very well. I held off buying one for a while because of ergonomic concerns but in practice it’s been great.
By hypercube33 2026-01-0712:35 I'm super happy with my OM10 mark3 and z9. the first is super fun to use and gives a really satisfying shitter kachunk when you shoot and the z9 though a chonker makes adjusting stuff easy having a billion buttons
By Zababa 2026-01-0713:12 >On the other hand there's no other class of camera that really works on vacation/travel and is meaningfully better than a smartphone.
My a6500 is serving me well, though I guess it depends what you mean by "meaningfully better than a smartphone". I do end up with a lot more photos that I like when I go on vacation with a camera than with just a smartphone
Edit: also applies to commuting, but I'm always a bit uneasy about having my camera with me when comutting.
Olympus is one of the few camera (I literally have hundreds as this is my side hobby) I love to use. Until every time I want to change anything. As a guy who can do 8x10, gfx, 907x, z9 etc I still find the menu system totally confusing.
It is not the hardware, it is the software …
By vladvasiliu 2026-01-0711:56 I don't know, man. They're very customizable, and some models have memory banks. I never need to go in the menus of my pen-f. And The OM-1 has a much improved menu system, with a customizable "my menu" page, which opens directly, on which you can stick your most used menu items (but, sadly, it's not included in the saved memory banks).
Furthermore, I find the physical buttons on the om1 are so customizable and can do so many things, that I never go in the menu, either. I haven't tried new models from the other makers, but the olympus models I have are much nicer to use than my old canon 40d and nikon d80.
By hypercube33 2026-01-0712:37 I had to think about this a while since my Olympus is my go to camera just because I love using it but I agree some of the menus are mildly confusing....though leaps ahead of sony
By Retr0id 2026-01-0619:56 I'm very happy with my thoroughly behind-the-curve E-M10, and I'm secretly glad the newer ones aren't all that great because I don't have to spend money on upgrading.
By vladvasiliu 2026-01-0711:48 > Only the OM-3 is somewhat exciting, but it sacrifices too much in terms of ergonomics to achieve an aesthetic I don't care about.
I was very disappointed with the om3. I love the aesthetic, but I feel it's half-assed. The faux-pentaprism bump is the specific point I hate. If it had the body of a pen-f, I would have been all over it. As it is, it's just a prettier om-1 with worse ergonomics.
I should note that I already have a pen-f, and don't have any issue with its ergonomics (I used it yesterday on -5ºC with big gloves, it was fine). Since I don't lug around foot-long lenses, the lack of grip isn't a problem.
