DAY 8

PHOTOGRAPHIC CURIOSITIES

World’s Smallest Camera

“SWALLOW THIS CAMERA AND CALL ME IN THE MORNING”

In this age of rapid technological developments, any attempt at definitively naming the “world’s smallest camera” may very well be obsolete by the time this book goes to print.

Be that as it may, the electronics company Misumi appears to take the cake for now, having created the 1/18-inch-wide CMOS camera chip. The chip can be used with a camera attached to a bendable wire, allowing it to be snaked through tracts in the human body or hard-to-reach pipelines; the “snake camera” can be equipped with varying lenses, offering up to a 105-degree field of vision.¹

The camera chip is reportedly small enough to be swallowed by medical patients, or even injected through a large syringe.²

An honorable mention goes to the world’s smallest camera plane, the DelFly Micro. Developed by a university in the Netherlands, the tiny dragonfly-shaped aircraft has a wingspan of 10 centimeters, weighing in at only 3 grams.³ —DJS