When does Digital Lo-Fi start ? Is it kid- cams from the noughties or is it this offering from the Swedish Purveyors of meatballs and DIY flat packed furniture IKEA ? Meet the Mother of all modern Lo-Fi Screenless digitals the IKEA Knäppa
Cover image is “Knäppa, avant” by Groume, CC BY-SA 2.0
Disclaimer: I’m not paid by Ikea although I do frequent their stores and have a family loyalty card. Likewise I’ve not had links to Paper Shoot
IKEA should not really have to be introduced to you. The Swedish monolith of Budget home furnishings has been the world largest furniture retailer since 2008 and has stores on every continent bar Antarctic.
But you may not be aware in 2012 IKEA launched their very own camera the Knäppa. I say launched as it was never sold (more on that later). BUt arguably this is one of the first intended lo-fi camera and the is the prototype for the Paper Shoot camera
Cameras and IKEA !!?!!!
Yup madness I know.
Ingvar Kamprad founded IKEA in 1943 at the tender age of just 17 in 1943. He started out selling Knicknacks like pens but moved into furniture retail in 1948 selling by mail order. In 1958 he opened his first Bricks and mortar shop in Älmhult in the Småland Provence of Sweden. Ingvar quickly cottoned on to the advantages of flat pack furniture (lower transportation costs and less damage). The company grew expending across Sweden and into Neighbouring Scandi countries and then the rest of Europe in the 1970’s.
And the rest is of the group is another tale to be shared over a hot-dog and coffee at the store exit (or here on the corporate history site)
But by 2012 IKEA was a global brand and to celebrate the launch of a new furniture line it decided to give away a promotional camera but no just some off the shelf design
So you Couldn’t Buy the IKEA Knäppa ?
Not at the time.
The Knäppa was given away at the launch of IKEA’s PS 2012 range. The PS series are long running designer driven collections launched every few years.
I had wondered if you got with the PS 2012 Sofa (i suspected the €39 PS vase wasn’t going to cut it). But nope it was given away in a goodie bag to select customers at launch events for PS 2012 at least in Malmö, according to the Hishe (Hisham Ramish)tumblr blog
Total Production numbers are unknown, but does pop up on auction sites although rarely
Looks a bit like erm……. a Paper Shoot Camera
Well it does, doesn’t it and arguably this Paper Shoot 0.7 Beta, the camera that would evolve into thereatil Paper Shoot series
The structual link is clear. the camera is flatplacked just like modern Ppaer Shoots it has a PCB board that you wrap a cardboard case around (here just plain brown card). I’ll discuss the spec differences in a mo but it looks very much like a a PS
And Paper shoot them selves acknowledge a link although that gets confusing
“Paper Shoot was the creative engine behind the IKEA Knäppa,”
Paper Shoot Website
Confusing ?
So Papershoot make the point they’re not founded until 2013 the following year but do note the following
“The Knäppa’s eco-friendly construction, intuitive design, and creative spirit all reflected Paper Shoot’s core philosophy. Though it was a special project for IKEA and not a regular retail product, the Knäppa helped bring Paper Shoot’s vision to a broader audience and paved the way for its future innovations in digital photography.”
We do know that Swedish designer Jesper Kouthoofd was described as the designer of the camera. Kouthoofd is a designer of digital electronics and was one of the founders of Teenage Engineering known for the legendary OP-1 synth/sampler that launched in 2011 and still is in production today
IKEA in their promotional material of the time including an interview with BBC all point to him being the desinger. They even released this humorous video featuring the camera being described by Kouthoofd (love the zoom function and O/S)
Now I suspect George Lim of PS fame did the technical side but who actually is more responsible for the design gets interesting.
Is Kouthoofd really the brains behind the Paper Shoot or is he merely a designer looking for an off shelf product that he tweaked ?
So How does it it compare to a Paper Shoot
Very similar design. You have a mobile phone sensor on a PCB board powered by 2 AAA batteries. The PCB is wrapped in a cardboard shell secured by 2 nylon bolts. The PCB is stuck to the cardboard unkike the PS models which also use currently more durable Stone card. They also work off rechargeable AAA
Like the PS you have a simple viewfinder and a combo on and shutter button.
As to the sensor Digitalkameramuseum.de suggests a 2.3MP likely CMOS sensor with 7MB of onboard storage storing up to 40 images. Images are 1280×960 (4:3 ratio or QuadVGA if that sort of thing float yer boat)
Beyond that sensor, okay all the same then ?
But there are some differences
Yeah what’s that thing on the side ?
So dear reader that’s a captive USB connector. It’s one of the key differences. And probably the worst feature. Most PS cameras connect by cable or get you to remove a memory card. This however exposes the risk of this getting the only way to get the images off camera damaged.
There is no filter switch either and I suspect that weird Video mode thing with a USB charging brick isn’t on either.
The camera does have a recessed delete button on front unlike the PS models. Its a WTF feature but I guess if you though you duffed one of your 40 shots. ……
And the name ?
So my reading of Swedish is that Knäppa was primary used for a snapping sound you got when you used buttons but can also means the sound of a camera shutter.
Hang on have you used yours ?
Nope. It’s kinda of currently a weird collector item for me. I paid about the same as a current PS which you could say is exorbitant for essentially a free camera.
But how much would you pay for a mint VUWS ? That’s the same thing. I own and use a VUWS but it arrived in a used but good condition. If it was still sealed……
I’d like your views ion this as this is the first post I’ve done where I’ve not use the camera .
Okay so what do others say about this
I’ll give hishe credit here for summarising this camera
“…the quality is not that great. Its like a camera phone from 2006…….You can get quite decent photos if you manage to keep the camera steady and the scene well lit. The shutter of the camera is slow, so you’ll need a steady hand.
In conclusion, this is essentially a digital pinhole camera. But there’s something extra about it, it has that certain feel. It’s not a Leica but its made out of friggin cardboard! But even though it’s cardboard the build quality of it is surprisingly robust. Image quality isn’t always everything nowadays. I would love it if IKEA started selling these. It would gain a big following.”
Sadly they didn’t
And your Thoughts on the IKEA Knäppa ?
This is a fascinating piece of Lo-Fi Digital history. It was clearly not intended as a proper “digital”. For comparison TIPA awarded the 2012 prize for General Compact (aka consumer) to the Samsung MV800 a 16.1MP with a flip LCD, in an era when compact cameras were already being decimated by the rise of the smartphone.
It’s easy to dismiss the IKEA Knäppa as just a freebie. They could have chucked in a generic Chinese budget cam. What they got was a quirky eco-friendly Lo-Fi camera that broke the 2012 mould.
Image wise given it’s 2.3MP sensor we need to reel in expectations. We need to be comparing it to simple cameras from a decade prior like my 2001 fixed focus 2MP Olympus CAMEDIA C-120. The C-120 is better optically but not hugely and is dependant on weird SmartMedia (SM). SM is arguably the APS film of storage media (aka It was rubbish idea, it’s out of production and buy today means a roulette wheel of luck).
The Knappa produces lower quality images. There’s more impressionist blocking of colours and some hard edges with ghosting. But there’s little off axis deterioration. The image below could be used on a website today
We also get a reasonable colour balance in daylight. The fixed focus in En pointe allowing for surprisingly close shots but not at the expens e of the long shot
From a image PoV you get very neutral images. No filtering going on here. Modern Paper Shoot and rivals try to ape the film feel and you don’t get that here
Do Say
- Yes I will have the lingonberry sauce with my meatballs
- It’s the OG Lo-Fi GOAT.
- But we can’t leave without a Hotdog ?
Don’t Say
- But my Leica Q3 is just way better ?
- We’re just going for a bookshelf ? Right
- Habitat did this better.
Other Sources on the IKEA Knäppa
Weirdly hishe’s about the only decent review you’ll find on this cornerstone of lo-fi photog today. His review was syndicated by PetaPixel . It also appeared to have been on the Dutch Appelogen.be blog but sadly no longer. The oldest post on that blog is from 2019 meaning either they delete older posts or the old blog died off and has been replaced
Roberto Pla who’s work with camera I’ve featured has a image of the manual on Flickr