PowerShovel Demekin Fisheye

PowerShovel Demekin Fisheye Overview

The PowerShovel Demekin Fisheye is a tiny, fisheye lens-equipped camera designed by PowerShovel, Ltd. for the 110 film cartridge. PowerShovel, also known as SuperHeadz was founded in the year 2000 by Hideki Omori after he successfully introduced plastic Russian cameras to Japan. Such cameras were cheaply made and often technically flawed but, much like the Lomography movement that swept through the Western world at roughly the same time, these “toy cameras” gained popularity in Japan through the interesting and unusual effects that their plastic lenses and light leaks often had on images.

Like most 110 film cameras, the Demekin Fisheye is pretty basic. Its relatively large 8.9mm (roughly 19mm equivalent) fixed-focus fisheye lens has a constant aperture of f/13.5 and is undoubtedly the most striking thing about it. Mated to the lens is a simple shutter mechanism which is triggered by a button located on the back of the camera on the user’s right-hand side and has a single shutter speed of 1/100 seconds. On the opposite side of the shutter button is a film advance wheel and on the top plate is a rudimentary viewfinder that can be flipped up into position. The back of the camera flips up to accommodate the film cartridge and then flips down again to lock it into place. When there is no film in the Demekin, the panel that houses the shutter button and film advance wheel folds down to make the camera even more compact. The last feature is a tripod socket on the bottom, a fairly unusual sight on a camera of this size.

My wife bought this Demekin Fisheye as a novelty sometime in the early to mid 2000s when we were still in college. She’s burned through a few cartridges of 110 with it over the years but I’ve never used it myself. After all, I’ve got a Pentax Auto 110 if I ever feel the unlikely urge to shoot 110 film.