Phone (2000) | Nokia’s Finest Hour

Not long ago we made an automated photography turntable with a Raspberry Pi Pico and a stepper motor.

There’s always a temptation to move onto the next project, meaning that you never quite get the full benefit from the completed projects. In this case we actively resisted the temptation and forced ourselves to use the turntable for an afternoon-long project.

Here’s an example of how the simple rotational movement can be used to create a variety of visual effects from a series of still photos. We used the turntable to make a short ad for a mobile phone that was released 24 years ago - the Nokia 3310 in glorious 4K. The fact that the photos can be combined to make a video where each frame is 40 megapixels (or whatever the resolution of your stills camera is) means that even with a significant crop, you’re still making 4K video. In addition you get to use flash rather than continuous video lighting.