The camera on its back and standing with the view finder open:
Ordered on 31 July, Shipped 3 August, Received 16 August.
11 business days (16 days total counting weekends) from when I ordered to when I received it, and that's not all.
When I opened the box, inside aside from the invoice and the Gakken kit I ordered, was the Maker's Notebook. Which was a surprise since I clearly didn't remember ordering it, nor was it on the invoice, a nice little bonus!
A nice little $20 bonus, since listed on the back of the book itself the retail price and the price it sells for on makershed.com is $19.99US... and the price is also the same in Canadian Dollars as well $19.99Cdn., as listed on the back of the book.It came with a thick rubber band around it with the words "Make: technology on your time."
It's a notebook full of 1/8" engineering graph paper, with the last 20 pages full of "reference material, from useful stuff like electronics symbols, resistor codes, weights and measures, basic conversions and more..."
[Quote from description]
While I'm not sure I'll ever use it, the reference material is nice and the two sheets of stickers are nice too. Though they aren't precut, if you want to use the stickers, you have to cut it out yourself, and despite the description on the page saying "Featuring a pocket in the back, with 2 sheets of stickers," there wasn't a pocket... the sticker sheet was just folded inside the front cover with the rubber band holding them in place...
But then again since I did receive it free I really don't care about that, I got myself a free notebook!
Anyways, back to the camera, since I can't read Japanese, half the value of a Gakken kit is lost to me since even though the 100-page Mook [Magazine+Book] at the end does give out a general history of Photography, a history on the Twin-Lens Reflex Camera and the different models over the years, plus tips on how to take better pictures and putting in different effects in your picture without the use of Photoshop... I cannot read any of it.
Assembly of the camera took me about an hour and now I'm the proud owner of a Gakkenflex.
Now, do I put one of the two included sticker skins? Or design my own?
On the page for the Gakkenflex on the Otona no Kagaku official website, otonanokagaku.net there is a PDF file you can download [624KB, A4 size] which you can use to design your own skin.
