Few designed objects can mean as many different things as the camera. While the SLR has probably become its archetype, there continue to be countless variations in on the theme running the gamut from large-format film view camera to improvised, lensless pinhole to digital rangefinder to smartphone. Each invokes an entirely different sort of engagement through the object with the image.

So when BBC Future asked Conran’s Jared Mankelow to re-imagine an everyday item, he chose the camera. By questioning the very act of picture taking, the designer came up with an apparatus that almost disappears around the eye: you look directly through it–no prisms or complex geometry here–and therefore see just through your eye exactly what the camera sees. Crucially, there is no screen, and so the act itself lacks the instant-gratification typical of the digital process.

Looking from the front like an old 3’5” floppy disk with its centre punched out, the camera’s rear has a slate of elegant manual controls. While it’s not likely to become a new archetype, it is among the most pragmatic camera designs we’ve seen in years. Better still is that despite its novelty, it is actually an amalgam of entirely conventional technologies, meaning it may become a reality sooner rather than later.