A new Kickstarter campaign has launched for the Instant Box Camera – a large format camera which can take images on film or paper and can also be used as a mobile darkroom.
The camera, which resembles a traditional tripod-mounted field camera from the late 19th or early 20th Century, and is the brainchild of Austrian photographer Lukas Birk, the co-founder of the Afghan Box Camera Project.
“The Instant Box Camera is a portable, light weight camera and darkroom, all in one,” Birk said on the camera’s Kickstarter page. “There is a lens in the front and a moveable sanded glass plate on the inside of the camera that acts as the focus. The Instant Box Camera is a paper camera, although you can expose negative sheet film or other light-sensitive surfaces as well.
“Inside the box are trays for chemicals that allow you to develop and fix the taken photograph on the spot. All the materials are easily available. You do not have to depend on any specific manufacturer. Taking images with readily available darkroom paper and chemicals is much cheaper than any other instant camera film out there (from 10 cents per photo).”
Birk says there are several ways of taking a picture with the camera.
“The traditional negative-positive process is the cheapest option and allows the most flexibility. Using regular darkroom paper with the Instant Box Camera, you get a negative image first,” he said. “The negative is then photographed with the negative holder to obtain a positive photograph. Through this method you can create multiple positive images from the same negative.”
Pictures can also be taken on direct positive paper. “Each exposure results in a positive image. There are many box camera photographers out there who love this type of paper because it creates unique photographs like instant film,” said Birk.
“You can shoot colour as well, as the RA-4 process is possible with the Instant Box Camera. You will need RA-4 paper and an extra set of colour developer/fixer with a black and white developer,” he adds.
The Kickstart page also notes that handcoated film can also be shot and developed in the camera, as well as traditional large-format emulsions.
The campaign also adds the camera is much lighter than old field cameras. “We chose a very lightweight material for the Instant Box Camera to make it mobile,” Birk said. “The camera weighs 4.1 kg (9 pounds) and the tripod 1.7 kg (3.7 pounds). We designed the tripod in three segments to be approximately the length of the camera when folded with a strap that can be used to carry the tripod or to stabilise it when set up.
The plywood camera is shipped with a 110/4.5 Soviet-era Industar-23U enlarger lens, though the camera can be used with any other M39-mount lens.
Birk said all the materials from the camera, which is mostly made of plywood, are produced from materials made in the EU, and the parts are made in a youth centre which employs young jobless people and refugees.
“The aim is to create an affordable, functional, light-weight yet sturdy camera that suites amateurs and professionals, students and professors, mobile and studio photographers,” Birk said.
The Kickstarter campaign runs until 31 March and when Kosmo Foto published this article the project had almost reached the funding target of £14,000 on the first day.
The cameras cost €395 (£348) for an unassembled kit, or €650 (£572) for a fully assembled model – but there are only 80 of the former and 20 of the latter offered during the Kickstarter.
I'm a New Zealander who has been living in London since the mid-1990s, shooting film seriously since the year 2000. Kosmo Foto was launched in 2012 and has since become a film brand, with the release of my first films Kosmo Foto Mono 35mm (2017) and Kosmo Foto Mono 120 (2019).
I’m doing everything I can to promote film photography in the 21st Century, and help it survive and thrive. If you want to write something for Kosmo Foto, please drop me a line at foto.dowling@gmail.com.
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In 1975 I saw such cameras on a street in a small Turkish town. The photographers mainly used it to produce passport photos for their customers.
I can understand people’s preference to get back to traditional analogue photography, but this has to be a joke! I had to check the date to make sure it wasn’t April 1st.
Home developing is on the rise, both since Covid and since the price of film keeps rising.