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Box Camera

The Instant Box Camera is a large format camera and darkroom in one

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Box cameras are one of the most unique and fascinating types of cameras you can play with if you’re into analogue. Also referred to as Afghan Box Cameras, they’ve been around for over a hundred years, and there are still some in daily use today. Building one from scratch, though, can be quite daunting. While they are fairly simple in their construction, there are lots of little details to take into account.

The Instant Box Camera is a portable, lightweight box camera that’s available as a DIY build kit by Lukas Birk. Like the Afghan Box Camera, it’s large format and features a built-in darkroom, allowing you to shoot and develop your direct positive (or negative) prints right out of the box, so to speak. It’s currently running on Kickstarter, where it’s already beaten its goal with 28 days left.

This photographer in Afghanistan is still making pictures with a 100-year-old box camera

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It always seems to be a race these days for photographers to get newer and better gear. They feel it will make them into a better photographer or produce better images. But the reality is that more often than not, it won’t. And it’s perfectly possible to create great images with older equipment, as Afghan photographer Haji Meerzaman is still proving on a regular basis.

Haji still shoots with a box camera he’s been using for 65 years. A box camera that was already at least 35 years old when he got it. It’s a fascinating piece of kit that’s essentially an entire camera and darkroom in a box. Travel YouTuber Drew Binsky was visiting Afghanistan and got to visit Haji and have his portrait taken using this camera.

The box camera is back and it has interchangeable lenses

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First introduced by Kodak back in 1888, the box camera is one of the simplest forms of camera out there. Popular until halfway through the 20th century, they started to disappear as 35mm SLRs and rangefinders started to take over. Although not as popular as they once were, film is seeing a resurgence and they’ve come back into demand. So much so that Hamm Camera Company have started up a Kickstarter campaign to launch the NuBox 1, a new medium format box camera with interchangeable lenses.

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