Photographer Made a Working Instant Film Camera Out of Gingerbread
A film photographer made an edible, Polaroid-style instant film camera out of gingerbread and candy that can take photos.
Dmitri Tcherbadji from Canada made the novel camera with a sugar glass lens that shoots Fujifilm Instax Square instant film.
Tcherbadji tells PetaPixel that the build lasted “longer than I expected” and it took a while for him to figure out the correct thickness of the gingerbread.
“It’s actually a really good material,” he says. “My wife gave me excellent advice to just sand it down because it expanded and I used a cheese grater [for that] which worked really well.”
Tcherbadji had to build a little screen to test out the sugar glass lens’s projection and while he admits the sweet lens and camera combination didn’t produce the greatest of photos, Tcherbadji was impressed that an edible camera gave any results at all.
“This project took a lot out of me; still, I had lots of joyous moments as I discovered solutions for many unexpected issues — from estimating the focal length of the sugar lens to designing the shutter,” he explains.
“As you can see, the images are very soft, lack contrast, and show lots of other distortions. Still, cranking them out of a piece of bread and sugar never ceases to feel exciting (and a little hilarious),” he continues.
“There’s certainly room for improvement. I’ve learned a lot building this, and I will be learning more as I attempt to expose a few more packs of film before breaking it into pieces later with friends.”
Tcherbadji says the project cost around $220 which was mostly spent on wasted Instax film.
“Instant film is excellent for experimental stuff as it can provide feedback quickly. I am particularly grateful for JollyLook’s DIY Instax Square development unit that makes this work,” he adds.
Tcherbadji is a website developer but runs Analog.Cafe because he is passionate about film photography.
He believes that he has built the first ever edible, working instant film camera with an active sugar lens and he wants to show his followers on social media what he’s built, but ultimately he plans to eat the camera.
And it won’t be his first time, Tcherbadji previously made an edible Polaroid SX-70 instant film camera (but that couldn’t shoot photos) and even left the recipe up on his website.
To see more of Tcherbadji’s work, check out his Instagram, X/Twitter, and Mastodon,
Image credits:Dmitri Tcherbadji
