Analog photography company The Impossible Project have just announced one of the coolest ideas ever – we’d say. The company describe it as ‘a revolutionary hardware concept’ which has been introduced in a Kickstarter campaign.
Meet The Instant Lab.
The device takes Instagram to the next level, allowing you to take a picture on your iPhone, before turning it into a real, physical photograph, on their film. It brings photography back to the future.
Florian Kaps, founder of Impossible explains: “The Instant Lab is the Impossible answer to a question that we have been posing for a long time: Is there a convenient but truly analog way to transfer our everyday’s iPhone images into these unique, real and magic photographs we love so much? The experience of now finally merging the digital with the analog world of photography using this Impossible machine exceeds our wildest expectations. At Kickstarter we are raising money to help turning our working prototype into final products available on the market from February 2013.”
The Instant Lab features a cradle to hold the iPhone, a highly specialized lens to focus the iPhone’s Retina display on the film plane, an extendible bellows to keep the exact distance between the phone, the optical system and the film, a simple darkslide “shutter” to protect the film in the device, and a high-precision film processing unit as a base of the device.
An accompanying iPhone app will allow Instant Lab users to select and crop an image and start a countdown timer. The app will then do all the necessary calculations to create a proper exposure on any kind of Impossible instant film.
Until October 8 Impossible says they aims to raise a minimum of $250,000 to realize production of the Instant Lab. “Besides pre-purchasing the Instant Lab up to half-off the final retail price supporters also have the chance to get one of the Kickstarter-exclusive Instant Lab special editions, such as the All Black or the limited Gold Edition, personalized with an engraved text.”
