The Albuquerque Box Camera, a camera & darkroom all inside one mammoth photography machine

The dawn of photography brought many wild camera concoctions, including the famed Afghan Box Camera. These chunky cubes were designed to contain not only a lens and holder for traditional image capture, but also tanks within for processing on-site. Ethan Moses of Cameradactyl returns to In An Instant with his IAI Artist Residency episode about his unique revival of this camera-type, the Albuquerque Box Camera.

The In An Instant Artist Residency brings photographers from around the world to the In An Instant channel, offering unique perspectives within the global film photography community. Thank you to Ethan for capping our final entry in the series with this awesome episode.

Go ahead and doink that subscribe button!

[Gee]

This video should have had an ASMR warning at the beginning. Ethan’s voice is like butter!

[Exxcalibur]

Flippin' love Afghan box cameras.

[edmoore]

Ethan's suddenly built himself an Afghan physique too - that must have taken some real work. Didn't recognise him initially, but for the familiar voice and the quality of the work.

[theclovercross]

oh totally forget about he having this in the works! just finished building my afghan box camera or instant box camera as this one was branded. well I can always take out the bottom, trade the tripod for stilts and convert it to this process.

[tim]

Very interesting reversal process. The citric acid and H2O2 are certainly more practical than sulfuric acid! But the original Afgan process that I've seen uses an internegative which is then photographed to make the positive, so there is no reversal step.

[abelsilvan]

I wanted to smash that subscribe button when Jeremy showed up, but I had already done when I saw Joe. Ethan can you invent more like and subscribe buttons for this video? Thanks

[rafibenatar]

It’s like printing with enlarger in darkroom 👍🏻

[floatprogress]

Very cool process! Does it need any additional bath/rinse after the final developer?

[pierrecrampagne]

J'aime particulièrement cette vidéo, elle est ce que j'attends de l'image instantanée, avec une certaine nostalgie du photomaton d'autrefois. Avec une certaine netteté. Avec les appareils P o l a r o i d plus petits autofocus, est-ce de l'argentique ou des colorants.
autrefois on avait 25 i s o, et 10.000 i s o . Aujourd'hui, combien de i s o si on veut faire de l'ambiance avec un appareil savoir les paramètres et ce qu'il faut faire pour en tirer le meilleur parti de la photo, comme pour le classique argentique avec la pellicule.

[bentbilliard]

The only downside is that the final image is a mirror image. Should be solvable though, maybe with a mirror? Both of those gentlemen, as well as Ben, true heroes of mine!