Photographer builds Polaroid instant camera made out of popsicle sticks

A photographer started a weird, but interesting project which has resulted in the creation of a Polaroid camera made out of popsicle sticks.

Maxim Grew is a photographer based in Brighton, UK, who spends most of time experimenting with Polaroid cameras. This photographer is not that interested into regular photography, but he sure likes unconventional photo shoots. His latest Polaroid project involved some popsicle sticks, however, they were not the subject of a photo shoot, they were the camera itself.

Polaroid instant film camera made out of popsicle sticks, duct tape and card

Building a Polaroid camera out of popsicle sticks

What’s better than a regular Polaroid instant camera? A camera made out of a film holder, popsicle sticks, thick card, and duct tape, of course! The back of the shooter consists of a regular Polaroid film holder for type 100 film, while the film is a Fuji-FP 100C, which can still be found in stores.

On the other hand, the lens was recovered from an old folding camera which can no longer be found in film stores, however, some may still be found at thrift shops. Photographer Maxim Grew says these old folding cameras are very cheap and that is very easy to salvage them, in order to build new cameras.

Timelapse video, final product, and first photo

Maxim Grew’s self-portrait taken using the Polaroid instant film camera made out of popsicle sticks

Maxim Grew set up a camera to record his progress and he uploaded the timelapse video on YouTube, for everyone to see how easy it is to create their own Polaroid popsicle stick camera. After the product was complete, he set it up and took a self-portrait image to demonstrate the functionality of his latest project.

As one can imagine, the photo does not have the best quality, but this was not the purpose of the project. The idea was to make the so-called “Lollipop Stick Instant Camera” work like an old film shooter. There are no details whether the photographer will continue to experiment with the Polaroid popsicle camera, as it can be seen from the photo that there are some issues with focusing that may require extra attention.