Skip to main content

The Instant Lab Fuses Digital Photography With Analog Prints

Digital photography may be quick, convenient, and instantly shareable, but let’s face it — there’s nothing like the feeling of holding an actual photograph. Florian Kaps, Henne Wanders and Achim Hein felt a need to bridge the gap between the digital and the tangible, so they create the Instant Lab. The Instant Lab fuses everything good about digital photography with everything that makes Polaroid photographs so awesome. Basically, you can take an image from a smartphone or tablet screen put it through this machine, and voila — an analog photo comes out. The Manual caught up with its CEO,  Creed O’Hanlon to ask all about The Instant Lab.

How did the idea for The Instant Lab come about?

Recommended Videos

It was partly conceived by a camera engineer, Henne Wanders, together with Impossible’s founder, Florian ‘Doc’ Kaps and an eminent former designer for Leica, Achim Hein, as a way to bridge digital image-making and analog instant film. However, to make it possible, they also had to ‘re-invent’ and refine  the mechanical film processing unit that is the basis of all classic Polaroid instant cameras. It was a simple concept with some major mechanical challenges.

The Instant Lab is like a magic box that allows you to turn digital photos into tangible, analog instant Polaroid-like photo. How does it work?

At its simplest, a lens projects an image from a smart phone or tablet screen onto an instant film, which is then processed mechanically (and chemically) as the film is ejected. It’s actually not a printer but a camera.

How long does it take to set up The Instant Lab and use it?

It works right out of the box! Download The Impossible Project app, which manages the image selection, cropping and exposure, insert a pack of colour or black white Impossible film into the Lab, and away you go!

Who does it make the ideal gift for?

It’s a great gift for anyone (of any age) who likes making and sharing images, and who also wants to make them tangible. The images themselves are the classic square-frame photos that everyone recognises as ‘polaroids’ – and like Polaroids, the opportunity to watch them develop in the palm of your hand is still something like magic!

What’s next for you?

An instant camera, the first designed specifically for the classic Polaroid in over a decade. It will be easy to use, point-and-shoot, but also have the capacity to be a sophisticated photographic tool when used in combination with a dedicated app and bluetooth!

For more information, visit shop-the-impossible-project.com.

Ann Binlot
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Ann Binlot is a New York-based freelance writer who contributes to publications like The Economist, Wallpaper*, Monocle…
The Pitt season 2: Everything we know so far
The second season is coming just a year after the first one debuted
Noah Wyle in the Pitt

Over the course of its remarkable first season, few shows have done more to earn a fanbase than The Pitt. The Max Original, which is set in a Pittsburgh emergency room and told over the course of a single shift, hour by hour, is both an old-fashioned medical drama and a modern look at all the ways that American systems are crumbling.

After the first season wrapped up on April 10, many are eager to learn more about a second season. After all, The Pitt is the kind of show that seems like it could run forever. Here's what we know about the show's second season so far:

Read more
Will we be getting a Black Mirror season 8?
The anthology series just debuted its seventh season on Netflix.
Paul Giamatti in Black Mirror

Following the debut of Black Mirror's seventh season on Netflix, attention has naturally turned to whether we'll be getting any more stories from the mind of creator Charlie Booker. Black Mirror has become one of Netflix's biggest successes, but the show has not officially been renewed for an eighth season yet.

Although the show hasn't been renewed by Netflix yet, Booker has made it clear that it's not because he's out of ideas. "Yes, there are some stories that are pretty much fully baked and ready to go," he told The Hollywood Reporter. "And there are others where I've got chunks of story or concept that I'm just slightly trying to work out."

Read more
Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman go to war in the first trailer for ‘The Roses’
This story has already been adapted into a feature film once.
Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman in The Roses

Anytime you get two heavyweight actors together and ask them to do battle on screen, the results are almost guaranteed to be electrifying. That's certainly what the first trailer for The Roses promises. The movie, which is adapted from Warren Adler's 1981 novel The War of the Roses, stars Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman as a married couple whose relationship disintegrates over the course of the film.

The two play Theo and Ivy, a married couple living an idyllic California life. When Theo's career crumbles just as Ivy's is taking off, though, buried resentments in their relationship come to the surface. Andy Samberg, Allison Janney, Ncuti Gatwa, Kate McKinnon, Sunita Mani, Jamie Demetriou, Zoë Chao and Belinda Bromilow are also in the cast. It was directed by Jay Roach.

Read more