Polaroid cameras need no introduction. Their popularity is so great that they returned in modern versions, and several companies are producing compatible photographic paper for old models. However, developer Abhishek Singh used the Polaroid as inspiration to create his Instagif camera, which in a way “prints” animated GIFs onto a cartridge equipped with a small screen.
If you have an old Polaroid in good condition, you can get compatible photographic paper thanks to projects like The Impossible Project. The direct alternative is to purchase a Polaroid Snap or Snap Plus, which offer a similar experience. But the way we take photographs has changed a lot, and the same goes for video capture. Any basic smartphone can capture images and short clips without difficulty, which in turn allows for rapid adaptation of content. Not to mention, every video is a potential animated GIF, as we can see daily on Facebook and other social networks. That said, what are the chances of combining the original essence of the Polaroid with the dynamics of modern video and animated GIFs?
How Instagif Works
According to developer Abhishek Singh the chances are very big, and he demonstrates it with his Instagif camera. It uses a body modeled in Autodesk Fusion 360 and 3D printed, and a special “cartridge” composed of a Raspberry Pi Zero W and a 2.8-inch PiTFT screen. In the camera body there is another Raspberry Pi (a model 3), to which the official camera is connected, and another screen that serves as a viewfinder. Once the shot is finished, the Instagif ejects the cartridge and plays the animated GIF on its screen.
Singh published all the necessary information for others to build their own cameras, including a complete guide on Imgur and the code on GitHub. The cartridge only stores one animated GIF, and it is erased when it is inserted into the Instagif again, but the rest can be extracted if we connect the camera to a computer. It wouldn’t be bad if someone modified the cartridge to save all the GIFs, perhaps with a couple of buttons to cycle through them one after another.
