Yvonne’s portrait, taken with with Gingerbread 1.
Just because the edible cameras I made look a little crude and the images they produce are distorted doesn’t mean they could just be slapped together. A fair bit of science is involved in constructing those things , which I’ll cover below.
But for now, let me start by explaining how the gingerbread camera works in simple terms:
1) Instax Square is a popular film format made by Fujifilm. I use it to collect the light from the sugar lens placed at a specific distance from film. It’s placed in an inedible plastic frame that feeds the Square frames through a set of rollers whenever it’s cranked.
2) The shutter is actuated by the photographer, briefly uncovering a specially designed opening behind the lens called an aperture . During this short period, the light is concentrated by the lens onto the surface of Instax Square film, which registers a latent image .
3) The image is developed once an Instax Square is pushed through the rollers that squeeze the chemicals stored in the thicker (bottom) part of the frame across the entire image. This step ensures that the film is no longer sensitive to light (and can’t be “overwritten”) and all the shades/colours are “amplified” to appear visible to the human eye.
A fresh pack of Instax Square film inside the gingerbread camera.
Instant film is an incredibly complex product, made by just two companies in the world: Polaroid and Fujifilm. Even in the heyday of film photography, only three companies produced it (Kodak being the third).
Gingerbread 1, the world’s first edible instant film camera with a sugar lens.
Photos taken with Gingerbread 1. I’ve taken over 100 photos with my gingerbread cameras. As expected, most of them did not turn out due to various faults that I fixed during the testing stage. Still, many came out looking interesting and even fun.
Because the sugar lens is a single-element mould that isn’t computed, its focusing ability is minimal, even when compared to a pinhole . There are certainly ways to improve the lens in the future (which I discuss below).
While building what I expect to be the world’s first edible instant film camera with a sugar lens , I struggled to come up with a good name for it. Nothing sounded specific, fun, and punchy enough. So, in this article, I simply refer to it as Gingerbread 1 .
A self-portrait that makes my flat-brim baseball hat look like a full cowboy hat thanks to the lens’ “fun house” distortion in the corners. The yellow indoor light and the moustache add to the accidental “cowboy” aesthetic.
Around the time I made this camera, I also grew a moustache. It’s no longer on my face, but at the time, it was helpful for portraiture. Being a defining feature, it made evident that the small, blurry 6×6cm/2½×2½” frame indeed contains the photo of me.
Technically speaking, the sugar lens in my cameras is one of the worst-performing optical elements ever made . It’s so bad that identifying the objects and people in the photos is a game I play with friends and strangers who had their pictures taken with it.
A friendly waiter got a photo of her taken on Gingerbread 1 instant film camera.
The extreme lo-fi nature of the images that pop out of the camera turns heads and generates joy. It appears that making this piece of iconic technology edible flipped all of the technical flaws into positives.
I let everyone keep their gingerbread portraits if they like them. This is why a few of the photos taken with Gingerbread 1 are no longer in my possession, and I can not scan them to show you in this article. Still, giving small picture frames to people who showed so much excitement over the project felt nice.
That said, I tried to keep a tally of the expenses associated with building such a camera. It was about $24 (USD) per pack of film at my local London Drugs store chain or $288 in total for film .
Baking forms, ingredients, and other production tools/materials I got specifically for this camera were probably another $50. If I wanted to compensate myself for the time spent prototyping and building the camera, I’d have to add another $1.5K to the bill (based on the minimum wage where I live). But of course, I’m not doing that.
A photo of Gingerbread 1 edible instant film camera through a mirror.
Despite its weak image quality, Gingerbread 1’s optical system proved to be an excellent demonstration of material properties.
In the photo of Gingerbread 1 (above), self-photographed through a bathroom mirror, you may notice floating triangles pointing downwards. I suspect that they are an illustration of lens flare rendered by a triangular aperture.
Previously, I thought these triangles were bokeh , but their sharp outlines in an otherwise blurry photograph and the evidence of a more realistic rendition of bokeh in other photographs suggest otherwise.
A photo of me (specifically the chin/moustache area) by Daren.
Portraits appear to be the most interesting subject when shot with Gingerbread 1’s sugar lens. Everything else — including flowers, plants, cameras, and items — is nearly impossible to guess out of the foggy, distorted blobs.
Portrait of Betty on Gingerbread 1.
I can’t deny that some images came out looking good enough to be kept in a wallet for at least a few months. They’re recognizable and a little indearing (I’m referring to photos of my wife and pets).
Noodle’s nose on Gingerbread 1.
You may be familiar with the challenges of trying to photograph a hyperactive pup by any means. Doing so on an edible camera is doubly so, as it strongly smells of delicious gingerbread . Nevertheless, a few attempts in, I took a photo of my dog I was happy with through the sugar lens. There’s no way this could’ve worked with a pinhole — the exposure time would need to be at least a minute for Instax film in dim light.
I enjoyed shooting with Gingerbread 1. And it just so happens that I’ve made two sets of templated gingerbread cookies, so I ate my gingerbread camera and then made it again. (More on that below .)
Gingerbread 2, a second-generation, improved edible film camera with an active sugar lens.
Photos taken with Gingerbread 2. I’ve learned a lot making Gingerbread 1 and devised a short list of improvements I thought would make sharper images.
Gingerbread 2 was made from spare gingerbread components and features a larger lens to help avoid distortion in the edges. It also has a gravity-propelled shutter for faster, more consistent, and less jerk-ey exposures. And it has a Christmas-tree-shaped aperture that I hoped would show up as fancy bokeh balls in the photographs with sufficient specular highlights (it did; see below).
But did it really make sharper images? You decide.
A portrait of me in front of a small Christmas tree in my apartment’s lobby via Gingerbread 2.
My initial reaction to the results from Gingerbread 2 is that it did not make images any sharper than Gingerbread 1. But it shows less distortion in the corners, and the shutter is more consistent/easy to use.
The earlier version required moving a piece of cardboard upwards quickly while watching for markings indicating that the film was receiving light; at this point, the paper had to be jerked back into the camera. This shook the camera each time and caused an accidental shutter removal, ruining the exposure.
Gingerbread 2’s shutter slammed down with the weight of a candy bar that pulled a piece of cardboard down, revealing an opening behind the lens for a split second (about 1/15th of a second).
Bokeh balls shaped like Christmas trees via Gingerbread 2.
The photographer in me is happy that the bokeh showed up in the photos as predicted. It’s not terribly prominent, but I can certainly make out tiny Christmas trees rendered from the lights on an actual Christmas tree.
A portrait of me looking like Skeletor on Instax Square Monochrome with Gingerbread 2.
Both cameras produced very creepy black-and-white images. One high-contrast exposure of me with Gingerbread 2 made me look like Skeletor.
A portrait of me looking like Moriarti on Instax Square Monochrome with Gingerbread 1.
Another black-and-white photo, shot on Gingerbread 1, made me look like Professor Moriarty from the Sherlock Holmes stories by Arthur Conan Doyle.
A portrait of Daren in front of a small Christmas tree in my apartment’s lobby via Gingerbread 2.
I’ve recently bought a couple more packs of Instax Square film. I’ll update this article with new images if anything good comes out.
Yvonne and I doing “cheers” with some coffee and gingerbread camera bits. Don’t get confused by the spoon which is a part of my T-shirt design.
Munching on Gingerbread 1 film camera with Yvonne.
We ate the gingerbread camera. I bought just one Jollylook film development unit — a plastic frame that holds Instax frames and develops the film when cranked (it’s the only non-edible piece of the camera, aside from film). But I made two sets of gingerbread shapes to ensure I had spares in case of a fracture.
Turns out gingerbread is surprisingly robust, especially after drying for 2-3 days. None of my pieces fractured, and I had a whole second set ready to be assembled into a camera. So I took this opportunity to build an improved version as my photographer friends LearnFilm.Photography Yvonne Hanson
But the only way Gingerbread 2 could work is if I took Gingerbread 1 apart and harvested the Jollylook piece for use in the new camera. Given that gingerbread is food and I don’t like wasting edible things, I ate parts of Gingerbread 1 with some coffee and chocolate chip cookies as I dug the Jollylook out.
Aside from the Jollylook unit, the cardboard shutter, and film, which occupied only a small portion of the camera by weight and volume (much less than a bone on a chicken wing), everything is edible as it’s just gingerbread, icing, fondant, and isomalt sugar. However, I didn’t eat the whole thing as the camera spent a lot of time on random counters and in multiple people’s hands. I also didn’t heat the icing as I made it, so there was some raw egg in it, too (I fixed this for Gingerbread 2). So, I picked around the “dangerous” parts and had a few cracker-sized pieces.
After drying for a few days, gingerbread becomes strong and flexible enough not to snap or crumble. Made with the recipe I followed , it retains a lot of aroma and is relatively porous. It tastes really good. All three of us kept munching on it as we worked until we finally decided to dump the rest before we got sick.
Gingerbread 2 was under construction around the same time Gingerbread 1 was getting devoured, so you’ll see both cameras on the very messy work/living room table in the photos. The apartment smelled like a festive coffee shop all day.
We’re just about done eating our first gingerbread camera.
Remnants of the Gingerbread 1 camera.
Comparing various lens molds made from melted Jolly Ranchers.
Making a functional sugar lens. Even though a pinhole is much easier to construct than a lens, it’s a little less interesting, in my opinion. I’m also sure that at least one person built a pinhole gingerbread camera; I bet no one made one with functional edible optics (I’ve looked).
Testing the new lens on the Gingerbread 2 camera. Notice how the chandelier is projected onto the piece of semitransparent parchment paper.
In the context of photography, a pinhole is a tiny opening on one side of a lightproof box. That opening filters the light so that it projects the objects outside the box onto the wall opposing the pinhole. Without the pinhole, that wall would be evenly lit by all the available light, but with it restricting the rays, we can see an image form.
The job of a lens is also to project an image. However, thanks to its refractive properties, lenses can do that with openings much larger than a pinhole, which can direct more light and form brighter images.
But unlike pinholes, lenses have focal lengths which need to be considered to get the sharpest image possible (plus many other specifics). I’ve determined that my isomalt lens designs work best with about 32mm .
I didn’t do any calculations to create the lenses in advance; the project was significantly more demanding than expected, with plenty of moving parts. So, instead of adding to my workload, I guestimated the sugar lens’ focal length by measuring the distance at which the projected image on a piece of translucent parchment paper appeared the sharpest — you can see that being done in the photo above.
The parchment paper played the role of ground glass as it’s often used on large format film cameras.
This is the second prototype that I used to test the Jolly Rancher lens. I built a few versions of this camera out of paper to confirm that it was working before moving on to baking it.
The isomalt sugar for the lens is a significant improvement over the Jolly Rancher mix I used at first with Gingerbread 1. Both mixtures produced bubbles, but Jolly Ranchers had more bubbles and dyes, which dispersed a lot of the light, causing an extreme lack of contrast.
Betty’s portrait I took on Gingerbread 1 camera with a Jolly Rancher lens. You may have to look twice to make out a person in this photo.
The Jolly Rancher lens also painted every image deep-orange. This was a neat effect, but it didn’t help with the resolution.
Though I didn’t need the camera to make high-quality images, Jolly Rancher lenses made photographs that were very difficult to read. Moving to the much clearer isomalt mixture helped improve the contrast significantly.
I made lenses of various thicknesses and outside circumferences for these cameras. They were all experimental; there was no way to tell which one would make better images other than to try. To ensure I got the best one out of the pack, I used a thin sausage made of silver fondant to hold the lens in place semi-permanently. Unlike icing, the fondant can be pealed when I switch the optics without causing cracks or permanent damage to the camera.
A fondant lens mount is ready to accept sugar lens.
Mounting the lens onto the fondant took some careful maneuvering to ensure I didn’t leave too many fingerprints on the lens and that it was secure.
If you’re wondering whether photos made with edible lenses can be any sharper than what you’ve seen so far, the answer is “yes.”
Moulding a Jolly Rancher lens using confectioner’s tools.
The techniques I used to build this camera involved basic concepts of optics and photography combined with a lot of experimentation to get “good enough” results. However, at least one scientist talked about the refractive index of isomalt sugar (1.63). This number can be used to create complex designs with multiple elements.
No matter the material it’s made from, a single crudely made lens can not focus light precisely. This is why all modern cameras have multiple elements, sometimes moulded into complex (aspherical) shapes, often using multiple types of glass material to correct the image/make it sharper.
Stephen R. Wilk, the scientist who shared some of his knowledge on edible optics , also mentioned other materials that can be used to make a lens: salts and different forms of sugar. All have varying refractive properties, which could help with creating complex designs. It appears that with the right skills, software, and tools, edible optics design can be taken to ridiculous heights.
✪ Note: Wilk warns that eating too much isomalt can have a laxative effect .
Building the camera: the shutter and the aperture assembly. In addition to the plastic piece that cranks out Instax film, the shutter and the aperture must be inedible. These are some of the most intricate pieces of design that I made from thin black cardboard paper, which I suspect to be quite a feat to replicate out of edible material. (I have considered getting or making edible paper, but I didn’t have the time to test its strength and ability to block light .)
I suppose you could eat the paper shutter in an emergency, but it has no nutritional value, and it’s dyed — thus unsafe.
Putting together the sliding paper shutter assembly.
My first shutter design was a wrap-around curtain made from sewn-together felt material and black wrapping paper. It would hang down from the back of the Jollylook unit, shading the film back from any stray light, then continue under the camera, up over the lens. It could not be triggered quickly enough and required a lot of additional material.
At ISO 800, Instax film is extremely sensitive to light. The shutter has to open and close within fractions of a second.
My second shutter design had paper “rails” surrounding the lens opening. A piece of cardboard had to be slid up and down rapidly on those rails. To achieve those speeds, I had to perform a violent, controlled gesture: yank a piece of paper out a certain amount and shove it back in as fast as possible without crumbling everything into a ball.
I had to redesign the shutter for Gingerbread 2 again. Neither of the above options worked well.
Testing the gravity-powered shutter design. As I released the piece of paper from my left end, it got pulled down by the weight of the taped candy, briefly revealing an opening in the window of its hosting envelope.
The newest shutter consists of a long piece of paper with a window that would slide on top of an opening. This action would briefly expose the inside of the camera to outside light when the window matches with the opening as the shutter travels down.
To avoid exposing the film to light when resetting the shutter, I’ve added a second dark slide that would cover the opening as the moving paper with the window is dragged back up for the next shot.
I relied on gravity to pull the windowed piece of paper down while taking a picture at consistent speeds. A piece of candy attached to the bottom would give it enough force to slam down quickly.
However, I noticed that after I completed my camera assembly, I got a lot more resistance during the shutter movement (probably because the icing that held the two front-facing gingerbread walls together shrunk as it hardened), so I replaced the candy with a chunkier confectionary.
Paper shutter assembly parts.
Aperture
An aperture restricts the light that enters the camera through the lens, like a pinhole. It does not limit the light as much as a pinhole, but it still helps keep the images sharper, avoid over-exposure, and shape bokeh .
I was determined to have the out-of-focus balls of light (bokeh) rendered with the new camera as tiny Christmas trees, so I made an aperture cut-out that appeared as an upside-down pine.
Paper shutter and aperture assembly ready to be mounted onto the gingerbread camera box.
The assembly begins. The paper shutter/aperture components are placed carefully on top of the gingerbread camera’s front piece of bread directly over the lens opening.
The assembly continues. I spread measured amounts of icingaround the shutter to act as glue between the two identical gingerbread panels with large circular holes for the lens.
The shutter/aperture assembly is complete. I covered the paper component with a gingerbread “front plate.”
Building the gingerbread camera body. The edible structure that holds the shutter and the lens in place must have a very secure grip on the Jollylook film holder with the crank and be completely impervious to light. Without those properties, it can easily fall apart with the movements of the crank or ruin every single image with stray light .
Sanding down gingerbread pieces to fit perfectly in the final build.
Lucky for me, the gingerbread recipe I used is exceptionally strong. The dough expanded in the oven, which meant I had to sand/grate it down to form precise shapes — but doing so did not break anything (which I thought was impressive). I even had to sand a large area around the mechanical crank down to about ¼” to give it unobstructed rotation space — the bread allowed me to do that without crumbling or caving. Just another ridiculous/wonderful truth about edible materials (they’re strong!)
In total, the camera had six gingerbread plates (two front-facing lens mounts that sandwiched the shutter/aperture assembly, plus the remaining four). Jollylook assembly covered the back of the camera; I made a custom green felt cover to ensure no light penetrated its back. The camera also needed numerous square sticks that I used to reinforce the joints and hold the film development unit.
First paper prototype of the camera.
The dimensions of the gingerbread pieces were not improvised. I’ve devised them after building a few paper models around the Jollylook unit. The final paper prototype confirmed my design with a successful test photograph that I made with a Jolly Rancher lens. It was an eery orange photo of the chandelier.
Test image shot on paper prototype.
Paper prototypes had to be made of multiple layers of paper to block the light and fastened with masking tape for quick assembly. They were extremely helpful in diagnosing future issues and gathering dimensions for the gingerbread forms.
Gingerbread camera baked components.
The icing holds the entire structure together. It’s crumbly but very strong once dried. The batch I made for Gingerbread 2 was mixed over hot steam to slightly cook the egg whites for safe consumption. It was also a shade yellower than the Gingerbread 1’s since I had to add brown sugar as I ran out of icing sugar by that point.
The final touches included the small gingerbread rails that propped up the camera and prevented creasing the paper shutter that tongued out from the bottom of the front plate.
The simple cross pattern near the lens and around the joints finished the camera. My crude icing efforts clearly show I am not a baker ; still, I’m happy with the new design.
The newly assembled Gingerbread 2 ruined the first few test shots. Thankfully, the solution was simple: I used fondant to cover the holes around the Jollylook Instax film unit that allowed stray light inside the box.
At this point, I spent the entire day making a gingerbread camera and eating another. Even after learning the techniques, having all the measurements, and all the baked components, it still took over eight hours to assemble Gingerbread 2!
Checking the aperture. As you can see, the inside of the camera is mostly empty (it’s a box), with the only thing missing here being a pack of film and the shutter assembly. There’s both a lot and not much to making a working film camera.
Sealling in the Jollylook film development unit into gingerbread with icing.
Filling in the very tough spots around the hand crank with flexible fondant to avoid light leaks.
Final checks before the last stage of the assembly: decoration.
Decorating the front plate with a pre-planned crisscross pattern. Gingerbread 2 has deliberately less icing near its bottom half and the sides (places it’s handled the most).
The shutter (a long piece of black paper with ahole cut-out in the middle) is complete. Testing.
Gingerbread 2, with its long paper shutter and a large sugar lens, is laid on top of many wasted and successful Instax Square frames shot through edible optics.
Up next. I will be updating this article whenever I make new photos with my Gingerbread 2. Check back anytime or subscribe for more monthly film photography content
Thoughts or suggestions about this project? Let me know !
