THE INTREPID Team story

The Intrepid Camera originally started life as a project to make an open source large format camera, as in one that anyone could download the plans to and build. We worked on this project for a year or so and it eventually turned itself into the final year of my degree.

After Graduating from Product Design I got to working out how we could share the camera with even more people. Soon we realised that if we took a lot of the ideas from open source tech, put them into a commercial product, we could then create a fantastic and affordable camera. 

The most important part of photography for me personally, is the ability to escape from everything, even if its just for half an hour or so a day. When using the camera I'm often somewhere beautiful and my mind is focused on one thing only, even if I don't get a shot I'm still happy to have had that time to relax and just do something I love. I think going on a walk or hike with a large format camera, setting up, sitting, waiting, thinking and then maybe if it all comes together just right, taking a shot, is one of the most relaxing and rewarding things I do.    

In all of my creative endeavours I always find myself being drawn back to physical formats. While studying Journalism I got into making and designing zines, I then got into photography through looking at Photojournalism and Documentary styles.

At Intrepid I get to work directly with a growing community of large format photographers and combine my love of photography with writing and designing. It’s amazing to be able to provide a platform for people with Intrepid Cameras all over the world, seeing what they create, and sharing and featuring their stories and photos.

When you shoot with a film camera, you are forced to slow down and take a step back, and for that moment you switch off from everything around you. 

With large format not only do you disconnect from the fast pace of modern life, but you really have to think about each individual element of photography, and how to use them to create the image you want. This makes it such a valuable experience, which we want to make accessible to any photographer. 

I have always been a tinkerer of models and have worked in many areas of product design from building stages, and making costumes, to model painting commissions. I’m really interested in woodwork too and studied 3D Design at College then Art and Design at University. 

I joined Intrepid early on and for a while it was just me and Max in a tiny garage, we’ve expanded so much since those days and we’re continually looking for ways to develop the designs.

I get to create products using my own hands everyday and I use skills I never thought I would be able to use in a job. Seeing a product appear from a load of wood, bolts and metal is pretty amazing.

We make pretty much everything in our Brighton workshop and always have, we’ve got lots of modern machinery but we combine it with traditional techniques like making the bellows by hand, which is what you’ll often find me doing.

Here at Intrepid we are trying to make large format photography accessible to a much wider audience and have successfully been doing so for over three years now. Too frequently people have not been able to experiment with this fantastic format, and often it is due to the high price tag. This is a real shame. Large format is probably the most rewarding and true type of photography you can experience; you are completely transported to a magical world underneath that dark cloth, nothing compares to composing an image on the ground glass, and prints made from the giant negatives have a quality to them that is like nothing else. 

If you are completely new to large format, then the range of Intrepid Cameras is a fantastic place to start, and if you are an old hand at all things LF then an Intrepid could be the light weight, compact and affordable camera you have been looking for!