"It was another lucky accident," Florian Kaps tells BJP, ahead of the official announcement of his company's relaunch of 8x10 large format instant film. "When I was negotiating with Polaroid after it closed its factories [in 2008], I was very interested in its leftover batches of original Polaroid batteries. I closed that deal and then received a call from a guy working in the warehouses who told me that the only thing left there was some 8x10 production equipment. He wanted to know whether I was interested."

Kaps didn't really know much about the equipment, "but it sounded like a good idea to preserve it, so I called Polaroid. If I wanted to have it, all I would need to do is take care of the shipment from the US to Europe, so it was added to our contract."

Of course, equipment of that size proved difficult to ship all the way from Waltham in the US to Enschede in The Netherlands. "We ended up with five containers and a very big financial surprise."

Four years later, after successfully relaunching black-and-white and colour instant films for the 600 and SX-70 cameras, Impossible has now announced it will release a batch of 1000 boxes of 8x10 large format instant film.

"Polaroid introduced the 8x10 film in 1973, making high-resolution large format instant photography possible for the first time," said Impossible in a statement. "The unique size and characteristics of the 8x10 film soon captured the attention of photographers as an artistic medium. During the 1980s it was frequently used for landscape, fine art or advertising-photography, scientific applications and high-quality proofs. Just like all other types of Polaroid film it was discontinued in the 21st century."

But bringing the 8x10 film back to life wasn't easy, Kaps admits. "For example, we had to fit the equipment to Europe's voltage." But once Impossible started testing its instant film formulas with a 20x24 camera at an event two years ago, it saw the potential for 8x10 large format instant film. "We began thinking about restarting this machine and bringing another integral film system. So we invited the team that used to work on large format instant film in the US to come and look at the machine and let us know whether we could still use it."

Yet Impossible didn't really put much emphasis on the machine, says Kaps – at least on the management side – because at its Dutch factory Impossible's engineers were curious. "Whenever they had time, they started working on the machine, and step-by-step they rebuilt one machine after the other. When we made the first tests, we realised we could actually restart production."

Impossible also plans to make available 8x10 film holders. "Many of our customers are not traditional photographers, so we're getting a lot of questions about what kind of equipment they need to use. We'll try to offer cameras or connect people to rental places, for example. We're very excited."

For more about the new 8x10 instant film, visit the Impossible website.

Image © Thom Jackson, courtesy of Impossible

Image © Adam Goldberg, courtesy of Impossible

Image © Alan Marcheselli, courtesy of Impossible

Image © Bill Phelps, courtesy of Impossible

Image © Bill Phelps, courtesy of Impossible

Image © Bill Phelps, courtesy of Impossible

Image © Chloe Aftel, courtesy of Impossible

Image © Chloe Aftel, courtesy of Impossible

Image © Melodie McDaniel, courtesy of Impossible

Image © Melodie McDaniel, courtesy of Impossible

Image © Neil WInter, courtesy of Impossible

Image © Nicholas Misciagna, courtesy of Impossible

Image © Nicholas Misciagna, courtesy of Impossible

Image © Penny Felts-Nannini, courtesy of Impossible

Image © Rommel Pecson, courtesy of Impossible

Image © Stefan Milev, courtesy of Impossible

Image © Thom Jackson, courtesy of Impossible

Image © Tim Mantaoni, courtesy of Impossible