Photographica
A photography mod that brings realistic camera simulation to Minecraft. Take photos with film or digital cameras, develop your negatives in a darkroom, and print photographs to display in your world.
Requirements
- Minecraft 1.21.1
- Fabric Loader ≥ 0.16.0
- Fabric API
Both client and server must have the mod installed for multiplayer.
Features
Camera Types
- Film SLR — Load film rolls, wind between shots, develop negatives in the darkroom, then print in the enlarger
- Mirrorless Digital — Insert an SD card and shoot immediately; browse and delete photos from the in-game SD card viewer
Optics & Exposure
- Interchangeable lenses — Prime and zoom lenses with real focal lengths (24 mm – 200 mm)
- Full exposure control — Aperture (f/1.4–f/22), shutter speed (30 s – 1/4000 s), ISO
- Exposure modes — Manual (M), Aperture priority (Av), Shutter priority (Tv), Program (P)
- Focus modes — Manual focus, Auto focus, Moving-object tracking (MOB)
- Viewfinder — Sneak to look through the camera with correct field-of-view
Photographic Effects
- Depth-of-field blur (depth-aware, no colour bleed at boundaries)
- Motion blur on slow shutter speeds
- ISO grain and chroma noise
- Lens vignetting by aperture
- Diffraction softening at f/16+
- Film-stock tone curves per film type
- Highlight rolloff and film reciprocity failure
Film Workflow
- Five film stocks: Colour ISO 400 (36 exp.), Colour ISO 100 (36 exp.), Colour ISO 1600 (36 exp.), B&W ISO 400 (36 exp.), Colour ISO 400 (24 exp.)
- Develop exposed rolls in the Darkroom block
- Print negatives in the Enlarger block to get displayable Photo items
- Right-click a developed film roll to preview negatives as inverted thumbnails
Digital Workflow
- Photos saved as PNG files in
.minecraft/photographica/photos/
- SD card browser with thumbnail preview, metadata display, and per-photo deletion
- Shader-compatible capture (tested with Iris + Photon)
Building
The output JAR will be at build/libs/photographica-<version>.jar.
Development
This mod was developed with the assistance of Claude Code (Anthropic’s AI coding assistant). The game design, creative direction, and all final decisions were made by the author.
License
MIT — © 2024 shunti