A former Fleet Street photographer is focussed on an innovative way of combining traditional with digital.

James Jackson has created a so-called Digipod, which replaces the 35mm film in old single lens reflex (SLR) camera bodies.

The 58-year-old, from View Road in Keighley, worked with the town’s Fab Lab and a Sheffield electronics company on producing the device.

“I first started thinking about this about five years ago and have worked on it actively for the past couple of years or so,” said Mr Jackson.

“I’ve a number of SLR cameras I used as a young professional and they are precision mechanical instruments, which hold great memories and took some great images.

“They are works of art, and I wanted to find a way of making a digital film pod to replace the 35mm film. The main issue was getting the hardware to fit the available space.”

He added: “There are a lot of people, like me, who prefer using the old SLR camera, when you rely on your own skill, rather than the modern digital. They are part of the history of photography and there are still things you can do with an old roll film camera that can’t be offered by the new digital ones. This gives you the best of both worlds.”

He said the Digipod has no hard memory – everything is saved to a micro sd card, and it has a mini USB for direct connection to a computer. It is slotted into the camera casing.

A patent is pending on the product, and Mr Jackson is now seeking backers.

A thousand people, each pledging £199, are needed to enable Digipod to enter production.

It has been launched on indiegogo – http://igg.me/at/digipod/x/4301479 – where more information can be found.

“I have followed many projects on ‘crowd funding’ sites,” he said.

“Many of them struggle to deliver on time or at all, and I know how frustrating this is for the backers. I made a decision to launch only after I had worked through all the challenges most likely to cause delays.”