Essentially a consumer cardboard box camera, it was designed to point and shoot. It took film; it made photos.

And is widely credited with opening up the practice of photography to the broader public. One image taken on this camera, in particular, even won the well-known Tasmanian photographer his first recognition.

"I started doing photography when I was about 14 or 15 ... and I won my first prize for photography at the St Marys Show with a photo of a pig," Hughes laughed.

"A photo of a pig standing up on the fence with his front feet up on the fence."

And despite the fact this instance occurred decades ago, the now-seemingly outdated technology used to create that image still exists - and is being used across the globe. The rise of mobile apps have in recent years bridged the gap between the convenience of digital and the aesthetic of film.

But it is still possible to create the real thing. That was in part the challenge put to The Examiner photographer Scott Gelston in creating the images here. Gelston had to re-learn much of the technical skill associated with burning an image to film, to then later coax it out with a range of chemical baths - and it was considered a technical skill, a trade or craft, in earlier days.

Read more: Scott Gelston uses 1964 Rolleiflex to capture Tasmanian moments

Debate about its place in this world or that of high art has followed the practice almost since its inception in the early 19th Century.

"I used to be a farmer down the East Coast," Hughes said. "At Chain of Lagoons ... down on the coast from St Marys."

Without many other large cherry growers around in the 1960s, many of these went to Launceston. But farming was not all Hughes was doing. "I did photography as a hobby," he added.

During this time, Hughes entered photographic competitions run by The Examiner and The Mercury. He made contacts in each, who would later ask him to make photographs for the newspapers.

"A news item would come up and I would go and take photos for them and then send the film in on the bus," he said.

"I've still got film cameras here with the film sitting in them," he said. "It's expensive to use film of course. And with digital, you can see exactly what you've taken and you ... know when you've got a good shot straight away."

Compared to the more widely used consumer cameras, a roll of 120mm film - also known as medium format - only allows a photographer to make 10 images.

Twelve at a maximum. "So you had to be careful or you would shoot off a roll on one subject," he said.

Though what today's cameras gain in features and freedom they also carry in complexity. "When they were film cameras all you had was the focus, the aperture and the shutter speed," he said.

And there lies the key difference between the two mediums - an instant digital image and almost unlimited storage capacity, or a level of physical restraint on both.

Eventually graduating from the Box Brownie to a more professional level film camera similar to that used by Gelston in creating these images - and now to digital - Hughes travelled the state photographing its people and places. "It's all about Tasmania as a whole," he said. "That is really what Tasmania is all about."