Month: January 2007

Pinhole workshop at Zoom In, London, UK

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The not-for-profit Zoom In Photography School are having a pinhole workshop at their location in Clapham. Their course prospectus begins:

The Pinhole Photography course is a fun way to learn and demystify the mechanics of your camera. Deliberately structured to help you understand your own camera better but also providing essential skills in those who wish to develop this old photographic technique in their photographic art work. You will cover everything from preparing your camera, constructing your camera using simple mathematical formula to taking meter readings and photographs and processing positive images from your negatives.

Continue reading at Zoom In

Via Estellelatcho

Art bollocks generator

Nicolai Grossman 1 Comment

Concept T-Shirts’ Art Bollocks Generator spews wonderfully incoherent art bullshit. For instance:

An exploration to morph a counter-intuitive post-modernism whilst not releasing calculations seen only as sound granules of the vortex.

You get a new one every time you reload the page. "Use your art bollocks to amaze people with the complex thoughts embodied in your art…" Endless fun!

Via this very interesting but completely unrelated post on Auspicious Dragon that I encourage you to read anyway.

See also: Joel Swanson‘s Art Crit Bingo

Nancy Breslin (pinhole photographs) and Caryn Hetherston (jewelry) show, Elkton, MD, US

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Regional Reflections will feature pinhole photographs of amusement parks by Delaware artist Nancy Breslin, and jewelry by Pennsylvania artist Caryn Hetherston.

The show runs 22 January – 1 March, 2007 at Elkton Station Gallery, 107 Railroad Avenue (click for map), Elkton, MD, US. Hours are 8am – 8pm, Monday to Friday.

You can see more of Breslin’s work at her Web site, Flickr, and fotolog.

Photography as Witness show, Klaus Knoll, Cella, Orono, ME, US

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Group show of six photographers. One part, "Home Studies" by Cella & Knoll, is pinhole photography with a twist:

"Process: We blacken the rooms with tarp and tape, then allow sketchy ambient light to seep through, illuminating the interior without losing the upside down exterior projection created by a single small hole, transforming the room into a giant camera obscura. We then photograph the rooms with a 4×5 for anywhere between four hours and a week."

The show runs Friday, 9 February – 9 March, 2007 at The University of Maine‘s Art Gallery, 5743 Lord Hall, Orono, ME, US. Weekday gallery hours are from 9am to 4pm.

Via Pinhole Visions

The making of the PanoramaScanCam

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Mac A. Cody's PanoramaScanCam concept rendering

Mac A. Cody writes:

On one of my robots, I wanted to place a camera that could observe everything around it. The camera did not have to have a high frame rate. It was not going to be used for motion capture or real-time autonomous driving. It did need to have a 360 degree field of view. Think in terms of the cameras on the Mars Viking landers of the 1970s.

PanoramaScanCam™ is my implementation of a panoramic camera implemented using the components of a flatbed scanner. This is not an original concept. Flatbed scanners have been used as cameras by a number of experimental photographers…

Check it out!

Via MAKE Blog

For fuck’s sake, it’s just 120 film, not 120mm!

Nicolai Grossman 6 Comments

120 is a number that specifies the format of the film. Remember 110? Disc? Same thing. There is no measurement of 120 film that is 120mm: not of the film itself, the paper backing, the spool it’s on, any of the standard frame sizes shot on it, or, likely, even the paper band that holds it closed. Calling 120 120mm is like calling Disc film Discmm: it’s incorrect and makes no sense.

Film data index: film and notch codes, data sheets, available formats, and more

Nicolai Grossman 7 Comments

I’ve put together an index of film codes/edge markings, data sheets links, available formats, large format notch codes, and more, for every photographic film in production that I could find info for.

Please email me with any corrections or additions! (Include a link to your Web site, if you have one, so I can credit you in the contributors section.)

The index is here on Photon Detector (in the Tools & Reference section).

An update listing instant films will follow soon. Enjoy!

Cheap DIY UV photography?

Nicolai Grossman 1 Comment

Instructables member Tool Using Animal writes:

For years I’ve wanted to mess around with UV photography. Unfortunately, all the websites on DIY UV seem to assume an infinite amount of money and access to specialized equipment on my part. There are two things that I don’t like, when someone tells me I HAVE to spend a lot of money (quartz lenses starting at $3000) or that i need specialized equipment (Wratten 18A filters, not cheap either). So I set out to do it my way, and here’s my $5 solution to UV wavelength photography.

Read instructions at Instructables

mc at uga at edu posted this comment at MAKE Blog (where I found this link):

I don’t want to be a party-pooper, but I’m not at all sure this is ultraviolet photography. Certainly the light bulb piece is a good substitute for an expensive filter, but is the camera responding to UV or to the small amounts of visible light that also get through? Most camera lenses block UV almost totally. If they didn’t, color rendition would be poor.

I suggest making a UV pinhole camera. Film (black-and-white) is very sensitive to UV if there isn’t any glass in the path.

The optical cement used to glue the elements together in modern lenses does block a good deal of UV already, so I suspect that mc is correct, but I’m not 100%. Anyone have any further insight?