Month: August 2007

Without Lenses issue #2 is up

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Erin Malone, editor of Without Lenses, "a quarterly journal exploring the art and craft of lensless photography", says:

This quarter brings a host of new interviews, the start of our technical article series and new features courtesy of our new content management system—Public Square.

Our two interviews are with a representative, Yvette Pasqua, of the Pinhole Camp at the Burning Man festival which begins August 27th and with Lou Krueger, professor at Bowling Green State University, who creates the most interesting dioramas and custom cameras for capturing these spaces.

The technical series kicks off with a basic how-to and a more complex look at making filters on the cheap. These articles are brought to us through the generosity of our technical editor, Tom Persinger, and the f295 forum members who have written these articles. Earl Johnson’s ‘how-to’ piece on building a foam coare 4×5″ camera is featured in this issue. Look for one or two of these technical pieces on a monthly basis.

Lastly, the switch over to our content management system—a feat that has taken the bulk of the last 3 months—brings a host of new community tools. You can now rate and review articles. You can submit story ideas directly into the system and rate ideas submitted by other readers. We will use this forum for deciding what ideas to pursue. Additionally, all readers who contribute reviews or articles, earn reputation, can create a brief bio and link to their own work and basically own their words in the context of this venue.

We hope these new features help provide for some lively discussion about the articles, help find new talent to feature, foster authorship and generally spread the ownership of Without Lenses to you, the readers.

We hope you enjoy this issue.
www.withoutlenses.com

Kodak Monographs now available for free download

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These three Kodak publications are available as PDF downloads from archive.org. As you can see, they’re quite old, and the copyright has expired.

Kodak Monograph 1: The silver bromide grain of photographic emulsions, Adrian Peter Herman Trivelli (1921)

Kodak Monograph 2: The theory of development, Adolph H. Nietz (1922)

The Photographic Negative, William Henry Burbank (1888)

Written as a practical guide to the preparation of sensitive surfaces by the calotype, albumen, collodion, and gelatin processes, on glass and paper, with supplementary chapters on development, etc.

Photographic printing methods: a practical guide to the professional and amateur worker, William Henry Burbank (1891) (thanks, Glenn!)

Via APUG member Emulsion

Camp Obscura pinhole photography workshop, NM, US

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Check out the Camp Obscura pinhole photography workshop led by Jackie Mathey:

  • Construct your own 4×5 super wide pinhole camera.
  • Expose images using black and white photographic paper and film.
  • Develop your own images.
  • Quick viewing with digitally scanned images.
  • Craft your images into works of art with the cyanotype printing process.
  • Create a camera obscura and experience what it is like to be inside a camera!

Each camp is held at the historic home of Olive Rush, currently the Friends Meeting Hall at 630 Canyon Road, in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The space is a beautiful adobe home with a rambling back yard situated about half way up Canyon Road offering a plethora of image making options for the pinhole photographer.

In this beautiful small group setting we will build our 4×5 super wide pinhole cameras and get a hands on approach to the geometry of photography. As we experience the camera obscura first hand we gain an intimate understand of the way light moves and images are revealed. We will expose and develop images, made with black and white photographic film and paper, while exploring unique locations. Negatives will be digitally scanned for quick viewing while our printing will be done in the alternative process of cyanotype. As a group we will create a short pinhole animation that will be digitized onto a disc for each participant along with scans of their images.

Join us for adventures in pinhole photography and the camera obscura and explore the history, art and techniques of this beautiful and intuitive process in its simplest and most rewarding form.

The workshop runs nights & weekends 21–28 September, 2007, at Friends Meeting Hall, Santa Fe, NM, US.

More info at CampObscura.com

Film formats and lens lengths

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I’ve got some relatively set preferences for lens lengths, but as I shoot more formats, I’m discovering that I have sometimes very different tastes for them.

For straight 35mm and 6×6, I don’t like anything longer than "normal": 80mm on 6×6 and 45mm on 35mm. (I actually find 50mm a bit long on 135 and prefer the 45mms on my Contax G2 and Hasselblad/Fuji XPan, and 28mm (44.8mm equivalent) on my 1.6x DSLR.) As I’ve written before, long lenses in these formats are pretty much strictly utility items for when I physically can’t get close enough to something. I’d rather go wide, sometimes very wide—I’ve been drooling over the 38mm 6×6 Hasselblad SWC for several years.

On 4×5, I find the "normal"-to-slightly-wide 150mm utterly boring and uninspiring. A Fuji 150/5.6 was the only modern large format lens I had until about two months ago. I did shoot a couple of frames I’m happy with with it, but I found its field of view so blah that I barely bothered to shoot with it at all. I recently bought a 210/5.6, which is getting there, but I was surprised to find that it’s still not long enough! I don’t know whether it’s the 4:5 aspect ratio, or because of the way I see when I have movements available, but my inclination on the format is to go long. (I have to be 2.5-3 feet away from my subject to shoot a head-and-neck shot with the 210mm, which is just too close. I feel like I breathing down their necks.)

It may also be because I’m just beginning with premeditated portraiture, and I’m doing it with this kit… I’m sure I’m in for loads of surprises with that. No interest in going wide so far. I have seen some spectacular LF wide angle landscape photography, but that’s not the kind of landscape pictures I’m interested in making right now.

I also recently picked up a half frame 35mm Olympus Pen FT SLR, which came with a 40mm, close-focussing lens. It’s kind of long on half frame (which has the same aspect ratio as a normal 35mm frame), but it suits me fine. I got a 25mm for it, which I’ve mounted and looked at stuff through, but haven’t felt the need to take a single shot through it yet.

Portraiture with 4×5 is making me want to try 150mm on 6×6, though. I think the only long lens I have for the format, a 350mm, is probably just too much for me.

I’m about to take the plunge into 8×10, which has the same aspect ratio as 4×5, but I’m curious to see if any surprises come out of that. With a viewfinder with four times the area, who knows? It’s bound to change the way I see in one direction or another.

Peeling Daguerreotype on silvered glass: WOW!

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Peeling Daguerreotype by Jason Greenberg Motamedi

Look what happened when Jason Greenberg Motamedi tried making a Daguerreotype on silvered glass! He says:

I made a few marginally successful Becquerel plates last year using silvered glass, however something about the traditional method (perhaps the heat of the Mercury?) caused much of the silver to flake off in the fixer.

Yes! Beautiful! Long string of positive expletives!

You can see more of his work at his Web site, motamedi.info, and at his excellent Daguerreotype blog, daguerreotypy.blogspot.com.

 

Further reading: Motamedi’s Brief Guide to Becquerel Daguerreotypy, The Daguerreian Society.

 

Photo © copyright 2006 Jason Greenberg Motamedi. Used with permission.

f295 2008 Symposium Update

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Tom Persinger of f295 writes:

f295 Symposium 2008: An Examination of Lensless, Alternative and Adaptive Photographic Processes is being held in Pittsburgh, PA USA May 29 – June 1, 2008. Here are a few of the latest announcements!

The Official Symposium Hotel

I’m pleased to announce that The Holiday Inn Select at University Center is our official f295 Symposium Hotel partner this year! They’re offering a discounted rate of $115 for single, double, triple or quadruple occupancy. They’re located within easy walking distance to all of the events at CMU.You can find complete information here (including how to register).

Speaker List Nearing Completion

The roster of speakers is nearing completion. We will probably have one, maybe two more added but we already have a solid line-up:
– Martha Casanave
– Jill Enfield
– Jesseca Ferguson
– Jerry Spagnoli
– Keith Taylor
– Ilan Wolff

You can read some of their bios here.

Workshops

We may be expanding our number of workshop days to include Wednesday and Thursday (instead of just the weekend). We’ll be announcing several others over the coming weeks, but so far we have confirmed the following three:
– An Artistic Approach to Digital Negatives with Jill Enfield
– Daguerreotype Workshop with Mike Robinson
– Wet-Plate Collodion

The Schedule

This year promises to be bigger and better than 2007. Don’t miss our opening night festivities which is focused around an open work sharing event—bring your images, gear, cameras, etc. and set it up to share with others. We’ll also have a few choice vendors present as well including our good friends at B&H Photo.

Exhibitions

Several exhibtions are already planned by The Society for Contemporary Craft, Pittsburgh Cultural Trust’s gallery at 709 Penn Avenue and Silver Eye Center for Photography. Stay tuned for more information about these exciting events!

Complete, up to the minute, Symposium 2008 information may be found at www.f295.org/symposium2008.

Your thoughts and ideas about the event are welcome. Feel free to email with any suggestions you may have.

All the best,
Tom Persinger