Here are nefotografas‘s instructions for adapting the very cheap Kodak Instamatic 100 camera to use 35mm film. There’s also a bigger version here.
This looks very easy to do, no major camera surgery required. Nice!
Tag: camera
New Fujifilm medium format film camera?
According to Photography BLOG, Fujifilm will display a prototype of a new medium format camera at PMA this year (the Photo Marketing Association trade show), which runs from 31 Jan – 2 Feb, 2008. They say that “details … are scarce at the moment, so we’ll try and get more info for you next week at PMA”. Stay tuned!
Razzledog’s prototype 4×5 SLR
Australian Polaroid-to-4×5-rangefinder camera modifier Razzledog built a prototype 4×5 SLR! He says:
I have long had dreams of building a 4×5 SLR……so this prototype is currently under review. The advantages are finally the image is right side up, so I no longer have to stand on my head….. I don’t have to worry about any parallax issues so I get perfect framing without fear of any cropping……and interchangable lenses are no problem. It has bellows so awesome macro is also permissible…
Continue reading and check out photos at Razzledog’s site.
DIY half-frame camera mod
Check out this sweet half-frame camera modification by bricolage.108!
If I understand the annotated version on Flickr correctly, he’s put in a sliding mask that blocks off half the frame at a time and a cord that you pull to re-cock the shutter without advancing the frame. So the sequence is: make an exposure, move the sliding mask to the other half of the frame with the paper clip, re-cock the shutter by pulling the dental floss, make another exposure, advance the film, re-set the mask, and start over again. Excellent!
In addition to the obvious benefit of getting twice as many exposures per roll, there’s an artistic benefit as well: since it doubles the enlargement factor over a normal frame of 35mm, you can get the grain to fall apart at smaller print sizes. Granted, most people seem to want to go in the other direction, but I really like that look for certain types of images.
UPDATE: Mr. 108 has added more notes on the photo and an excellent description of how he did it as well as some photos he made with this camera. I can’t wait to try this!
I also forgot to mention that he’s the same guy who came up with the inspired double-sided lens/pinhole bi-cam hack. Way to go, bricolage.108!
Film is digital and digital is analog
Think you’re cutting edge and cool because you lead an up-to-the-minute digital lifestyle and shoot digital because film is old? Fuck you! Think you’re more virtuous than the unwashed infidel masses because you shoot film and only listen to music on vinyl? Fuck you, too! Of course if you’re in either of these groups, you’re probably unperturbed by facts anyway, but you both can suck on this:
Film is a binary medium. Either enough photons hit a particular grain of silver halide to alter its charge—after which it will turn into a grain in the developed image—or not. There or not, on or off, 1 or 0, with nothing in between. Film is binary.
Sensors in digital cameras are inherently analog devices. Each sensor site responds to light by producing a continuously variable ("analog") voltage which is then converted to a numeric value by an analog to digital converter.
So use the right tool for the job—whatever that is for you at a given time and task—and shut the fuck up already.
How to un-jam a Hasselblad V-series body
Here’s how to solve one of those "oh, shit" moments, when your Hasselblad body gets stuck:
Ordinarily the lens and body are both cocked. You cannot install a lens unless both the lens and the body are cocked. However, you cannot remove a lens unless both units are cocked. When the condition is otherwise, the lens cannot be removed. This condition is called "jammed". It is really not that way. It is just that the cocked-cocked combination is no longer present. I have found that the lens is the normal culprit for getting the pair out of sync. Sometimes the lens can fire without being told to do so. This causes the lens and body to be out of sync.
Continue reading the how-to (with pictures) at PhotoWeb Tech
The making of the PanoramaScanCam
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…
Via MAKE Blog
Double-sided lens and pinhole bi-cam
Flickr member bricolage.108 hacked a 35mm trashcam into a double-sided lens/pinhole monster. He writes:
If using a normal film roll this camera takes redscaled ["redscale" is where you shoot the film backwards, so the light gets filtered through the antihalation layers before hitting the emulsion and turns the image red/orange or yellow, depending on the film] pinholes from one side, and trashy lens shots on the other. It also makes doubles, exposing both sides of the film.
The same way if i redscale the roll first, i can take redcale shots using the lens and "normal" pinholes, on the same roll with the same camera.
I can, for example overlap the same subject using two "different cameras" and techniques or (and this i think it’s conceptually interesting) create (simultaneously) an image where the shot and what’s "behind the camera" are both visible.
Here’s an image he made with it, more here.
Book pinhole camera
Flickr member Sreiny made this pinhole camera from a book. Check out more photos of the construction of the camera and photos it made in this photoset on Flickr.
Via MAKE Blog
Homemade pinholga floppy disc shutter
Check out Will Luo‘s sweet 3rd-generation homemade pinholga floppy disc shutter. He writes:
the third incarnation of the pinholga’s shutter. i got the idea of using a floppy disk from this blog entry. this one is customized for the holga though. it was much easier and faster to make than the last version:
1. cut off the part of the disk that has the spring-loaded protector. the disk i got had some soft paper coating inside which i removed as well.
2. make a small cut here and bend the corner up to make a small "handle" that can be used to push the floppy door open. i glued a little piece of foam there to make it less slippery for the cable release…
Continue reading at Luo’s Flickr photostream.