RE-35 | Digital cartridges for analog 35-mm cameras

via re35.net

If only this was true. Got duped this morning by a late April fools. Flexible 35mm digital sensors for old film cameras.

Posted via email from Charlotte's posterous

New films from the Impossible Project for SX-70

via the-impossible-project.com

Hoorah hoorah, new films for the Polaroid SX-70 instant camera. Love the story behind this company and can't wait to get my hands on the new monochrome films, which are apparently on sale later this week – bet they sell out in hours!

Posted via web from Charlotte's posterous

"Wow, that meal was delicious: you must have a great oven"

For various reasons, today I've been thinking about the camera kit that I have at home. This morning I stumbled across a random website (that I now can't find! This is the first time this has EVER happened to me with the Internet - normally I'm straight back there) that had one of those photography sayings that says "It's not the camera, but the photographer who's using it that counts."

Normally, I'd be nodding sagely and agreeing with them - but there was something about the metaphor they used that rang bells in my mind. The little vignette that the blogger painted was of someone serving up a great meal to their friends, and one of the guests saying "Hey, that's delicious: you must have a really expensive/great oven!". The blogger then likened this to someone seeing a beautiful photograph and saying to the photographer: "Wow, that's stunning - your camera must be really expensive..."

I can see their point. I have countless mouldy cameras that I defend with the exact same idea - that it's not the quality of the image, but the content, ideas and inspiration of the photographer that matters the most. I've seen incredible images taken with crappy camera phones, and rubbish ones shot with Hasselblads – but for the first time, I'm not sure that this maxim completely works.

Let's go back into the cooking metaphor. If you're only armed with a saucepan, a knife and some average-quality ingredients, then you're going to have to really know your spices and timings to produce an edible meal. Obviously even if you're not Michelin-starred, you could probably churn out some tasty comfort food: something to fill your belly on a cold night or shovel into your mouth before work to keep you going. Food as fuel, but not food as exciting, life-reaffirming art.

So if you want your guests to be wowed, to fall to the floor and cry: "oh my God, I didn't know food could taste this good!" then you're going to need top-quality ingredients and some high-end kitchen equipment to boot. Why do you think chefs spend so much money and time on their knives? They're tools that they use every single day, and only the best blade will make their job - expressing their creativity through food - easier. Try producing molecular gastronomy with only a wooden spoon and your best intentions. Obviously, it won't work - and that's not your fault (although really, you probably should have realised before you invited your friends over...) – you just don't have the right equipment.

Equally though, if you pay out for kit but have no idea what you're doing with it, it's very likely that you'll end up phoning for pizza. You need to know how to use those gadgets and gizmos to best effect - you need to know how flavours combine and sing, how to gently and tenderly slow-roast a piece of meat to bring out its best, and how to balance courses so your guests end up satied, delighting in the clever interplay between tastes and pleasantly full rather than overblown and stuffed.

Back in the world of photography, my metaphor stands – if you're a gifted photographer that understands the interplay of light, colour, tone and shadow, then yes - pick up any camera, no matter how crappy, and you'll create imagery that people will enjoy - but it's top-quality glass, sensors, films or camera bodies that you need in order to express your creativity most effectively and create imagery that's jaw-droppingly, awe-inspiringly world class. So unsurprisingly, most of the time you'll find that the camera the professional's using was expensive - and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

 

Posted via web from Charlotte's posterous

Holga & Diana Camera Workshop @ Garage Studios

via garage-studios.co.uk

Earlier this year I went on a course at Garage Studios where I learned the ins and outs of my LC-A camera – they've just started offering Holga and Diana courses as well. Can't recommend these Brighton-based chaps highly enough – they're friendly, helpful and you're guaranteed to come away very happy with your camera.

Posted via web from Charlotte's posterous

new york, new york...

This was my umpteenth visit to New York: I just can't get enough of it.

Unfortunately I fell sick with some sort of bug on the third day of our trip, which laid me up for two days. Still, inbetween bouts of sickness, I got to watch the "Deadliest Catch" Memorial Day Marathon - two straight days of crab fishing in the Arctic Circle. Will there be crab in the pot? Will it be big enough? Will they meet their quota? Weirdly, can't get enough of this program - reckon it's my seaside roots...

Er...anyway! What was extremely nice is that on the second-to-last day of our trip, which also happened to be my birthday, I woke up feeling much better and my significant other gave me the best present he could possibly have handed me - a Lomo LC-A+.

Back in the UK, three weeks later, I finally got round to developing the shots. I somewhat dismissively opened the packet that contained the negs and CD from my first roll and I (quite literally) found myself stopping dead in the street and staring, open mouthed, at the teeny-tiny contact sheet of images. Most of the shots hadn't worked, as I'd expected - but some, just some, seemed to sparkle with a life of their own - even if it was just the corners of shots that were in focus or the weird vignetting perfectly framing scenes.

As I peered at the contact sheet I held my breath - something clicked inside me and I completely, utterly, irrevocably fell in love with this tiny, crappily-built and horribly over-priced camera.

Damn it.

the new arrival (or why I'm going to be spending all my paycheck on developing costs for the forseeable future)

Now we come to the slide-show portion of our program:


So today I got home from work (rushed home, as I'm halfway through this at the moment and can't wait for the next seminars) and found that this rather exciting package was waiting for me....


I'm no stamp-aholic, but this looks promising. Particularly loving the old-school twine approach to postal security.



Well, it's certainly wrapped well. I've never seen such incredibly sound packaging (and I get sent some pretty expensive camera gear on a very regular basis). Now to extract it from its polystyrene coffin...

Ok, polystyrene off – uncovered soft leather baglet... but what's inside said baglet?

YEAH! It's my new lilac Smena Symbol, fresh from the Ukraine via eBay – a well spent lunchbreak asking people on Twitter for user reviews while also researching different Lomo cameras and gasping at how much Urban Outfitters was charging for them vs how cheap they were on t'Bay resulted in this absolute gem of a camera.


Jeez - what do all these dials mean? Where's Aperture Priority? What about full auto?

I don't think we're in DSLR land any more, Toto... :)

Can't wait to try this out in NYC in two weeks time. That now brings the total kit-count to two 35mm film cameras, two DSLRs plus four lenses, two camcorders and a whole heap of chargers and adaptors. I'm going to need a bigger suitcase.