...which I am now reliably informed is not a new product, even though it's only a concept! This silicon film was premiered back in 2001. Thanks to @alkchan.
Showing posts with label film is so expensive. Show all posts
Showing posts with label film is so expensive. Show all posts
Monday, 4 April 2011
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.
Tuesday, 16 March 2010
Orangette: food photography using film
I was originally into this blog about a year ago, then restumbled across a group of old bookmarks in my browser and rediscovered it. In her FAQ she says she's shooting everything on film after falling back in love with the format (sounds familiar!) and some of these, though they look a little Poladroidy to my admittedly untrained eye, are simply stunning.
But the cost, the cost! Yeouch. As much as I would adore to shoot all my food work on Polaroid, thanks to the cost of a pack I would have to remortgage the cottage to do so. Fingers crossed that the Impossible Project brings out something cheap for my SX-70 in a few months' time..
Beautiful writing and blog though, worth poking around in.
Monday, 1 February 2010
"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.
Friday, 22 January 2010
Scanning for Sprockets
An excellent guide to scanning in 35mm negatives and keeping sprocket holes. I always wondered about how people did that. Looks like I need to get myself a scanner...
Tuesday, 14 July 2009
how to completely fail (and then succeed) at loading 127 film
Following my last post, I thought it'd be appropriate to record my first attempts at loading 127 film into my new/old Kodak Brownie 127. 35mm, not a problem - but this 127 looked like it was gonna be tricky.
I'd managed to get hold of two rolls of Efke R100 from retrophotographic.com, and they'd set me back £5 or so each. Youch. It'd be worth it, I reassured myself.
Even the outside of the film didn't look easy. I was going to need some help. Enter the ever-wonderful FrugalPhotographer.com, and their downloadble PDF guide to getting this dastardly roll into your retro 127-takin' camera.
I also reached for my new-found-best-friend, my roll of black electrical tape. I knew I was going to need this once the film was loaded, to cover up the little red hole where the film numbers pop into view on the back of the camera, but it turned out I was going to need it sooner than that...
Snipping through the sticker that held the protective paper casing (or so I thought) around the film, I also happpily snipped through the VITAL PIECE OF FILM that fed into the take-up spool. Cue electrical tape. Also, there was no protective paper casing as the PDF guide had suggested, which flummoxed me a bit. (post-finishing edit: Ha! I thought I was flummoxed then?)
The film roll had a notch in it where it clipped into the advance wheel on the top of the camera. Or, again, so I thought. Turns out my camera actually had an empty roll in the place where the film's meant to sit, and no take-up spool - this actually makes sense, as when shooting 127 finished film is left on the take-up spool and removed from the camera without winding back to the first roll as with 35mm - but I didn't know that at the time. So, I happily loaded my film into the wrong side of the camera, connected it to, again, the wrong side of the camera, and sat back to admire my handiwork...
Hmm. Why was it upside down? And why, when I turned the film advance wheel, did the film not go anywhere, and simply start to pile up (and look worryingly loose around the spindle)...oh...
...And, the big, backwards-shaped penny dropped. It looked wrong because I'd loaded the film backwards, that's why. Sigh. This gaping maw in the centre of the picture is where the film should be. Yes, I'm a prize doofus.
And then, to add insult to injury, in the process of reloading it correctly this happened - the PDF was littered with warnings about "hold onto the springy film" and "DO NOT let go of the film", which of course I ignored - and then the film sprang out of my grasp and light flooded in between the rolls of paper. SIGH.
Having resigned myself to ruining this roll (that's £5 down the drain) I decided to go ahead and load it properly anyway, to make sure I was doing something right.
That's better! Starting to look like the camera in the PDF now...
...plus the advance wheel actually advances the film. And for my final trick – the little red window, complete with electrical tape and shot number. (I thought I'd use the flash through the red window, just to make properly sure the film was ruined)
Now all that remains is to pretend to take several pictures, get to the end, get the film out of the camera, load the damn thing properly and start taking pictures for real. To be continued...
I'd managed to get hold of two rolls of Efke R100 from retrophotographic.com, and they'd set me back £5 or so each. Youch. It'd be worth it, I reassured myself.
Even the outside of the film didn't look easy. I was going to need some help. Enter the ever-wonderful FrugalPhotographer.com, and their downloadble PDF guide to getting this dastardly roll into your retro 127-takin' camera.
I also reached for my new-found-best-friend, my roll of black electrical tape. I knew I was going to need this once the film was loaded, to cover up the little red hole where the film numbers pop into view on the back of the camera, but it turned out I was going to need it sooner than that...
Snipping through the sticker that held the protective paper casing (or so I thought) around the film, I also happpily snipped through the VITAL PIECE OF FILM that fed into the take-up spool. Cue electrical tape. Also, there was no protective paper casing as the PDF guide had suggested, which flummoxed me a bit. (post-finishing edit: Ha! I thought I was flummoxed then?)
The film roll had a notch in it where it clipped into the advance wheel on the top of the camera. Or, again, so I thought. Turns out my camera actually had an empty roll in the place where the film's meant to sit, and no take-up spool - this actually makes sense, as when shooting 127 finished film is left on the take-up spool and removed from the camera without winding back to the first roll as with 35mm - but I didn't know that at the time. So, I happily loaded my film into the wrong side of the camera, connected it to, again, the wrong side of the camera, and sat back to admire my handiwork...
Hmm. Why was it upside down? And why, when I turned the film advance wheel, did the film not go anywhere, and simply start to pile up (and look worryingly loose around the spindle)...oh...
...And, the big, backwards-shaped penny dropped. It looked wrong because I'd loaded the film backwards, that's why. Sigh. This gaping maw in the centre of the picture is where the film should be. Yes, I'm a prize doofus.
And then, to add insult to injury, in the process of reloading it correctly this happened - the PDF was littered with warnings about "hold onto the springy film" and "DO NOT let go of the film", which of course I ignored - and then the film sprang out of my grasp and light flooded in between the rolls of paper. SIGH.
Having resigned myself to ruining this roll (that's £5 down the drain) I decided to go ahead and load it properly anyway, to make sure I was doing something right.
That's better! Starting to look like the camera in the PDF now...
...plus the advance wheel actually advances the film. And for my final trick – the little red window, complete with electrical tape and shot number. (I thought I'd use the flash through the red window, just to make properly sure the film was ruined)
Now all that remains is to pretend to take several pictures, get to the end, get the film out of the camera, load the damn thing properly and start taking pictures for real. To be continued...
Friday, 10 April 2009
Why I like my Lomo (by a digital photographer)
A few weeks ago I developed a big bag of film from my Lomo Fisheye 2. For anyone who doesn't know (probably all of you, let's face it), my Fisheye was given to me at Photokina 2009 by a overly generous press officer working on their stand. I'd spotted the incredible Lomo stand and was desperate to speak to someone about their cameras, so in between the endless cycle of meetings and press events I spotted a window of opportunity and dragged my slightly bemused co-worker to the riotous Lomo stand.
(note - this shot was taken before the event started. It was a lot busier at the time, honest!)
Squeezing through the crowds, I made my way to the press desk, determined to "make first contact" with someone on the Lomo team. I'd run out of business cards about six meetings ago and the only worker who wasn't involved in an animated discussion with a trendy hipster only spoke halting English. Somehow my fervent: "Honestly, I work for a *cough* digital *cough* photography magazine, which I know isn't quite relevant to your company, but I really love your stand and I'd love to know more about Lomography," translated into her grinning, nodding and handing me my very own Lomo camera. It was a bit like that scene in Before Sunrise where the stone-broke lead character persuades a bartender to give him a bottle of wine on the house so that the serendipitous couple can continue having the best night of their life. Anyway.
For the rest of the trip I skipped around Cologne beaming from ear to ear, happily clutching what a lot of my digital colleagues have since dismissed as a "toy camera". Back home I gloated for about two weeks straight, proudly displaying my prize on my desk. And then I started using it.
Taking pictures with film has been completely enlightening. I only really got into photography when I got my job with the magazines, so I'm almost wholly a child of the digital age - taking a picture where you can't see if it's worked until you develop it has blown my tiny mind. It's so freeing. And I know how cliched that sounds, but it is.
Initially I snapped. I had no idea about exposure times or focal length and was unable to set the aperture - all I could do was point the camera, shoot and keep my fingers crossed. I developed the occasional film here and there, and maybe five out of the twenty-four pictures could be classed as keepers. The number of completely dark ones where I'd left the lenscap on was slightly frightening - there was nothing to beep at me and say "take the lenscap off!". It started to make me less lazy, and my photographic muscles revelled in suddenly being asked to work. Bit like when you haven't been for a run for weeks, and it hurts like hell but simultaneously feels so good.
As an experiment I decided to make the Lomo my primary camera and take it everywhere that I'd usually take a digital camera. A quick holiday to Paris, pre Christmas? My only camera was my Fisheye. A shoot for Photo Pro at the De la Warr Pavilion? I'm there, snapping away, to the absolute delight of the photographer who laughed with real happiness and demanded to take pictures of it. An Olympus event with David Bailey at Holborn Studios? I whip out the Lomo and everyone (including the Olympus reps) crowds round cooing about "the old days" while Bailey stops his own conversation and eyes it suspiciously from afar. One of the nicest things about the Fisheye is that it makes everyone smile. DSLRs just don't do that.
The downsides: practically speaking, it's freaking expensive to run. I developed 7 films the other day (the big bag that I mentioned at the start of this ramble) and it set me back £40, which really shocked me. I guess this is my karmic payback for spending the last two years blagging memory cards which I'd then carelessly run over or send through the wash.
When I was only developing one or two films, every photo I pulled out of the pack made me squeak with excitement - but having developed this big whammy of images, I began to notice the camera's limitations. The in-camera flash doesn't extend past the lens enough, so when I use it at night or in dark situations there's a large shadow cast. See:
Annoying, isn't it? This shadow is in everything I took after dark, meaning about an eighth of the shot is blacked out. And there's nothing I can do about it, besides getting an off-camera flash. The camera does have a hotshoe mount so perhaps there's a flash available for it - will have to investigate further...
Here I was all set to continue rambling, writing more about how the limitations of my Lomo has made me think I'd be better off buying my own DSLR - but having dived into the big stack of shots to fish out this badly-lit shot of my Christmas tree, I started smiling at the images I'd forgotten. Shots of my "plus one", riding escalators in Paris - pictures of my friends at New Years Eve, and again at my recent MA graduation. Yes, some are badly lit, and there's still loads of shots of the inside of my lenscap, but these images have an immediacy that my digital shots just don't possess and that's what I love about it. They might not be technically correct but they bring back the memory of the event, which is what I was trying to capture anyway. And the idea that there are "rules of photography" have always irked me somewhat. At an amateur level, all that matters is that you like the images that you take. If you're selling shots, then your client needs to like them too. That's it, surely.
Of course, in a more practical sense, the cost of developing all these films is hugely prohibitive. If I can get that Lomo effect with a digital camera, I'd be as happy as the proverbial Larry. I wonder if it's possible...
(note - this shot was taken before the event started. It was a lot busier at the time, honest!)Squeezing through the crowds, I made my way to the press desk, determined to "make first contact" with someone on the Lomo team. I'd run out of business cards about six meetings ago and the only worker who wasn't involved in an animated discussion with a trendy hipster only spoke halting English. Somehow my fervent: "Honestly, I work for a *cough* digital *cough* photography magazine, which I know isn't quite relevant to your company, but I really love your stand and I'd love to know more about Lomography," translated into her grinning, nodding and handing me my very own Lomo camera. It was a bit like that scene in Before Sunrise where the stone-broke lead character persuades a bartender to give him a bottle of wine on the house so that the serendipitous couple can continue having the best night of their life. Anyway.
For the rest of the trip I skipped around Cologne beaming from ear to ear, happily clutching what a lot of my digital colleagues have since dismissed as a "toy camera". Back home I gloated for about two weeks straight, proudly displaying my prize on my desk. And then I started using it.
Taking pictures with film has been completely enlightening. I only really got into photography when I got my job with the magazines, so I'm almost wholly a child of the digital age - taking a picture where you can't see if it's worked until you develop it has blown my tiny mind. It's so freeing. And I know how cliched that sounds, but it is.
Initially I snapped. I had no idea about exposure times or focal length and was unable to set the aperture - all I could do was point the camera, shoot and keep my fingers crossed. I developed the occasional film here and there, and maybe five out of the twenty-four pictures could be classed as keepers. The number of completely dark ones where I'd left the lenscap on was slightly frightening - there was nothing to beep at me and say "take the lenscap off!". It started to make me less lazy, and my photographic muscles revelled in suddenly being asked to work. Bit like when you haven't been for a run for weeks, and it hurts like hell but simultaneously feels so good.
As an experiment I decided to make the Lomo my primary camera and take it everywhere that I'd usually take a digital camera. A quick holiday to Paris, pre Christmas? My only camera was my Fisheye. A shoot for Photo Pro at the De la Warr Pavilion? I'm there, snapping away, to the absolute delight of the photographer who laughed with real happiness and demanded to take pictures of it. An Olympus event with David Bailey at Holborn Studios? I whip out the Lomo and everyone (including the Olympus reps) crowds round cooing about "the old days" while Bailey stops his own conversation and eyes it suspiciously from afar. One of the nicest things about the Fisheye is that it makes everyone smile. DSLRs just don't do that.
The downsides: practically speaking, it's freaking expensive to run. I developed 7 films the other day (the big bag that I mentioned at the start of this ramble) and it set me back £40, which really shocked me. I guess this is my karmic payback for spending the last two years blagging memory cards which I'd then carelessly run over or send through the wash.
When I was only developing one or two films, every photo I pulled out of the pack made me squeak with excitement - but having developed this big whammy of images, I began to notice the camera's limitations. The in-camera flash doesn't extend past the lens enough, so when I use it at night or in dark situations there's a large shadow cast. See:
Annoying, isn't it? This shadow is in everything I took after dark, meaning about an eighth of the shot is blacked out. And there's nothing I can do about it, besides getting an off-camera flash. The camera does have a hotshoe mount so perhaps there's a flash available for it - will have to investigate further...Here I was all set to continue rambling, writing more about how the limitations of my Lomo has made me think I'd be better off buying my own DSLR - but having dived into the big stack of shots to fish out this badly-lit shot of my Christmas tree, I started smiling at the images I'd forgotten. Shots of my "plus one", riding escalators in Paris - pictures of my friends at New Years Eve, and again at my recent MA graduation. Yes, some are badly lit, and there's still loads of shots of the inside of my lenscap, but these images have an immediacy that my digital shots just don't possess and that's what I love about it. They might not be technically correct but they bring back the memory of the event, which is what I was trying to capture anyway. And the idea that there are "rules of photography" have always irked me somewhat. At an amateur level, all that matters is that you like the images that you take. If you're selling shots, then your client needs to like them too. That's it, surely.
Of course, in a more practical sense, the cost of developing all these films is hugely prohibitive. If I can get that Lomo effect with a digital camera, I'd be as happy as the proverbial Larry. I wonder if it's possible...
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