The Plastic Lens ~ Words » Miscellaneous

Unsensored [Coda] & Upcoming Events

Cameron — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 14:23:40 +0000

It’s been a busy year and it’s not over yet. Coming up in September is something I’ve been looking forward to for oh, 2 years now, since the last one! The Ballarat International Foto Biennale is about to kick off and anyone who is even vaguely interested in Photography would find more than enough to entertain and enlighten them in the month of September in the beautiful country Victorian town of Ballarat and it’s surroundings. Comprising 20 Core exhibitions, 60 Fringe shows, workshops, seminars, portfolio reviews, affiliate events, artist floor talks, camera market, special events…and much more it should be a fantastic start to Spring!
Then if that wasn’t enough, before we know it the next World Toy Camera Day will be upon us! That’s right, not long now, October 17, 2009 to be precise. There are other very funky thangs like HolgaPalooza happening at the moment, but perhaps I’ll get a chance to talk about that in my next post.

Finally I’ll leave you with a short movie filmed on the digital harinezumi. Wrapping up the last day of the Unsensored 09 exhibition at the Collingwood Gallery, Melbourne, Victoria on 19th August 2009. Covering the work of 43 artists using film in their photographic expression. Thanks to the committee and all who participated, exhibited, helped and attended. It was great!
Music: tiny beats by twoth – Lost films vol. 1 Powershovel Audio Allstars – www.powershovelaudio.com

Melbourne in Winter

Cameron — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 13:25:41 +0000

This post is not about photography or toy cameras per se, but about Melbourne at night this Winter. I went to the excellent Dali – Liquid Desires exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria late night and afterwards wandered around with my BBF attached to a tripod, shutter set on “B” for some night exposures. In Federation Square they had this great installation set up called VOLUME. It’s an audio visual installation made up of LED embedded pillars which respond with light and audio to people walking around them. It’s absolutely facinating and has to be experienced to truly appreciate it. This short video captures some of the ambience of thi audio-visual installation, which currently at Federation Square in Melbourne as part of The Light in Winter 2009 events. Some of the video is captured with the Digital Harinezumi by Superheadz and some on a more conventional Kodak M1093S camera. All audio is actual sound from the installation (and ambient surrounding noise)

VOLUME from artpunk on Vimeo.

‘Sometimes We Yearn For The Dream’

Cameron — Sat, 30 May 2009 02:13:14 +0000

Apologies for a general lack of content and updates. Dealing with a busy work environment (thank you Swine Flu!) and family life has left me with less time and energy than I normally would have. I am still taking photos when I can, of course. Thanks to a contact on flickr who pointed me to a Wired article on the blackbird,fly with a brief chat with Powershovel’s Hideki Ohmori. You can read the article here: Why a Plastic Camera Pioneer Reinvented Lo-Fi Film Shooters. I like his reply when asked why he was obsessed with film, where he explains that we can appreciate the quirks of film more so now we have digital to compare it with and says “We do not always want a faithful representation of reality. Sometimes we yearn for a dream.”

In other news I was browsing a local “Opportunity Shop” the other day and spied an Olympus XA camera with flash in it’s original box for a modest amount.

Olympus XA

Sure, it isn’t a toy camera, but I do shoot with other film cameras from time to time and had heard some good things about this camera, so I made a note to go back there with some money, but my youngest chose that time to fall off the school playground equipment and fracture her radius. So off to the hospital we went. By the time we left the hospital the shop was shut, but thankfully the camera was still there the next morning. I will be taking the camera loaded with film out soon and report back with example photos. There is so much more I have to share with you good readers, but that will have to wait a few days as unfortunately, work beckons again!

Harinezumi & World Wide Pinhole Photography Day!!

Cameron — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 00:14:36 +0000

The Digital Harinezumi from Superheadz

Woot! Double bonus for me (well, triple if you count my coming off nightshift yesterday morning) not only is it World Pinhole Day, my second equal favourite photography day of the year next to World Toy Camera Day, but the Digital Harinezumi from Superheadz arrived from Japan on Friday! More on both of these things later on, including example images and movies, but for now, please enjoy my ‘AudioBoo’

Listen!

Loving The BBF

Cameron — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 09:53:02 +0000

A good old fashioned movie camera.

This post shows a video which was edited from a digital transfer from some good old fashioned analogue 8mm film. Taken with a Fuji Single-8 movie camera; no sound, 16 frames per second, fixed focus, point and shoot – probably the movie camera equivalent of a ‘toy camera’ with wonderful artifacts, colour and retro look to the finished movies.
This example is just a small snippet of some film I shot for Powershovel/Superheadz featuring my favourite plastic Twin Lens Reflex Camera, the blackbird,fly which anyone who has actually been reading this blog (and I know there are a faithful few, thank you!) will be aware of.
Thanks to my lovely family and many thanks to Nick and all at Powershovel/Superheadz.
I have edited the footage in iMovie ’09 and the backing music is ‘Laconic Granny’ by Kevin MacLeod

We Love the BBF from artpunk on Vimeo.

More Harinezumi News

Cameron — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 13:43:07 +0000

Just a quick post, as I’m working a late-early turnover and am quite frankly, stuffed and must hit the sack… thanks to my new tumblr feed, I have read some rather cool and groovy details about the Digital Harinezumi camera on Nic Nichols site. He has been working hard to keep us informed with all the latest developments from those other hard working and quite brilliant people at Powershovel/Superheadz – read the latest here: update the harinezumi is coming

Plastic, Plastic, a little bit of digital…

Cameron — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 08:24:38 +0000

Superheadz Plamodel DIY 35mm Camera

Well, my entries here have been sparse lately, as I have been caught up doing lots of other fun stuff which I will talk about over the course of the next few posts. I have been taking lots of photos with the blackbird,fly as well as capturing my photographic excursions on good old fashioned 8mm film, as part of a project in collaboration with the excellent people from Powershovel/Superheadz. I hope my movie making skills are up to par, I suppose we won’t really know until the film is developed (in Japan) and transferred to digital media for editing, fingers crossed the material will be useful to my Tokyo friends. I’ve certainly had fun taking my family around different locations to photograph and film them, we have traveled to all the usual places I would go to capture the world around me through a plastic lens; the seaside, into the city and just generally mucking around at home as well…

In other upcoming projects I have planned, I will endeavour to construct the SuperHeadz Plamodel DIY 35mm Camera (pictured) before your very eyes in a video how-to. Phil and I discussed this camera in the Photogeek.tv podcast #84 and it looks quite interesting, as well as educational. I am fortunate enough to have one of these kits, so this should be a bit of fun and will test my D.I.Y. skills, as the instructions are in Japanese, but the diagrams seem very straightforward and understandable. I think it should go OK, but the proof of the camera is in the building. Whatever happens – any problems will be due to me, not the kit, I’m sure! Stay tuned for that one anyway, could be interesting!

The Digital Harinezumi from Superheadz

The little bit of digital I refer to in the post title is the Digital Harizenumi, a forthcoming piece of kit from Superheadz that looks to be the coolest blend of analogue ambience encompassed in a digital camera that I have ever seen. Looking a bit like a 110 film cartridge (only way cooler) this piano black camera produces some wonderful analogue like movies as well as shooting still images. Harinezumi translated to English from the Japanese is “hedgehog” and anyone familiar with the cute graphics of Superheadz will know the particular character this refers to! Sure it’s digital, but the results are so full of old-school character (and just sheer magic) from the videos I have seen produced by it, that I would be more than happy to use one! Here is one example movie in colour made by my friend in Tokyo, Nick Dangerfield and another using the cameras black and white mode by him as well. I just love them. I am sure you will be hearing more about the Harinezumi here as well as elsewhere…
You can get more of a taste at this link here: digital harinezumi! You can also read more about it at Nic Nichols site.

February, Fires and Other Things

Cameron — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 00:13:30 +0000

he last few weeks have been extremely hot and dry with high winds, culminating in the worst bushfires Australia has seen in recorded history on Saturday the 7th (now being called “Black Saturday”) where the temperature reached over 46º C and many fires broke out, involving vast swathes of the State and in some cases totally obliterating some townships. Nearly 2000 homes have been destroyed and over 180 people so far have lost their lives (the final numbers are not confirmed yet, but I suspect it will go higher) My family have been fortunate, despite living in area surrounded by many forests, national parks and wooded catchment areas and the like, danger has so far passed us by, but we remain on alert and have important paperwork, photos (and for me, cameras) packed and ready to go should we need to abandon our home in the face of a dangerous threat. Of course our children and our lives are the main priority, so we must be prepared to lose those material things, if need be. So far the weather has settled and we are just waiting for some rain, but early last night as we were preparing to get the kids to bed and relax when we received a few phonecalls in quick succession from concerned friends and relatives, as a fire had broken out just ‘down the hill’ from us. Thankfully it was contained with alacrity by our brave Country Fire Authority volunteers and other emergency service workers who have been tireless in their dedication to protect the community.
I suppose this leads me to ponder on the transience of ‘things’ and the importance of photography in our personal lives and the construction of our reality through our memories. Often the first material things people try to preserve in the face of disasters like fire are their photo albums. I know that looking through my photographs of my wife and children brings me great joy and sparks recollection of happy times that often get buried below the surface of consciousness by the ongoing events and concern of everyday life.

n a lighter note, the French publisher Editions Allia has kindly sent me 5 complimentary copies of the booklet of Andalusian Poetry featuring my Polaroid abstract on the cover. This is my first Book Cover!!

ic Nichols of Four Corners Dark has an interesting interview with hideki ohmori of powershovel you know Powershovel, the cool people behind the blackbird,fly camera – this is part one, so I am looking forward to reading the next installment – update: pert two is here: interview with hideki ohmori of powershovel part two. Thanks Nic! Speaking of the BBF, the latest issue of Lightleaks magazine (Issue 22) has a review of this fine camera by C. Gary Moyer (as well as many other tasty lo-fidelity photographic content)

THE IMPOSSIBLE PROJECT

Cameron — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 19:27:56 +0000

s far as integral ‘instant’ film is concerned it seems there is hope still for the Polaroid fanatics amongst us, myself included.
hats off to Florian Kapps, Lexi (even though I can’t see him in the Team, I’m sure he is working extremely hard behind the scenes) and the rest of the team in their quest to bring back the production of instant integral film.
Visit The Impossible Project and read the article in the BJP related to this exciting news.

Scanning for Sprockets

Cameron — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 01:57:48 +0000

So you’ve got yourself a new BBF, or you’ve loaded 35mm into your Medium Format Toy Camera after I showed you how (or not, *heh*) or you may have bought a 35mm back for your Diana + camera or for your Holga. You have finished your first roll of film that you opted (in the case of BBF or dedicated 35mm back) to use in a way that will expose the image over the sprockets, and of course now you would like to see those cool sprocket holes in your resultant photos! – But SHOCK, Horror, Much Gnashing of Teeth! To your dismay the prints you pick up from the lab don’t show your sexy sprockets! Unfortunately most labs just aren’t geared up for those kind of exposures, they have set frame sizes for their prints and their machines won’t recognise non-standard frame sizes (the definition of which includes the full negative width ‘sprocket look’). They could probably find a work around to do it, but it would take time and effort, which of course equates to money in business. I get my film developed only (no prints) which is less expensive than develop and print. I just scan all my negatives these days, printing those I like. I take so many non-standard photographic shots such as panoramic, or exposures all the way to the film edge (sprockets) or square format (which isn’t really that non standard but try telling any modern lab that!) it is far easier for me to do this than put up with prints that don’t really reflect what I shot in the first place! So, you will need to scan your own negatives in, on a scanner capable of taking negatives. Remember, to get the sprockets in your scan, you will need a scanner that scans outside of the usual 35mm margins, which usually means one that can scan medium format film. There are many different scanners that will scan medium format negatives. Notably Canon & Epson make good models like the Canon 8800f, the Epson v500, v700 or if you look at the second hand market there are superseded models that will scan negatives well for a cheaper price.but it doesn’t stop there!

It can be a tricky thing scanning in the sprocket holes. Most scanners I know of have a special mask, or cartridge like thang that you have to place your cut negatives in. Most likely these were not designed for the cool sprocket effects you can get with the bbf, so these masks often will cover the sprockets area.

One user has modified his 35mm negative mask (on his Canoscan 8400F – same as mine) as seen here to enable it to scan in the sprockets, but I didn’t want to physically modify my mask, so used the 120 mask and placed the negatives in that, stopping the negative from touching the flatbed by using rubber bands across the body of the mask to hold the negative above the surface of the glass. Or if you like you can get out the hobby knife and stiff cardboard and fashion your own mask like this one I made (as illustrated) …

But wait! There’s even more!! It still doesn’t end there!

If you select the whole area of the negative including the sprockets to scan, those extra black areas can drive the scanners ‘auto’ settings a bit crazy! I know they do with mine…

I have a Canoscan 8400F and I have to ‘trick’ it into not auto-adjusting the levels to some weird blue cast by (in preview mode) selecting an area on my negative just inside the sprocket holes (see example image). Once that is done I use the ‘set’ option on the Canoscan 8400f to set tonal values for the selected area, the tones will stay the same when you re-size the selection area…. then you can readjust your selection margins for scanning to include the sprocket holes and scan. These particular options when using the Canoscan software are only available in the advanced mode of the scanner. I hope (if you have a scanner other than the Canon model referred to here) these options translate to whatever scanner/software combination you are using.

Note – You have to ‘set’ again after any ‘reset’ however, as the scanner will reset anytime you move your selection boundaries unless you specifically set it. Does that make sense?

**UPDATE! Finally (and with the help of the new Quicktime X screen recording capabilities) I have made a video tutorial on using the scanner interface to scan in your sprockets (and also avoid that weird blueness that can afflict your scanned negatives)