A photographic exhibition by the friends of Jeff Moorfoot
One hundred photographers show their appreciation for the hard work done by the Ballarat International Foto Biennale Director, donating some of their finest work to be sold on his behalf. A once in a lifetime opportunity to purchase works by these artists at a very modest price.
Works [...]
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Less than a month after the last of the Polaroid Integral Instant film cartridges passed their use by date wonderful news has been released by those luminous people at The Impossible Project. The Impossible Project who have been working tirelessly to keep the beloved instant film alive released an update stating that the Polaroid licensee [...]
![Unsensored [Coda] & Upcoming Events](http://www.theplasticlens.com/blog/wp-content/thumbs/thumb_bifb09logo_2.jpg)
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
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 [...]
Unsensored 09 – The Melbourne Silver Mine presents Unsensored 09 an exhibition of analogue photography. Now in it 3rd year, The Melbourne Silver Mine’s UNSENSORED09 is the work of 43 artists using film in their photographic expression. Opening night Friday 7th August 2009 6pm at The Collinwood Gallery 292 Smith St Collingwood, Melbourne. The [...]
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 [...]
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
This years Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day (last Sunday) was less than optimal (for me) for a lot of reasons. The weather was shocking, we had power failures, my computer froze when the power finally came back on and I was suffering from the jet-lag feeling that comes from just finishing night shift and [...]
Also filed in Review
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Tagged artpunk, Australia, Cameron Stephen, Digital Harinezumi, Digital Toy Camera, lo-fi, new, pinhole photography, polaroid, Powershovel, small camera, Superheadz, WPPD
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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 [...]
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 [...]
Also filed in Miscellaneous, Video
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Tagged 8mm film, analogue, bbf, blackbird fly, children, Fujica Single-8, happy, movie camera, Powershovel, retro, Superheadz, umbrella, Video
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The film was over 20 years expired, 100 ASA and the shooting conditions were pretty overcast most of the time, but I am happy to say that I picked up the developed first roll from my demekin fisheye camera (made by Powershovel/Superheadz in Japan but available (along with other great products) in Australia from Via [...]
After reading the review of the demekin camera on Nic’s blog (see previous post) I was inspired to unwrap the expired 110 film and load it onto my demekin and take it out on the weekend. Unfortunately the weather was pretty overcast most of the time and the film speed of 100 wasn’t great for [...]
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 [...]
Also filed in DIY, Miscellaneous
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Tagged 35mm, 8mm, Digital Harinezumi, DIY Camera, Japan, movie, Nic Nichols, Nick Dangerfield, Plastic, projects, Superheadz, SuperHeadz Plamodel DIY 35mm Camera, Tokyo, upcoming, Video
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Dear Pinhole Photographer,
Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day will be celebrated on Sunday, April 26, 2009. Please join the celebration! www.pinholeday.org. If you are able to help with publicity or translations, especially Chinese, please email support@pinholeday.org.
THE DETAILS:
The coordinators of the eigth Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day are busy preparing for this upcoming major global festival. It will be [...]
I
t’s been a while since i updated the words part of the site, sorry. Things have been a bit busy & weird around here (something not that unusual) but I hope to be back to updating the site with interesting new material, cameras, reviews (including some cool Superheadz cameras) and videos of…stuff (It’s a very [...]
Also filed in DIY, Video
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Tagged 2008, Holga, pinhole, pinhole day, polaroid, polaroid transfer, rose, Video, world pinhole day, WPPD
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Monday, February 16, 2009
T
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 [...]
Also filed in Miscellaneous, Philosophy
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Tagged bbf, book, bush fires, cover photo, interview, memories, Nic Nichols, photo albums, polaroid, Powershovel, priorities, published
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Tuesday, January 20, 2009
A
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 [...]
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
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*) but now you would like to get those cool sprocket holes in your resultant photos! But SHOCK, Horror, Much Gnashing of Teeth! To your dismay the prints you pick up [...]
Also filed in DIY, Miscellaneous, Video
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Tagged 35mm, analogue photography, film, help, how-to, negatives, scanner, scanning, scanning film, scanning sprockets, sprocket holes, visual guide
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Friday, December 19, 2008
Well I’m glad someone thinks I have some influence, I must show my wife an email I just received. All jokes aside, though, given my love of animals and photography I’ll share it with you, because it’s always nice (especially for the amateur photographers among us) to know you can have a chance of actually [...]
Thursday, November 13, 2008
Y
esterday (November 12th) my pinhole rose photo was published in the extratech section of the Herald Sun newspaper in Melbourne. It’s good to see that in these days of megapixel digital photography the origins of photography and image making (the Camera Obscura) still get some mention (even if it is under the title ‘strange but [...]
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
I
n Tokyo there lives a very generous man named Susuma Kohda, who also happens to be a very talented photographer. This morning an Australia Post vehicle delivered a package to my door. Inside were two magazines kindly sent to me by Susumu, one was the latest edition of Snap! where more of my images (along [...]
The Lubitel TLR (Twin Lens Reflex) is not strictly a toy camera, but it is a reasonably cheap one as compared to other more sophisticated TLRs (more sophisticated in terms of build quality & optics). You will often see Lubitel images in toy camera exhibitions, but it’s glass lens and extensive choice of apertures and [...]
Saturday, October 11, 2008
For those who have been trying to access the site and been getting a “server not responding” message (as I have for the last few hours) – my apologies. I have requested some sort of explanation from my host for this and other buggy behaviour I’ve been experiencing lately.
Back to business. The bbf [...]
Last Sunday the Melbourne Silver Mine Inc and Melbourne Flickr group held a meet at Albert Park Lake where some of the more experienced members demonstrated how easy it was to develop your own B & W film with a few chemicals and fairly simple equipment. They started by loading exposed B & W film [...]
Just in from the toycamera.com forum
“For those who may want one, the Photographer’s Gallery in London has the BBF sitting inside its camera display case at the moment, and another in the window. I assume they’re for sale – everything else is, though there was no price next to it. I would have asked, but [...]
Saturday, October 4, 2008
It is now 13 days until World Toy Camera Day (that’s the reminder – more to myself than anyone else as I really do have a brain like a sieve sometimes)
Now, for the BBF update: The blackbird,fly officially went on sale in Tokyo Friday of last week (8 days ago). This little camera really is [...]
Friday, September 26, 2008
After posting my BBF video, (which is hosted on Vimeo), a fellow named Gianfranco Chicco made a comment on it there. He is on sabbatical in Tokyo and has visited Powershovel’s Camera Cabaret recently.
Camera Cabaret is the Powershovel/Superheadz Ina Babylon shop in Shibuya, Tokyo and looks (from Gianfranco’s video) to be chock full of interesting [...]
Also filed in Video
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Tagged bbf, blackbird fly, camera cabaret, cameras, Japan, Powershovel, shop, Superheadz, Tokyo, Video, virtual tour
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Tuesday, September 16, 2008
My mission is to try and shoot 360 photos in 14 days (well the little piece of paper said 7 days, but I let them know that I couldn’t possibly manage that in between family commitments and other essential things like going to work, sleeping and eating) I have already taken two rolls worth of [...]
Friday, September 12, 2008
The 6th annual World Toy Camera Day to be held on October 18, 2008. Get ready to whip out your plastic cameras and take some great shots! I was too busy/distracted/stupid/thedogatemypost forgot to write about WTCD last year which is pretty ironic really considering this blog is mainly about toy camera photography, so I thought [...]
Saturday, September 6, 2008
To those who were asking about the BBF and where they may get it outside of Japan. I’m sorry for both the delay in answering your questions and for other things, which I take full responsibility for and will come to in due course.
I have returned to work after a nice break, so my updates [...]
Monday, September 1, 2008
I just love Superheadz. Not only because they feature my youngest daughter on the opening banner page for their Magical Camera Tour 2008! as seen at left, but for the whole feeling of verve and fun that pervades the whole site, from the colourful graphics and their enthusiastic approach to life, the universe and everything [...]
Thursday, August 28, 2008
In many ways this blog owes a lot to a nice person named Susan Burnstine, who takes dreamy etherial photography with her homemade cameras and has a great site outafocus as well as her professional photography site. In 2005 I got hold of one of her cameras, a little gem of a thing with the [...]
The Unsensored08 exhibition was reviewed on the Melbourne Age EG (entertainment guide) last Friday.
I love the quote “even plastic toy cameras” For a look at (a scan courtesy of Jodes) the review, please follow this link: eg review of Unsensored08
The exhibition finished this Wednesday, so if you haven’t seen it and are in Melbourne get [...]
…and then there’s travel with your kids. Don’t get me wrong, I love them very much, BUT..
I am sitting in the hired Maui we have to travel around the Northern Territory for the next few days. Already I have had to defuse WW III in the back of the van a couple of times and [...]
If anyone is bopping around in Melbourne this evening, there is a joint photographic exhibition of analog photography opening tonight @ 6pm, all welcome! I have one photo hanging, but there are many wonderful examples of film photography showing.
The exhibition details are below:
UNSENSORED08
Collingwood Gallery
292 Smith Street Collingwood
Opening Tonight (08 08 ‘08!) at 6pm
Exhibition showing from [...]
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Well I’m just testing out WordPress for on my iPhone, which I know is kinda geeky, but hey…
I want to see how/if it works as I’ll be travelling soon & will be posting ‘from the field’ so to speak.
I’ll try adding a photo too, although while I’m away from a developing lab, any future photos [...]
A
flickr friend of mine and fellow toy camera fan who lives in Japan – Susumu Kohda (Tokiocityphotos on flickr), noticed some of my photos in a Japanese magazine called Snap! and sent me 3 images from it today. I was excited to see photographs of my dog, daughter (and friends), chicken, trees near our [...]
T
he popularity of plastic cameras like the new Diana + series means that there are more people out there taking their first steps with film and medium format, as well as dealing with the particular quirks of these plastic fantastics. I sometimes forget that in this digital age there are many people out there who [...]
Don’t you think it’s a bit sad, the atmosphere of fear and loathing that modern society (and more to the point government and media) has managed to whip up into a frenzy in the minds of the people on the street? This link leads to an interesting view on how amateur and professional photographers alike [...]
Powershovel, the forward thinking Japanese company that involved a few lucky photographers (including yours truly) around the world in a photographic collaboration using the Holga 135BC (as mentioned in previous posts) has kindly invited me to trial a new toy camera they have in development, a plastic 35mm Twin Lens Reflex called the Blackbird, Fly. [...]
Also filed in Review
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Tagged 35mm, bbf, blackbird fly, Plastic, Powershovel, preview, Prototype, Superheadz, teaser, TLR, toycamera, Twin Lens Reflex
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These shots actually came back at the start of the month, as promised, but I’ve been so distracted by other stuff that I haven’t gotten around to discussing them yet. If you click on any of the thumbnails a larger image should pop up. As mentioned in this previous post I was given 5 [...]
Part two isn’t half as entertaining as part one, primarily because it only has boring old me in it and not the kids. This was later in the afternoon, after we had been to the park and I had picked up my Holgamods Pinhole slide to do some still life photography of tomatoes. Shown [...]
Well, the day after WPPD (worldwide pinhole photography day) Randy Smith’s original Pinholga camera prototype arrived in the post, and a nice piece of Holga modification it is too! Having the pinhole plate secured by a screw in filter holder (Kodak Series V type known to Diana users who like to use filters on [...]
April 27th 2008 was Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day (in case you hadn’t gotten the hint after me banging on about it for a while now)
We walked up the street in the afternoon, it was chilly, cloudy, threatening to rain but with short (very short) moments of sunshine. The whole family (including the dog) helped me [...]
Well, it is Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day tomorrow (a couple of hours time for me, but I will get some sleep before the fun)
I will probably use my nice wooden Zero Image pinhole camera which is already loaded with film, as well as my Holga pinhole camera and my homemade/modified Polaroid pinhole camera. Check out [...]
Any time now the first contributions to the communal pool for World Polaroid Week at flickr will start appearing. I’m not sure how many more of these we will be able to have. If you can, why don’t you join in?April 26 – well, the week is officially over in the pool (even though I [...]
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
A
few queries have come through my inbox over the last couple of years and I’ve seen quite a few discussions regarding the differences between Diana and Holga toy cameras and which is better. Let me state right now that value judgements like ‘better’ really are subjective markers and what is good for one person [...]
This little video was made with Phil in mind, as he expressed in interest in how to do this (he actually offered to bear my children for this info, but personally, however tempting, I dont think it would work!) If anyone else can glean some useful hints from it (and can be patient enough to [...]
Yesterday I had a pleasant surprise. I had entered a couple of my toycamera photographs into a local exhibition; part of the PAVE festival (Performing & Visual Arts in Emerald) on the urging of my wife to participate. Unfortunately I could only attend the (one day) exhibition later on in the day, as my shifts [...]
OK! Seeing as I lost most of my old posts it is time to start again and repost the more intelligible or entertaining ones (at least as I see them) – also I can say thank heavens for rss feeds, in this case bloglines. Being as narcissistic as all get out, I had this blog [...]
Well, I have had my first roll developed from the 35mm film in the Diana + experiment and have learned a couple of things:
1. I needed to wind on a little more than I first thought for at least the first half of the roll, perhaps one & 1/4 turns of the winder rather than [...]
Here is a fairly straight forward tutorial video showing how to simply adapt a toy camera (a Diana + in this case) that usually takes 120 (medium format) film to take 35mm film. Even though I’m using 35mm in my Diana + here, this should be achievable in just about any medium format toy camera [...]
It sounds like a B grade epic theatre type movie about old testament life, but the 135 BC is a new Holga camera that takes 35mm film. The bc stands for (I think) bent corners which refers to the vignetting you get on your photos, probably produced from the curved corners mask inside the camera [...]
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Im at work and cant spend too much time entering much, but thought I would grab a quick quiet moment to cut and paste an interview sent to me by a local newspaper reporter in relation to a joint toy camera exhibition coming up later this month (Oct 2007) called The Plastic Photo Show – [...]
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
On visiting Ralph’s site after he left a comment on my little pod-cast thingy, I found myself nodding my head in understanding through much of his most recent post where he talks about (among other topics) the way labs deal with medium format film, specifically medium format film from toy cameras. The lab I use [...]
Monday, February 12, 2007
Toycamera Lightseal from artpunk on Vimeo.
I would just like to note that Light Leaks (magazine) showcased South Australian plastic photographer Don Brice (mentioned previously here) in their last issue.
Now to this post. I have put together a little video podcast, it’s a bit dry & not that exciting but I’m just feeling my way with [...]
Just a quick little post, as it’s late, I really should go to bed and I’ve been wrestling with the quirky behaviour of the photoblog side of the site. I picked up three of my photographs from the framers today for an upcoming toy camera and pinhole exhibition here in Melbourne at the Kerala gallery. [...]
How many times do we drive down the road, busy, busy going places and we see something, say for example, an abandoned rusted out car, lit just right by the setting sun, or as another example, a large group of goths emerging from the train station after a big night out…so, we see something and [...]
Saturday, February 3, 2007
I was browsing the toycamera.com forum today and stumbled across an interesting post talking about the underlying philosophies and process of shooting with toy cameras. It’s something I have been thinking about a fair bit and is one of the reasons I created the “words” part of the Plastic Lens site, so I could “think [...]
I don’t want to sound too negative in this post (ok, sorry, very lame joke) but what is it about the local labs around me that they can’t be bothered to even try and stock 120 negative sleeves/pages. Does anyone else have this problem? More and more lately I notice my negatives are getting damaged [...]
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
I had the very good fortune to catch up with Don Brice last Week. Don is a professional photographer and toy camera aficionado from Adelaide and was over in Melbourne on an assignment. We met up at Federation Square amongst a crowd of people following the Australian Open Tennis on the big screen in the [...]
To outline how I managed to wander onto the path of toy camera-dom here are extracts from my old blog punkclown daze – Flash Back to April 2005 ~ (wavy visuals and twilight zone theme goes here)
Saturday, April 09, 2005
Whooot! I’m a WINNER!
Well, to cap off a lovely sunny day spent with friends and family [...]
Saturday, January 27, 2007
Hello and welcome to the part of The Plastic Lens where I talk a bit about my journey as a toy camera photographer and share some of my experiences of using these wonderfully lo-tech cameras in my every day adventures as a photographer, when I’m not busy being the many other things I am.
I hope [...]
