The Plastic Lens ~ Words » Digital Harinezumi

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.

Pinhole Day and a Quick 1st impression of Harinezumi

Cameron — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 01:20:40 +0000

Pears WPPD 09

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 having to adjust your body clock through a 12 hour 180º shift within a day…
Apart from those factors, I had fun and actually managed to grab a few pinhole exposures that I thought were not too bad (not brilliant either however). My two cameras of choice this year were my converted Polaroid EE66 with Polaroid 125i pack film and my Holgamods Pinholga using type 84 packfilm. I started the day with little coffee cups and ended (as I seem to do) in the kitchen with some fruit…

I‘m having a lot (A LOT) of fun with the Digital Harinezumi.

Harinezumi by Harinezumi

This probably has a lot to do with how much it reminds me of using an analogue toy camera. When in still capture mode, you do not get a LCD viewfinder mode, you have to estimate what you are capturing (and anyone who uses toy cameras will know that their viewfinders are less than accurate) You also have the option of turning off the review mode of the camera so that you won’t know what you have got until you download the images to your computer (so I suppose that’s the digital equivalent of waiting to get your film developed).
In movie mode, they’re is no audio as such, there is a bit of white noise. I think it may have been fun if they had the option of the whirr of an old 8mm camera sound as well as the movies generated by the camera remind me of those and the results look very analogue, like some old family home movies from the 1960′s.

Macro Toes by Harinezumi

The colours are kick-ass funky and similar to some sort of weird cross processing type of thing going on…
As you can see from some of my initial test images, the macro function (two choices of focus here macro or normal) works very well. There is nice grain in lower lighting conditions, feeling more reminiscent to me of film grain than ‘digital’ grain. I could go on and probably will, when I do an ‘out of the box’ video review of this little electric hedgehog later on this week, but I remain impressed with what Powershovel & Superheadz have come up with.

Harinezumi!

Cameron — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 01:44:08 +0000

harinezumi ambulance -a frame grab from the digital harinezumi movie

OK, here are my first takes with the super cool & groovy Digital Harinezumi from Superheadz in Japan, the footage here was captured in very poor light conditions, mainly due to:
1. The first shots being shot at night in subdued lighting (as I was on night shift at the time) &
2. the rest of the shots being taken in very overcast conditions (which have been present since I got the camera)
Despite these factors, I am very pleased with the results so far. I really can’t wait to take this camera out in the sunshine to see more of what it can do.
Post production was in iMovie ’09 and most of the video footage is ‘as is’ the only filter is put on a 2 second segment at the ‘Ambulance Only’ doors where it goes B&W and static-like – some footage has been reversed, but that is about all as far as post production trickery goes…
The great backing music is ‘post’ by oco, from the ‘Lost Films’ compilation from www.powershovelaudio.com
I truly think that in this camera, Superheadz have created the first true digital ‘toy camera’ but also one that takes movies a well! A fantastic analogue-digital hybrid concept!

HARINEZUMI! from artpunk on Vimeo.

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!

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.