The Plastic Lens ~ Words » lo-fi

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.

The Lure of Lo-Tech

Cameron — Sat, 27 Jan 2007 21:35:41 +0000

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 to gain an understanding, for myself and perhaps, hopefully for anyone who might choose to read this journal, about what it is that is particularly appealing about what is commonly known as toy camera photography as well as what I am doing with this type of photography and what direction it might take me. Along the way I hope to share with you some links to other photographers works that capture my imagination and explore the potential that lo-fi photography has to offer. Insights and explanations as to the why and wherefores of some of my images in the main gallery of the site might be forthcoming too. This may be more for my own fading memories sake than anything else, but I’d be chuffed if anyone would like to join in and comment where appropriate. It might be fun.
Thanks for taking the time to read this far. Please, check in soon for more.