The Plastic Lens ~ Words » Prototype http://www.theplasticlens.com/blog Talking Photography, Plastic Cameras & Stuff Sun, 05 Feb 2012 22:27:09 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 BBF – the teaser movie http://www.theplasticlens.com/blog/2008/bbf-the-teaser-movie/ http://www.theplasticlens.com/blog/2008/bbf-the-teaser-movie/#comments Mon, 09 Jun 2008 23:45:05 +0000 Cameron http://www.theplasticlens.com/blog/?p=73 Blackbird Fly Plastic 35mm Twin Lens Reflex CameraBelow is a ‘teaser‘ video of a great new plastic camera that is in development by the company Powershovel, in Japan. I have mentioned Powershovel on this blog before, they are the driving force behind many great artistic projects that involve music, books and photography and behind the company Superheadz Ina Babylon who market all kinds of cool cameras that use film and often alternative formats.
Powershovel sent me a test camera of theirs under development called the BBF (initially it was going to be called the ‘blackbird, fly’ but a company representative tells me it has decided to market it as the BBF now) As seen in this post the camera is a plastic TLR (twin lens reflex) that will be capable of taking different format exposures on 35mm film. As far as I know this is the first ‘toy camera’ TLR that is exclusively designed to take 35mm film and it will also have the option to use two different masks in the camera, the sizes of these masks will be 24×36 and 24×24. The test camera I was supplied with had the 24 x 36 mask which is removable so you can actually get exposures to the edge of the film complete with sprocket holes!
Anyway on to the ‘teaser’ of the camera as well as a few example photos I shot with it at the end. Apologies for the low fi video quality. The video itself shows that the camera has ‘N’ & ‘B’ shutter selection, a hotshoe (which works as expected) and two aperture settings (sunny/cloudy). Also illustrated is the waist level head-down viewfinder familiar to any one who has used Twin Reflex Cameras like the Lubitel, Yashica, Seagull etc. Different framing lines are obvious for the different masking options I presume.
This was a fun camera to try out and I was sorry when I sent it back, I wanted to ‘play’ with it more, but time was a factor. Remember the BBF is not available yet and is still under development, so the final product may be slightly different with different features. I am led to believe it should be released in August or September 2008.
The lovely background music for the video is a piece called ‘Soup’ by a Powershovel musician, Ken Takehisa and is available on the release ‘Lost Films Vol 1″ from the Powershovel site powershovel audio


BBF a new camera from Powershovel/Superheadz from artpunk on Vimeo.

]]> http://www.theplasticlens.com/blog/2008/bbf-the-teaser-movie/feed/ 12 Blackbird, Fly http://www.theplasticlens.com/blog/2008/blackbird-fly/ http://www.theplasticlens.com/blog/2008/blackbird-fly/#comments Sun, 01 Jun 2008 13:07:35 +0000 Cameron http://www.theplasticlens.com/blog/?p=65 blackbird,flyPowershovel, 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. As with the Holga 135BC collaboration, I received the camera and 5 rolls of 400 iso film to shoot with. This time I will be returning the camera as well as the films however, as it is a prototype and the camera is still in development phase. For those who would like to have a closer look at this camera, I have uploaded a few images (click on the thumbnail) of the very light, very cool, very black (I’ve seen photos online of one with an orange front panel) Blackbird, Fly camera. Soon I will upload some example shots from the camera as well as a brief review of my experience using it. I understand this camera will probably be released sometime in August (but don’t quote me on it)! *update – I have been informed that the camera will be marketed as the BBF camera now.

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