When I make a camera out of a product's packaging, I don't worry about copyright issues because I'm not making a copy. Guinness, Lakefront Brewery or Chanel aren't going to worry that my cameras are going to be mistaken for their products. This time such a misunderstanding could occur. I hope they see it as a tribute and not trademark infringement.
You never know what's going to make a good camera. I saved the box from the Super System 4 MultiReel 3 Developing Tank with 4 x 5" Sheet Film Holder Kit, which, by the way, is a really major improvement compared to tanks and hangers. I needed to make one more Evil Cube to make sure I had eliminated the last gremlins from the Compact Series templates. The somewhat spare design of the box caught my eye and I was amused at the illustration of the developing reel which could become the circular shape in the middle of the front of a camera everybody expects. There also seemed to be a little irony about it.
Otherwise it's a normal Evil Cube. I still found a couple stupid errors on the template that are hopefully fixed now.
What kind of project would be appropriate for such a camera? Hmmm. Photographic equipment. We must have some of that around here.
I'm occasionally asked if I ever take pictures with lenses and my stock answer is "Yes, I use them to take pictures of my pinhole cameras." Let's enter Bizarro World and see what that looks like.
My Canon F-1 came with the logo for the 1980 Winter Olympics on it that I immediately covered up with plastic tape, which is still there. It's a black body camera! It was my workhorse for decades and especially during my bad boy art teacher period at Knox College. It's sporting my favorite lens of all time: the Canon FD 20mm f2.8 — 94° angle of view and almost perfectly rectilinear. I was involved with extreme wide angle long before pinhole. It still gets used for a few special projects.
The Populist wasn't my first pocketable camera. This Olympus XA2 went with me almost everywhere. It can do auto-exposure out to two seconds practically in the dark.
Long exposures have also been something I've been involved with before pinhole. I got this Luna Pro to measure exposures in situations too dim for the F-1's internal meter where someone might have to hold a pose for seconds and sometimes minutes.
As soon as Sarah brought her mother's Plenax PB20 home in the '70's, I put a roll through it but the bellows was already full of light leaks.
Sarah's collection of digital cameras.
Sarah's parents' Olympus Infinity Zoom 70 and a Funsaver we think Andy bought at Disney World in high school. They both have film in them
I got through the first six months or so of my discovery of photography with a consumer rangefinder borrowed from a roommate and a Canon Pellicle Mirror SLR a friend had bought at the PX in Vietnam. I bought myself a used Hanimex Praktica SLR with a top-of-the-camera, non-coupled, averaging meter which failed almost immediately. I then took out a loan and got the Mamiya 1000 DTL, innovative then for wide-open through-the-lens metering and a top shutter speed of a thousandth of a second. It came in a kit with a "normal" lens, but here it features my first wide angle, a Chinon 28mm f2.8. The meter failed after a few years and I got the professional F-1. After several trips carrying around the manual exposure F-1 and three prime lenses, for a trip to Europe in 1998, I decided to treat myself to something automatic and got the Nikon N50 with a Takumar 28-200 zoom. Unfortunately it was very slow autofocusing and would occasionally refuse to fire the shutter. I only used it for that trip and a couple weddings.
When we were looking at houses to buy, I would always point out some nook which might work as a darkroom. The real estate agent must have been pretty excited when this house came up with a darkroom already there, including this 1940's Federal enlarger. I jokingly said we'd accept one of their counter offers if they'd throw in the darkroom equipment and they went for it. It uses a glass carrier which can take up to a 4x5 negative, although it only had a 50mm lens on it. In the early 'aughts I had a brief excitement for black and white film photography and bought a medium format lens for it, but that never went anywhere.
It also included this Yankee development tank which I remember my professors disparaging, but I've developed hundreds of rolls of film in it.
Worried I wouldn't have enough for my workshops, I bought a couple spiral stainless 120 reels and a quart tank from pinhole enthusiasts Blue Moon Camera in Portland Oregon. These really intimidate some people, but I find them about the easiest to load of almost any system or format.
And the inspiration for all this, which has transformed my darkroom experience. I've mentioned the 4x5 system, but kudos also for the adjustable reels. My Yankee tank could transform from 35mm to 120, but now I can do two at a time, in any combination. It makes a difference with quick C-41 development times to get the chemistry in and out of the tank as fast as possible. The Paterson System takes only a third of the time as the stainless tank. I have to mention the film squeegee. I used to do it with my fingers and always had problems with dust and scum. Using this squeegee, soaked in the PhotoFlo beforehand, has eliminated 80% of the problem. I neglected to include the changing bag in this picture, but I'm not sure how it could have worked in the composition.
Paterson has hand-drilled .31mm pinholes, on the axis and 15mm above it, 6cm from a 6x6cm frame. The film is Kentmere 100 semistand developed in Rodinal 1:100. This was all done in available light, which was particularly dim this week. The exposures ranged from twenty minutes to 2 hours,
No comments:
Post a Comment