7 posts tagged “camera”

Gakkenflex - Read, Assemble, Customize, Shoot!

Yesterday
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This is where model making, stationery and craft meet. Gakken's Otona no kagaku (大人の科學) magazine volume 25 is all about twin-lens reflex cameras, you get to make one yourself and read about their history and shooting techniques in 98 pages all for HK$300 ( and even cheaper in Japan at 2,500 yen), what a bargain comparing to the inflated prices of typical toy cameras! I was surprised to find this being sold in 7-11 last Thursday and immediately grabbed one. I had so much fun this weekend assembling it, customizing it and play with it.

Gakkenflex

The kit also comes with two stickers in different styles so you can customize its look instead of settling with a black camera. I decided to use MT masking tapes to do the trick though. Assembling the camera takes about 30 minutes but I slowed myself down to enjoy the whole process more.

Gakkenflex

If you've bought this but you don't read Japanese, fuzzyeyeballs' ndroo made an English interpretation of the assembly based on his experience doing it. You can probably make it by just reading the diagrams but there are a few places you may get stuck so reading his guide helps.

Gakkenflex

The best thing with Gakkenflex is that it has a real viewfinder which allows you to focus accurately. You don't get a hot shoe, a film counter, a film advance knob which stops winding when next frame is reached and an aperture control, as you would find from BBF. But the true viewfinder made a big difference and impression on me.

Gakkenflex - decorated with MT masking tapes and line drawing

After the assembly, I chose to customize it right away with MT masking tape. This is a relatively inexpensive way to customize anything. The washi paper is easy to cut after its being put on the camera body, just use a cutter, follow the contour and 20 minutes later its done.

Gakkenflex - decorated with MT masking tapes and line drawing

Next I used Uniball Signo white roller ball to draw some flora patterns around the knob. Signo ink doesn't stay strong on surfaces other than paper, but I love the fact that it will soon give a distressed look of the camera. Besides, if I want a new pattern I can just easily put on some more masking tapes and draw again.

Gakkenflex - homemade leather strap

Lastly, this light weighted TLR deserves a thin leather strap so I added with ease. I took this lovely camera out for the day but because of the rain and poor lighting, I only took one photo. I'm expecting to see some awesome vignettes and lensbaby like effects. Visit Gakken flex / 大人の科学マガジン付録二眼レフ flickr group to see who the photos look like, or my Gakkenflex Customized flickr set for more photos of the finished camera.

Gakkenflex - decorated with MT masking tapes and line drawing

Boy doesn't it look great with my Saddleback Leather briefcase? You don't have to tell me.

The Impossible Happens - The Comeback of Polaroid Film Cameras... and Films

Oct 13, 2009
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Breaking News! Announced in Hong Kong today, Polaroid licensee The Summit Global Group will launch new Polaroid film camera in 2010, while The Impossible Project is in its final stage to create its new black and white 600 film. Since the media hasn't reported much, I'm gathering the details in bits and pieces from these two sources for you: Neonpunch.com and Alvinhui.com

Polaroid One600 Rossa, SX-70 and Holga

The Summit Global Group managing director Mr. Giovanni Tomaselli lives in Hong Kong, that's why this press conference is done in Hong Kong.
iZone Kids camera will be relaunched, due to its previous popularity, along side with films supplied by FujiFilm.
Florian Kaps from the Impossible Project said there will be two kinds of black and white instant film to be released in 2010. Color film will be released near summer 2010. Both will be in the same 600 format.
Both Giovanni and Florian said Spectra film will be relaunched ~~in addition to pack films~~. (Thanks to JC helping to clarify this with Mr. Kaps)
Polaroid One and One Step cameras will be relaunched in mid 2010.
Wing Shya (Polaroid fanatic, photographer and director), Maurizio Galimberti (famous Italian photographer) and Florian Kaps (the impossible project) were invited to the event.
Wing Shya will be the key photographer for marketing in Hong Kong.
Pogo is the printer, Pogo 2 is the printer with camera. Both already launched some time ago (not yet in Hong Kong though). Pogo 3 will be able to do 3x4" prints

I'm so happy about the comeback of films by The Impossible Project, but certainly disappointing to hear about the cameras. Re-producing One and One Step may just be Polaroid's tactic to buy time for converting loyal analog fans from the classic to their PoGo dream. They should've spent their time to develop an advanced analog instant camera, there is still edge in the photography arena.

Check out photos of this event here in Neonpunch.com

Western news:

Polaroid cameras to be produced once again

Polaroid classic instant film cameras to make a comeback

The Impossible project also made an announcement about this exciting news.

I Can't Leave One Behind

Jun 30, 2009
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Accumulated 5 years of mileage and I'd finally redeemed them for a few tickets for our family trip. Not exactly my type of vacation but it is still great (I've never done that but my dream vacation is very long and slow, beach and people, sunshine and camera, aircon and writing). I love the first day's visit to Mother Farm, we had very close encounter with animals and I was really surprised that the lambs are so kind and innocent to people even though they can be rude to each other. Many of the species there have huge scrotums too, almost like the size of your head! Almost every one of them looks like smiling all the time. One of them even liked me so much he/she marked me with his/her gland secretion repeatedly.

Mother Farm in Tokyo

To me, Disney is totally kind of boring. I'm happy with the mechanical games though, especially roller coasters, but today Space Mountain was closed..... arrrhhhhh! Oh it was a great parade tonight though, featuring millions of colorful light bulbs on all of the performers and cars. I have to say that Japanese are highly sophisticated in crowd management and self-discipline in public space. During the parade, not only did the crew organized people in place very professionally, the crowd itself is like self-organizing units knowing where to go and what's the limit. Everybody was sitting down so everybody else can take great pictures and see the parade clearly. I love this crowd awareness, like flocks of birds. The firework was not as beautiful as the one in Hong Kong Disney though.

Tokyo Disney

OK, this trip I'm carrying 4 cameras with me. I could not leave any one behind in my hotel because each seems to be suitable for certain condition and they work well together (imagine this perfect harmony between your wives!). Polaroid SLR690 is great for its square crop and unique color, Voigtlander R4A 35mm 1.2 + AGFA 400 film is great for low light condition and shallow DOF, Lomo LCA+ with Lomo 200 slide film is to create stunning e-to-c high contrast photos. Finally, Ricoh GX-200 is to fill-in the gaps, like snap shots and videos.

Carrying 4 Cameras

So I was carrying these 4 cameras for the past 2 days. I'm going to Hakone tomorrow leaving heavy luggage in Tokyo for 2 days. I will still carry these 4 cameras with me expecting to capture great imagery to share. CU in a few days!

Digital Harinezumi - You Are The Moon

Mar 16, 2009
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The Digital Harinezumi is Superheadz' first step to include digital photography into its analog adventure. Some may think it is a betrayal to its analog origin but hey, why not take the advantages of both worlds and explore more.

Digital Harinezumi

The beautiful almost piano finishing look of the digital counterpart is truly attractive under sunlight. Having the privilege to play with it for a week, I realized that this is again yet another camera from Superheadz which makes people around you wonder, after Blackbird Fly. It retains the cuteness of the original 110 film harinezumi but with a digital twist.

Digital Harinezumi

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There is an LCD screen on the back, 4 control buttons and 1 spring loaded switch to mimic film winding. It is almost like a camera used by spy, especially when you can switch the camera into macro mode and take very clear images of documents. Funny thing about it is that you don't get the LCD screen to work for you to preview before you take a photo, you just guess shooting. I'm sure this 'feature' is intentionally installed by Superheadz. The image is really high contrasted and color boosted, so you may get some strange analog effects for your benefit on one hand, but terribly red shift of color in low light condition on the other. One thing I don't like about it is that all photos you take will have the same 1st Jan 2009 00:00:00 date stamp, which means you can't organize photos by date automatically by photo archiving softwares. Oh and the price tag is enough to scare you off.

Digital Harinezumi 07-00-20

Another cool feature is that you can use it to make old movies. Intentionally mimicking 8mm film, you don't get sound out of the movies, in fact the resulting movies have a faint background noise which maybe intentionally included as a 'feature' as well. I had some fun with the movie feature last night and edited using iMovie to create this video you see above. Background music: You Are The Moon by The Hush Sound. To look at it at better resolution, check out the vimeo post of this movie here.

"Woodpecker, Fly" and More Lo-Fi Life & Camera Discovery

Dec 26, 2008
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Fellow Flickrer Fuzzyeyeball from Singapore did this "Woodpecker, Fly", an amazing BBF customization! Check out ndroo's blog entry of this project.

Fuzzyeyeball's Woodpecker Fly

And don't stop at Fuzzyeyeball(aka ndroo)'s Flickr site, go straight to his blog if you like photography and crafts/hacks like I do. You will be amazed by those fun projects and wanna pick up your camera right away.

Doube fun by ndroo

This double exposure fun with film strips is super easy to do (IMHO), will certainly give your photos a whole new perspective. Also check out his recent beautiful Splat double exposures.

Splat by ndroo

A picture worths a thousand words, totally true about "how to do redscale film" and "SX-70 modification for 600 films", coz most of other sites don't show photos and arrows as detail as his.

Link: FUZZYEYEBALLS : My lo-fi Life & my obsession with lousy lo-fi cameras

Nice Camera for Kids, None Exists

May 13, 2008
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Interested in Camera Too?

Today's short trip to Vietnamese afternoon tea: My son was carrying my Rollei 35SE camera with a Lomo LCA leather carrying case. Instead of just viewing the result of a digital camera, he seems to start getting interested in all those cameras sitting in the glass case in our living room. So I picked one and allowed him to carry it for me.

Son Holding Polaroid

I was looking at my glass case full of analog cameras and he asked "may I get that one?" So I pointed to a plastic camera and he said "no no, that one". "This?" I said pointing to yet another plastic camera, "no the big one". He aimed at the biggest, a Polaroid Highlander. It was too heavy for him to hold up to eye level so finally I laid it on sofa for him to play with the shutter. After 30 seconds playing with the shutter he switched his attention to the flash unit. "What's this?" he said. "It's supposed to be a flash unit but we don't have the bulbs here so it doesn't work." Then he made canon firing sounds by clicking on the switch. Time to go afternoon tea, that's when I shortened the strap of the leather case to fit his size and made him carry a Rollei compact for me.

Tonight I searched on the net and found some cameras for kids. But none of them looks good enough. All but super colorful and weird shapes like game controllers. Why don't they make some classic looking digital cameras with colorful shells? I hate to see game controllers invading into a kid's world.

Contaflex S Shoot

Mar 25, 2008
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Visited friend's home on Saturday who's father passed on to her this Contaflex S SLR camera, the last variant introduced in 1968. I like a lot of the reflection it made on her red metallic cabinet.

Contaflex S

I learned a little bit more of this camera from Camerapedia.org: "When it was introduced in 1953, the Contaflex SLR was the first 35mm SLR equipped with a between-the-lens leaf shutter. That combination requires a very complex cycle of operations when the release button is pressed. The advantages are compactness and synchronized flash up to the maximum shutter speed. The inconveniences are limited lens interchangeability and mechanical complexity. In particular, no Contaflex model has a rapid return mirror, and all suffer from a limited range of lenses, from 35mm to 115mm focal length."