11 posts tagged “superheadz”
Whether it is digital or analog, mini cameras are the most trendy thing happening in the industry. Digital Minox, Rollei, Diana mini, Digital Harinezumi (just released new white edition), etc. They are all in this tiny little promotion happening in Festival Walk and APM LOG-ON.
And yes we are including the Olympus E-P1 too coz it is somewhat a smaller version of SLR. If you missed the chance to grab a Lomo mini camera keychain packaged in beautifully printed film cans, they are now back in stock, talking about 20% the size of the actual camera (hmmm, I did say they are keychains, not real cameras).
Most of us are bored by the strap came with our cameras right, so we've been collecting from Korea and Japan some of the nicest straps ever produced and some of them are here, the rest will be coming to the stores this year.
Friends from Lomo, Superheadz and Fujifilm gave us some very nice supports including some left over film canisters, cute POP and displays, etc and I feel thankful for their generosity and help. Superheadz even shipped from Japan a dozen foam boards printed with versions of the lovely Russian girl character.
One of the pink display took me a few hours to create using films, MT tapes and various products from other departments. If you have time, please do visit these two stores and see if they are still intact :) This promotion lasts for 2 weeks from now on. Hope you like it and able to find some inspirations from it. Check out the Flickr photo set of this promotion.
Note: thanks Martin for the hard work. Get well soon Moon.
Superheadz is such an interesting company. I was in their office last week checking out some up and coming cameras from them and found these cute keychains on the meeting table.
These keychains are mini versions of Lisa Larson's larger ceramic work each hand painted and signed, they were released about a month ago. Interestingly Superheadz runs a web shop dedicated to Lisa Larson's work here. I didn't make the connection at the time of the meeting, but now I wonder if their Harinezumi cameras (both analog and digital) idea has anything to do with Lisa's Harinezumi ceramic works. Somebody from Superheadz please let me know.
Today my son somehow found these keychains on my table and he immediately put the cat behind a notebook with its head peeking out. The walking cat became a peeking cat, how interesting! I said they are keychains and he said "that means you can always bring them out so that they can play outside". He must be so bored now that school is over (because of the flu).
Talking about Harinezumi, on the same table in my meeting with Superheadz, there is this White Digital Harinezumi prototype which looks even cooler than the black one I tried before. It is going to be released around Oct this year. Drooling?
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.
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.
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.
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.
As I said, I had some failure of poor exposure of my second roll of redscale film on BBF. However, I found my masking frame mod quite successfully generated the effect I want.
The problem with redscale film is that you have to at least double the exposure value to make a decent photo, especially in low light condition. However, the only way to do that in BBF is the B mode, which makes it difficult to create sharp image in most freestyle shooting. Anyway, if you use this combination (redscale film + BBF), make sure you shoot in full sunlight or use B mode with a tripod.
Now back to the topic. I always like the film borders of peel apart polaroids, I wanted to introduce more of such element into my BBF 135mm photos. So I took apart a Polaroid 600 film, peeled apart all the white borders, washed the transparent film cover and scratched it a bit, leaving only some chemical deposits on the edges. Next I took a masking frame which came with the BBF, reverse it (so that I can have a full frame) and taped the Polaroid transparent film cover (with borders) to the masking frame.
This created an instant film border frame for BBF! Now with this masking frame put onto the camera reverse, you get a full 35mm frame and you can actually play with a lot of different masking effects including this one. Say stick a tiny human figure onto the frame to create silhouette, print your illustrator or logo pattern onto a transparent plastic and make a new mask, etc etc.
Installing the mask is no brainer, just pop it in! There can be more modifications on BBF, share with me if you have some.
I had my last roll of redscale film on BBF failed nearly 100%, i.e. under-exposed. I guess either my colorsplash flash was not strong enough or I need to increase exposure time when redscale film is used. Or both.
So today I used Diana's flash with new battery, turned my B mode on and tried to over expose as much as possible. We'll see the result in a week's time. This photo was taken with iPhone, modified on iPhone using CameraBag, check out the Flickr pool of photos taken using the same method.
What's common between a wedding banquet and a halloween in 2008? Redscale film.
I used the same redscale film from Lomo on my Blackbird Fly camera for both events. Shot most of the films in the evenings, indoor and low light conditions but found most of the photos under-exposed (I'll need to figure out why). The redscale technique is probably as old as color film itself, simply a canister of film winded upside-down so light passing through your shutter hits the chemical from an opposite direction creating red-shifted images.
You can learn more about redscale here on wikipedia, create your own redscale film if you don't want to let lomo profit on such a simple technique. Finally, post something on the Redscale Film flickr group to share your results.
One important thing to note is that even though it is not an E2C or cross processing technique, you still need to tell your lab to treat printing the photos differently. Since all images are fell on the "wrong" side of the film, if your lab prints the photos in their normal way, your output images or scans will be in mirror images. So tell your lab to develop the film normally but print them reserved to get the correct images.
If I have black scrap leather I would've made a leather strap for my BBF like my Diana Choco-mix. Anyway, thinking about how to customize my toy, I tried to put some scrap-booking corners on it but results vary. I'll probably keep my BBF black but somehow give it a personal touch.
Earlier this year I saw from Randy Smith's Holgamods web site, subsequently reported here, a Holga 3D mod allowing you to take photo in one shot and create a 3D image. I visited Fotokina in Cologne this year and found that the legendary Holga manufacturer Tokina Limited has a prototype probably going into production soon! They also have a viewer so that you can insert a two photo slide to see a 3D image lo-fi. I was not able to take a photo in their booth coz I was sort of not so welcome there (judging from their differential treatment to me than to westerners) but the prototype is a little bit more sophisticated than the mod you see here. Despite the fact that Holga is still a great toy camera, amazing historical value and with it a lot of fun stuffs to play with, it is going to be a dying commercial product as LOMO (their customer) is focusing on their exclusive Diana range and Superheadz (their customer too) to their BBF (plus stupid differential buyer treatment losing opportunities, anybody can produce an OEM Holga as long as you can meet the x,000 pcs MOQ thereby losing HOLGA's own brand value).
Anyway, do check out this site here to see sample images and try viewing the photos there crossed eye, it works perfectly even if you just look at them on your computer.
Just received last night two rolls of developed film taken by BBF. I love the finer control of focus and sprocket hole effect a lot.
The dark corner effect is strong enough to create a nice gradient blue sky in sunny days, particularly when using e2c or x-processing film.
Finally, this nice little 135 Twin Lens Reflex plastic camera created from scratch by Superheadz will arrive Hong Kong exclusively at city'super/LOGON in Oct/Nov!
I knew about this from Superheadz since last year and they've been sending prototypes to selected photographers around the world for testing and testing and testing. In addition to their 110 cute cameras, this will make history in the world of toy camera. Drooling to play with it for a long time, finally I received a sample this August. Obviously Superheadz took tremendous effort to make it perfect before they are comfortable giving me a sample to try. I've seen Hiruma san on Tokyo's street talking on the phone in sweat with the manufacturer because of the flood in China back in July, which explains the delay in release.
During this launch, only 3 colors will appear in the market. Black, Orange and Blue. But I've seen other colors in their office back in July, red, brown and yellow. In addition, somewhere on Flickr I saw white too.
The most amazing things I like about BBF is built-in film counter (no more camera backs/adaptors), removable film masks to create sprocket holes effect and square photos, not to mention a hot shoe for flash. Instantly tons of things to play with just like Holga or even more. I'm so glad both LOMO and Superheadz are now deviating their paths further by doing things other than the most popular Holga, differentiating from each other instead of competing with fancy packaging and Holga accessories only. LOMO's new path is with Diana, while Superheadz with 110 cameras and BBF.
The Plastic Lens' Artpunk already has several preview articles about BBF's features here, here and here. Thanks Artpunk!
I've created a "Black Bird Fly" camera and photos Flickr group so if you have photos taken by BBF or photos of your beloved BBF, please go there and share/discuss! I can't wait to see how my photos are developed, will soon share.
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