Walkabout, Part 76
Tag: film
What to buy?
The Lomographic Society made me their OSCM expert last week! I’ve got 35 piggy points to spend in the Lomographic Shop! What should I do, buy some film or spend a little more and splurge on something bigger? I have a 1990 LOMO LC-A and a Colorsplash flash, and my $1 TIME camera beats a Holga 135 any day of the week.
I sense a pattern here…more doors, San Miguel De Allende
A little blown out, but I like the effect. Canon FTb, 50/1.8 lens. Most likely shooting with Kodak UC 400 at midday, hence the blow out.
Woops!
I’ve used York Photo for my mail order film processing for several years. They’re inexpensive ($2.20/roll, $1.50 shipping, and $1.00 scans), they turn rolls around in a week, and they partner with Snapfish for their online service. They offer perpetual hosting and have great deals on prints.
I got my first rolls back from San Miguel a week ago, and was waiting on two other rolls. One roll showed up online yesterday, and when I got home, found this in my mailbox:
- Woops!
There was a note from York saying that they received the roll in this condition, damaged beyond repair. I used to send film without film canisters to save space, but I think I’ll send them in film canisters from now on.
Nothing York could have done about it, USPS strikes again.
Meikai El test shots, as promised!
Cover
Test with my new Olympus Stylus Epic.
World Toy Camera Day – October 18th!
A World Toy Camera Day community affair with like minded toy camera photographers from all over the globe who take part on this day in the month of October. A day where we wake up in the wee hours of the morning and load all of our favorite plastic cameras like the Holga, Diana, Brownies and the like and end the day with our Low-fi, Low-brow, blurry and ridiculously out of focus snap shots. A day also invented by Becky Ramotowski who took the idea from World Pinhole Photography Day. Her idea spawned a world wide annual event using toy cameras and shooting endless rolls of 120 and Polaroid film…oh and even some crappy 35mm too…and has been in circulation for six years now. See you all there.
Another toy camera – Meikai EL
This is a Meikai EL, circa 1963. Bought on eBay, I was the only bidder!
As toy cameras go, this one feels pretty solid. The body is metal and plastic and the leatherette makes it feel like a “real” camera. The film advance is smooth, and there’s an indicator to let you know when the film is properly advanced. The lens looks like it’s made of glass. The door latch is solid.
The fake light meter surrounding the viewfinder give it away as a toy camera, and the fixed focus, fixed shutter speed lens adds to the toy camera gestalt.
The camera has 3 aperture settings – f/8, f/11 and f/16. If you’re not sure which direction stopping down is, the BRIGHT and DULL labels should help to match the weather conditions to the aperture settings. There’s an Instant and Bulb shutter setting next to the aperture setting.
The Meikai EL has an accessory shoe and a PC socket for flash. The instructions recommend using the Bulb setting for flash shooting – flash bulbs need a a slower sync speed, like 1/15th sec or so.
The Meikai EL only has one lug for attaching a strap, so you’re stuck with a wrist strap. This camera CALLS OUT for a two-lug thin leather tourist-ey neck strap.
The pictures I’ve seen on the net have the simple lens elements, soft focus, toy camera look. I’ve shot a roll of 5-year-old Jessops 200 speed film on my lunch hour and should get it back from York Photo in a week.
Somewhere in my garage I have an old Vivitar 16M flash with a PC cord, I’ll have to dig it up tonight.
Meikai Links:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/probablekoz/sets/72157601440327601/
http://camerapedia.wikia.com/wiki/Meikai_EL
http://westfordcomp.com/classics/meikai/index.html
http://www.merrillphoto.com/MeikaiEL.htm
http://muujuu.multiply.com/photos/album/11/Meikai_EL_Camera
Stocking up on film
Sorting through my bookmarks, I found a film vendor online selling Lucky GBR 100 film for $2.00/36 exposures. This is my favorite film for LOMO shooting, as it’s sometimes as unpredictable as the LOMO is. Our joke on the lamented lomo.org BBS was that Quality was not Job One at the Lucky factory – one roll would have a red cast, another a yellow cast, and another one would be spot-on.
Then, I won an auction for 12 rolls of Fuji Superia 400, my favorite non-LOMO film. Skintones are a little harsh, but colors are vivid otherwise. Time to make room in my freezer!
I went thrifting this weekend and found a $2.00 camera for $2.00 and an $80.00 camera for $2.00:
The Olympus Stylus Epic (Aka Mju-Mju II in some countries) was one of my favorite cameras during my film phase in 2000-2004 – I had the champagne edition. A fast, sharp 35mm f/2.8 lens, great fill flash, and color correction indoors with flash made this camera a replacement for an SLR wide angle lens. And, if it was good enough for Helmut Newton, who am I to complain?
I bought 2 CR123 batteries (they’ve gone up in price since shooting film – $14.99 for 2!) and some Kodak Hi Definition 400 ($7.99/3 rolls) film and will go shoot with it this afternoon.
Plastic Cameras
I love my TIME camera – it’s a Holga/Diana with the chromatic aberrations and vignetting, but without the cost of medium format film and development…
Jazz Jelly camera, revisited
My fixation with LOMO LC-As and film photography began in 2000. About that time, I started collecting toy film cameras. I like the aesthetic, I like the disconnect from technical frippery that a plastic lensed, single aperture, single shutter speed gives. I like vignetting. I like chromatic aberration. I like soft focus.
One of the cameras I loved was the Jazz Jelly. It looks like a $5 Olympus Stylus, with its dove bar shape, built-in flash and sliding lens cover. The 28mm lens is simply designed – if it has more than 2 elements I would be shocked. It’s light, and it’s disarming. People don’t concern themselves with someone taking their picture with a see-through purple, red, or green camera.
The Jelly has a panorama setting. It crops the top and bottom of the photo, and some film processors can crop that onto a wide print. I think back in the APS days this was more common, but most places will probably print on 4×3 paper and print the borders, like a letterbox DVD.
Since the Lomographic Society has brought the Diana back from the dead and renewed interest in the Holga, I’ve rediscovered toy cameras. 35mm toy cameras are getting hard to find! Cameras like these used to be available at Wal-MART, drug stores, convenience stores and even office supply stores. Cheap film cameras have all but gone from retail, and I’m afraid they were so cheap that they may have all ended up in landfill.
I’ve combed the junk shops hoping to find that Diana in mint condition, but alas, have never been that lucky.
I found a Jelly on Amazon for a reasonable price ($7.99 with a battery and 200 speed film!) and will throw it in my bag, see what I can do with it.
Miroslav Tichy
Am so enthralled with the photographic work of Czech artist Miroslav Tichy, who made cameras out of cardboard tubes, thread spools, rubber bands, and other similar things, and then photographed public scenes in his small hometown. He developed the negatives in a bucket at night, because he didn’t have a darkroom. Later, he said that the defects and ugliness were where the true art happened.
Photography is painting with light! The blurs, the spots, those are errors! But the errors are part of it, they give it poetry and turn it into painting. And for that you need as bad a camera as possible! If you want to be famous, you have to do whatever you’re doing worse than anyone else in the whole world.
[via This Is That ]
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