The clever chaps behind the eco-friendly film canister ‘Do You Wood Film’ have been hard at work creating a new product called the PHC Pinhole Canapa, an eco friendly camera to complement their previous efforts.
Designed to not pollute the environment the working model will be fully unveiled in a Kickstarter campaign by the 15th August. Designed by film-lovers Mimo Continue reading
Long time Phogotraphy advocates will know all about our eternal struggle to find a decent camera, film or even lens based photography Kickstarter. If not ego-inflating projects, the vast majority of crowd funding attempts tend to be little more than money spinning cons.
Then we discover this. A no frills 4×5″ film loading system.
Introducing the Sp-445, the smallest, lightest most proficient home developing system for 4×5″ film. Its inventor, Continue reading
The latest in what’s becoming an increasingly dull line of products being pushed in the virtual reality headset market is named Lucidcam and apparently people are getting very excited about it. The premise is a nice one; targeting middle-American families allowing an experience not far different from Apple’s Facetime but supposedly in 3D as long as you wear a cardboard box on your head.
Take a look at the fundraising promo video:
One brief look at the market for VR devices and you’ll see why this attempt at crowdfunding is happening now and not later. The Oculus Rift, now famously part Continue reading
With almost a month left to go, how has yet another seemingly redundant piece of camera technology found itself successfully funded on Kickstarter? We’re talking of course of the recently introduced Holga Digital, the latest in a long line of intentionally tacky cameras from the Chinese firm.
The question you might ask is how a product that outputs poor quality images that any digital camera is capable of making could prove so popular. A digital camera that has been intentionally marketed and designed with limited functions. There is absolutely no ‘new’ technology available with the camera, if anything it’s the lack of tech that might just be its unique selling point.
I spent some time considering the appeal the colourful looking adult-toy might have and indeed its lack of high-tech, ground breaking features might be what makes it endearing. Of course the Holga brand is popular already and has a steadily growing fan base filled with people who are committed to buying whatever is new on the product line just as an Apple enthusiast would be for the latest iPhone.
Perhaps the most unusual ‘feature’ of the Holga Digital is its lack of LCD screen on the back. There is nowhere to review or worse, chimp through your photographs. It may seem counterproductive, but the fact its not there may instil a bit of the magic that has been lost in our age of instant gratification. The entire range of Sony Alpha cameras available today have even done away with optical viewfinders, instead they’ve been replaced with garish tiny LCD displays inside the arched roof – perhaps a disconnect from the subject one step too far for some photographers. It’s no wonder that people are grasping at ways to feel closer to the scenes they’re taking.
Remember those days when things broke, we fixed it?
Of course the lo-fi functionality of the camera is easier for our minds to understand. Instead of a mass of circuitry, multitude of functions, wheels and dials we’re presented with a plastic box that might as well just been 3D printed. Perhaps its simplicity in design (some may prefer to call it tacky) proves that to engage people in the arts and photography more is not always better.
We’re still on the fence with this one, but have to admit the interest and success of the Kickstarter has piqued our interest and look forward to seeing if the Holga community develops and thrives with its new found digital technology.
Related: Tacky Red Cameras.
If you’re passionate about losing all self-respect as a photographer, look no further than the latest pretentiously sounding photographic KickStarter, Lumigraphe. It not only promises to extinguish any magic left in the exploration of photography’s early years but will also help remove any burden of disposable income from your wallet.
The video is deceptive enough to fool any unwitting photographer with more cash than braincells into thinking the product is actually a cool, unique and innovative idea. Presumably that is why 30 people have already spent a total of €4000 backing the toy company so far.
Here’s the promo video:
“Perhaps the most impressive thing about Lumigraphe is its simplicity”
Don’t let the sexy Thierry Henry accent fool you. Unless I’ve mistaken the whole thing for an ironic joke or study in social stupidity on the Internet I can tell you this statement is absurd. If you’re not laughing cringing already at the word simplicity, let me break it down for you. Continue reading
Folks, we’ve officially come full circle. The gigantic advancements in technology that have been made since Daguerre first fixed an image, Fox-Talbot invented the reproducible image and Kirsch invented the pixel still has photographers like us grasping for our roots. “The Camera Obscura is Back.”
And like anything in this post-post-modern world, it needs a tacky sales schpiel to sell it (we’ll get to that later.)
Before there were photographs, we painted to make a record of people, places and ideas. Many of these artists would use a camera obscura to aid them in this process as they provided a still frame from which to copy from, trace over or interpret more easily than their own sight. Damn peripheral vision!
David Hockney pointed out that many masterpieces had to have been created using this ‘old camera technology’ much to the horror of many art historians.
Then came along 1800s and something called ‘fixing the image’. Scientists, chemists and hobbyists (there were no photographers back then obviously) started experimenting with different materials that would take the light exposed onto the back of the camera obscura and fix it in place. Niépce was the first to successfully do this in 1827, although modern photography is often attributed to Daguerre and Fox-Talbot over a decade later.
Excited? Well get ready to have your visions of grandeur dashed by an awful ’90s style infomercial that not only teaches you how to suck eggs, but at the same time devalues the premise of the idea it’s created. Continue reading
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