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
Terrible news for UK based film photographers today. The high street chain Poundland have confirmed they are no longer stocking their cheap AGFA Vista branded out of the box 35mm colour film.
The devastating news was discovered by 22 year old Scandar Silva-Payne of Bristol, UK who heard a rumour via a friend who also buys the cheap £1 a roll film so he took to Twitter to ask the firm directly. Continue reading
December is almost upon us and being that time of year we thought we’d save you a “Gifts for Photographers” Google search with this incredibly cute photography book with a twist.
It’s a camera!
Designed by the brilliant Kelli Anderson, this wonderful little stocking filler would be a joy for child or adult alike. At a price of just $29 it’ll be hard to resist for 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.
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
Moscow based artist Dmitry Morozov has designed a digital camera by reengineering a Gameboy classic, accompanying thermal printer accessory and a GUN!
He calls it the 8-bit Instant Photo Gun, and that’s exactly what it is. Despite looking like a movie prop from a futuristic steampunk-esque film like Mad Max, the camera is actually quite functional. Albeit a certain taste may be required to appreciate this certain output aesthetic.
The thermal printers & camera were sold as an accessory to the Gameboy over a decade ago. With under 1 Mega-Pixel of power they are slowly starting to creep bag into the digital-hispter’s bag. Morozov has simply repurposed the entire system to work with a gun’s trigger. Continue reading
Phogotraphy 