Eclectic junk from the four corners of the ‘Net. And pictures too!
As I said in a previous post, I use Costco for my photo printing and they use this nifty Frontier printing system to process the digital images you give them. Dry Creek has on file a number of different profiles for digital printers at places like Costco, Ritz, Wallmart, etc. By using one of these you can proof your images and get better color accuracy when you send you images to them for printing.
This is a little brute of a camera but if you ever have a chance to pick one up you should. For a while this was one of the most popular cameras of it’s time. How I don’t know, the outside gears are like something out of a Jules Vern story. Maybe that’s why I like it so much. If you want a camera that isn’t going to cost you much that you want to tear down and hack on it this could be the one. It’s so simple that you can add different lenses to it, make it into a pinhole camera, convert it to half frames, etc… It’s also the perfect camera for a beginning student. Sure, its not and SLR but a rangefinder is perfectly acceptable for most everyone. Being fully manual it also makes the kids learn a thing or two about exposure.
I bought mine on eBay for around $15US and I’m quite happy with it. I do need to fix the close focus on it but there is enough info on the ‘Net that it should be easy.
Argus Collectors Group
The Argus C3
I can’t wait to try this out. the idea is simple, expose for the highlights (VERY important with digital cameras), turn the image to gray scale, and …. Well I’ll let you read the rest of the story to find out how to do this technique. Lets just say that it involves adding film grain to the image to that extra bit of ‘pop’.
HOW TO make Digital Black and White photos…
I bet when you read the title of this you thought it was about an iPod music player that would stick to walls or something. If you have ever wanted to shoot video from your moving car your pretty much stuck with cramming into the space between the dash and windshield or having someone hold it out the window for you. Both solutions suck if your looking for quality. If your looking for glass reflections and shots of your buddies face they don’t get this. If your looking for something a bit better this might be for you. The suction cups should hold the camera at speeds up to 110MPH and sports two ball joints so you can level your camera out.
There is a photo that backs up the 110MPH claim, its the one where the Sticky Pod attached to the side of a helicopter(!) I’d want to see the footage from this shoot, you never know if it was just shot at an air show or something.
The suction cups give it enough friction that it won’t slide down inclines and, as shown in more photos, they can be hooked over things to provide yet more shooting positions.
By the way, if you look at the photo, you can see that the guy demoing this is looking to by a new video camera. Nothing to protect the camera from flying bugs and rocks kicked up by the car. Ouch!
Hood mounting this platform would be great, and remember that if you have the space you can use your car as a camera dolly. Just put it in neutral and have your grips (your friends that thought that movie making was always glamorous) slowly push the car in pace with your subjects. The car has enough weight to dampen out small bumps and jerks to make a smooth image. A bit of advice though, do this on level ground or you end up being able to sell your video to America’s Biggest Idiots.
Panoramic photographs are nothing new, some in this collection date back to the early 1900’s.
Panoramic photographs (1851-1991)
This is agreat site devoted to a love of pinhole photography. I discovered Xiao Shan’s home page when I was looking at his Flickr photostream. As you can see by the image I’m using for this story, Shan likes to improvise and create unique cameras out of whatever is around, I like the zebra cameras myself but the coffee cameraas are a very close second. Its a great place to kick start your brain if your looking for a photo project and you get to see some beautiful photos too.