I’ve been wanting to try microclicks for a long time and I finally got around to doing it earlier this year. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this technique, microclicks is a way of making an overlapping panoramic shot in a Holga or Diana. You aim the camera at your subject, take a picture and instead of winding to the next frame you just wind it 3 or 4 clicks and take another shot. Make sure you turn about 20 degrees every few shots and eventually you’ll have a dreamy panoramic picture that spans the width of 2 to 3 frames of medium format film or, if you choose, you can make the entire roll into one large panoramic photo.
For this roll I used my Holga with Ilford’s Super XP2, iso 400 and a yellow filter. If you’re doing this in sunny situations, a filter will be necessary to counteract any overexposure. As you can see in this first shot, taken at the Philly Art Museum, the yellow filter didn’t really help. I was trying to take a shot of the outside of the building from the Rocky Steps.
Oh well. Here are a couple more photos from that day.
Long exposure of a window in the museum’s cafe
I did make some successful microclicks when I took my Holga and yellow filter to the beach.
I’m very happy with these results! I got these by aiming, clicking, advancing the film 4 clicks and turning slightly after each advancement of the film. Next time, I’ll only advance the film 2 or 3 clicks and make a slight turn every 3 or 4 shots. It’s a really fun technique.
Here are two non-microclick pictures from our beach day. The yellow filter really makes for wonderful contrast in these pictures. I’m going to have to start using it more often.
Purchasing vintage cameras requires a certain leap of faith and sometimes instead of landing on your feet, your fall flat on your ass. Take my Brownie Junior Six-20. I spotted it in an antiques shop and thought it was a bit overpriced at eight bucks, but I got it anyways (turns out that’s about list price but I digress).
After figuring out how to get the damn thing open I shot a roll of film (which I haven’t developed yet). When I tried to get the camera open to retrieve the film, it was jammed. The back just would NOT come off. Disgusted, I set it on a shelf until this afternoon. I decided to pry it open using two small screwdrivers and discovered that the full take up reel had problems fitting (even though I used 620 film and spools). That, coupled with the monumental effort it took just to open and close the camera rendered it inefficient to use as a picture-taking camera. It’s destiny was to forever sit on some decorative shelves until, I had a lightbulb moment.
I’ve had the idea of making a light out of a camera since I saw one a few months ago. I knew it would be pretty simple and it truly is. Here’s how I did it. You need a camera in which the aperture can remain open and a light source. In this case it’s my old piece-of-crap Brownie and a little reading light that I got from the dollar store.
To keep the Brownie’s aperture open you simply need to pull out the little lever on the side (look below the red crayon) then push the exposure lever down.
Then, position the light so that it aims directly through the open lens. You may need to stuff some paper or other soft filler behind the light so that it doesn’t move out of place.
That’s it!
It’s not very bright as you can see, but it’s much more interesting looking than your standard silver and black model flashlight.
I’m really glad I was able to give a new life to this old beauty. It may have fallen pretty flat as a camera but it lights up my nights as a light and my kids are having a blast with it. Plus, I think it might look quite nice dressed up in some festive decor and placed on my mantlepiece or even on my Christmas tree!
Photo booth pictures are quirky and spontaneous. I drag my kids to one of the two local vintage photo booths in my town frequently with only one rule: You have to be goofy! Over the years I’ve collected lots of strips, which can be found on our corkboard, tucked in between magazines and even used as bookmarks.
The time had come to consolidate them into one place before they got lost so, taking my life into my hands, I searched through our very full garage for an old frame and found a long forgotten, oddly sized collage of frames that turned out to be the perfect place to display my pictures.
This project doesn’t require much; an Exacto knife, paper to use as background, self-adhesive photo corners, a ruler and the photos. I picked a frame, in this case the 7 x 5 inch frame oriented horizontally.
After deciding which photos would fit best I picked out the background paper.
Using the frame back, I cut the paper to size with the Exacto knife. For this frame I’d need two pieces of paper and to make it a little more interesting, I made a little checkerboard pattern. I’m using some old card stock as my background but you could use virtually anything. Just make sure it doesn’t compete too much with your pictures.
Arrange your pictures first then, using the photo corners, affix them to the paper.
You can see that after I got going, I realized my original design would not fit very well so I eliminated two of the pictures.
That’s it! Here’s my finished product.
I used a little different arrangement with each frame.
And this is what it looks like hanging on the wall. It’s much nicer than the corkboard and puts our crazy memories front and center in the living room. The variations on this project are truly endless!
Here’s a step-by-step of my new favorite technique, the instant film emulsion lift. It’s a lot easier than it looks, so bust out some of your not-so-favorite instant film pictures and practice until you’re proficient. My instructions are modified from eggzalky’s blog No Such Thing as a Wasted Polaroid. Go check it out because it’s really, really cool and filled with creative images and ideas.
This technique doesn’t work with all films. It will NOT work with the new Fuji Instax format (it’s integral film) and I haven’t had any luck with Polaroid 600 film either, although you can do negative transfers with this film (that’s a process I haven’t tried yet). I’ve used TIP’s Color and Monochrome films for my projcets because I’m saving my last packs of Polaroid SX-70 for manipulation.
I have used all kinds of images for this process from pictures with well-defined subjects to abstract, badly-exposed, crystallized shots. I’m waiting to use my best pictures until I get better at doing this.
Gather your supplies. You’ll need a pan to hold some hot water, scissors, watercolor paper and a paintbrush. Pretty simple.
Fill your pan with the hottest water you dare to dip your fingers in to. This is key to getting a good lift. Then prepare your picture for the process by trimming the sides and peeling it apart, like this
Some sites recommend trimming the sides off so that there’s no white left. I prefer to leave a little bit of white on because your emulsion will have a distinct edge to it that makes a nice border. That edge is also tougher and less apt to rip apart during the manipulation process.
Very fresh instant pictures do not peel very well because the layer of chemicals (the white stuff) is still wet so make sure your pictures are dry before peeling. Twenty-four hours usually does the trick. If you’re having trouble getting the layers to part cleanly, it’s probably still wet.
Next, take the piece with the image on the front and the white chemically stuff on the back and submerge it in your hot water.
Gently, using your paintbrush, swish the area above the white layer around so that it begins flaking off.
If your pictures are too old, the white layer will stubbornly refuse to budge. I tried this once with a picture I had taken last year and all I succeeded in doing was getting the picture wet. Bummer. The fresher the picture, the easier these chemicals will release. The water temperature is also very important. It doesn’t matter how fresh your photo, if the water isn’t hot enough, you’re going to run into trouble.
When most of the white stuff is gone you’ll be left with the emulsion stuck to the clear mylar coating that normally separates the outside world from the guts of the Polaroid.
Using your paintbrush, a toothpick or your fingernail, gently coax the edges of the emulsion away from the mylar.
When the two pieces are separated you can remove the mylar from the water and toss it. Now you have an undulating blob of emulsion. It’s fragile but easily manipulated by swirling the water around it. It’s like a photographic jellyfish. Don’t forget to flip the image over before placing your paper in the water because it’s been sitting face down through out the process.
Introduce your watercolor paper to the water by gently sliding it in below the emulsion.
You can see in this shot that I ripped this photo but that’s cool. I’ll work around it and make it part of the image. From this point you can manipulate the shape of your emulsion on the paper underwater. Use your trusty paintbrush or handy-dandy fingers. When you get the lift generally where you want it, slowly slide the paper from the water. It’s going to move around when you take it out so be prepared, but you can hold down the two sides of the emulsion with your thumbs to keep it somewhat in place.
Here it is fresh out of the water. At this point you can continue to manipulate the emulsion with your paintbrush, use your fingers to smooth the surface and create texture by gently tracing circles or lines on top of the image. If at any time you don’t like what’s going on, simply immerse your photo and paper in the water and reposition it.
Here’s the finished product. I decided to pucker the ripped areas. I also smoothed and stretched the image then gently swirled the surface to create a little bit of whirlpool-like texture.
That’s it! Hang it to dry then put it under a big, heavy book to flatten it out afterwards. You can transfer your emulsion onto almost anything, again, check out No Such Thing As A Wasted Polaroid for a look at some beautiful artwork featuring this technique.
I think I’m living in the movie Groundhog Day everytime I look out the window today. The raging snowstorm outside is reminding me WAAAAY too much of February’s Snowpocalypse. While the forecast is calling for only 12 inches of snow (ha!) I’ve decided to get productive today and research a subject I’ve wanted to know a little more about: Close-Up Diopters.
The world of macro photography is one of my favorites to visit. I personally like to get as close to I can to make my subject look alien. I have a couple of diopters, a +4 and a +10 (which is the diopter of choice). How do they assign a number to a diopter and what does it mean? I found a great page on Michigan Tech’s website, of all places, that easily explains some of the mathematical concepts I’m about to present so if you want even more in-depth information check it out (http://www.cs.mtu.edu/~shene/DigiCam/User-Guide/A95/Close-Up/Close-Up-Lenses.html).
“Most close-up lenses are marked with a +d number in diopter unit, the power of the lens. The diopter (or power) of a lens is defined as 1000/f, where f is the focal length of the lens measured in mm. Thus, a lens of 50mm has a diopter of +20 = 1000/50, and a +4 diopter close-up lens has a focal length of 250mm = 1000/4. A close-up lens with larger diopter value has higher magnification.”
In the Holga, the native lens is f=60mm which means it’s focal length is 60mm (NOT to be confused with the MINIMUM focal length, which is something entirely different). The diopter of this lens = 1000/60 or 16.6 or, if you round-up, +17.
I often get asked how I use my diopters, especially in focus-free cameras. It is a tricky business, for sure and requires a bit of trial and error. The most important thing you need to know is how close you need to get to the subject, but how the hell do you figure that out? First off, you need the minimum focal distance which will tell you how close to your subject you can stand and still take a shot that is in focus. In a Holga, that would be 2.95 feet/89.95 cm. So the closest you can get to your subject with an unmodified Holga is about 3 feet. By the way, I found this out by looking it up on the web. Most cameras have this number listed in the Specs part of the camera’s manual.
My favorite tool, the +10 diopter, has a power that would equal 1000 divided by 10, or 100mm. This means your working focal distance or the distance between your lens and subject is 10 cm (100mm) or, for those of us who aren’t using the metric system, 3.937 inches.
This all means that when you use a +10 diopter on a Holga, you should be 10cm/3.97 inches from your subject in order to get it in focus. You’ll have to learn where your diopter’s sweet spot is and that will occur through trial and error. The stronger your diopter (the larger the “+number”) the smaller the area of focus and the greater the amount of bokeh you will get in your shots. At least, that’s the experience I’ve had with my plastic diopters.
Here’s a little chart that sums it up quite nicely. I can’t take credit for this. I got it from a Flickr group about 3 years ago. The person who posted it has been deleted but still, thank you to holga_pics for doing the calculations.
Don’t forget to set your Holga to infinity (the mountain symbol) when using a diopter:
Diopter Power Working Focal Distance
+1 100 cm or 3′ 3″ (39.37″)
+2 50 cm or 1′ 6 ” (19.5″)
+3 33.3 cm or 1′ 11″ (13″)
+4 25 cm or 9.84″
+5 20 cm or 7.87″
+10 10cm 0r 3.97″
I know what you’re (or at least, what those of you who are into geekery, like myself) are thinking. What formula is used to calculate these numbers? This statement from http://home.sprintmail.com/~awiner/diopters.html sums up the formula quite nicely.
“…the diopter power implies the focus distance. Take 100 cm and divide by the diopter. That’s the focus distance with the diopter. So, a +5 diopter wants to focus within 20 cm. A +2 diopter wants to focus within 50 cm. So, higher power diopter implies more magnification – if you can get that close.”
You’re really just dividing 100 into the diopter power number (+2, +3, etc). That’s it! Who knew it was that simple? Certainly not this math phobic girl.
For consistent results and quicker shooting in the field, make yourself a ruler or marker that will help you position yourself the correct distance from your subject. I use some old cardboard and carry it with me whenever I do macro work.
I hope this little exercise has been useful. If you’re still reading this, I think you get a medal.
Seriously.
Thanks for staying with me on my mathematical journey because knowing these concepts will allow you to use any diopter on any lens and get decent results.
I love turning an ordinary object into an abstract work of art and my favorite technique is macro photography. According to the Wiki :
Macro photography is close-upphotography. The classical definition is that the image projected on the “film plane” (i.e., film or a digital sensor) is close to the same size as the subject.[citation needed] Lenses designed for macro are usually at their sharpest at macro focus distances and are not quite as sharp at other focus distances.
In recent years, the term macro has been used in marketing material to mean being able to focus on a subject close enough so that when a regular 6×4 inch (15×10 cm) print is made, the image is life-size or larger.[citation needed] With 35mm film this requires a magnification ratio of only approximately 1:4, which demands a lower lens quality than 1:1. With digital cameras the actual image size is rarely stated, so that the magnification ratio is largely irrelevant; cameras instead advertise their closest focusing distance.
Blah, blah, blah, right? I like the definition that states the image would be life-sized or larger and that’s normally how I execute my macro photos.
With my iPhone 4 I’ve taken some really nice close-up shots without any extra lenses. Here are a few examples:
When I want to get wickedly, uncomfortably, we’d-better-be-really-good-friends kind of close, I use a magnification loupe. You remember those, don’t you? Once upon a time when we didn’t have digital cameras we used loupes to view our negatives on light boards. Here’s a little portrait of mine
It’s a little plastic thing that has 8X magnification power and is one of the coolest macro tools I have. Simply place the loupe over the object you want to magnify and move the phone in and out to achieve the correct focus. It’s fun to play around with the area of focus when you’re trying to take a shot of a flower or other object that is very dimensional. By moving the loupe around the subject you can create bokeh within the macro shot.
The one thing you do need is a lot of light, just as you do when using a macro or magnification lens on an SLR. You can see from the picture of my loupe that the edges and corners throw a lot of shadows around. This is another thing to beware of. It takes some practice and patience to get all the angles right so that there are no shadows or tell-tale vignetting but it’s well worth the results. Here are a few of my favorites.
Now that the turkey has been eaten and the pumpkin pie put away, it’s time to get back to some camera talk.
Awhile back I posted some mods for my Polaroid Land Camera 220 so that it would accept Fuji instant film without getting stuck. I finally shot the last few pictures in that pack and was able to unload it and take pictures of what I actually did. Unfortunately I’m still running into problems with the Fuji film but more about that in a minute.
When you open up the back of your camera you’ll see this. That little metal bar, visible right below the roller towards the top of the camera, is the root of the Fuji film problem. In my camera that little bar was kind of bent down causing the film to jam up when I tried to pull it out. At first I tried bending the two prongs back. It didn’t work. Then I tried to bend to bar back into shape. That didn’t work either. If the camera was going to function properly the bar was going to need to be completely removed. I removed the two small screws, visible to the right of my thumb, and the screw in the top middle of the black plate which you can see is slightly recessed below the roller. Here are a couple of shots of the bar.
Once that metal bar was removed I throughly cleaned the rollers, which were all gunked up with glue from the film. I used rubbing alcohol and a Q-tip and scrubbed until they gleamed. I thought my problems were over so I loaded up another pack of film and went searching for suitable subjects around town. All was going well until the 5th or 6th picture then things started jamming up again. I wasted the last half of the pack trying to figure out what the hell was going on.
I discovered that my rollers were, again, totally clogged with glue residue. Look closely at the sides of the rollers in the first picture and you’ll get an idea of what happenend. There were even little bits of the paper tabs stuck in the glue. Now I’m baffled. I don’t know how to fix this problem. I clean the rollers after each and every pack of film and it doesn’t make much difference. If anyone has a suitable solution by all means, post it please!! I’m going to go surf the net now to see if I can find some answers. Until then, here are some of the good shots I got with my crazy Land Camera.
So, I’m really excited because my macro Lubitel experiment seemed to work really well!
I was thinking the other day that there’s got to be an easier way than just guessing the distance, like you do with macro Holga. I thought, if I set the focus to infinity and then put the diopter up to the viewing lens I should be able to move in & out on my subject until I find a spot that is in focus. After finding the spot of focus comes the tricky part: moving the camera a few inches up to get the picture-taking lens on the subject while simultaneously holding the diopter up to that same lens.
I loaded up my freshly-calibrated Lubitel (more on the calibration in another post) with slide film and headed to the playground with Elias. Then it was off to the Rehoboth Block Party on September 23 with some Rollei 100 film. I developed those last night and much to my surprise, macro Lubitel took hold! This is a shot of a bottle that my friends Amy and Barbara make and sell. They etch the glass then insert a string of holiday lights inside. They’re beautiful.
I’ve found that there is very little room for error when using the +10 diopter. I’ll do some experimenting with my +3 diopter and see if there’s a little more play in the focusing spot, which would come in handy when taking pictures in an unpredictable environment, like outside at this street party. By the way, I had quite a few people ask me about my Lubitel. It’s so fun to explain to people that it is indeed a real camera and takes wonderful pictures.
I’ve gotten lots of inquiries about my pinhole camera, so here’s the story. I really wanted to make one and first checked out the Corbis website for their DIY pinhole instructions. While beautiful looking, I soon discovered that the published dimensions are not big enough. Apparently you have to enlarge the diagrams in Photoshop in order to get them large enough to hold a canister of 35mm film. A pinhole cam was already going to be a lot of work so I quickly abandoned that idea.
Next I decided to do a random search of pinhole cams on Google and was amazed at what I found. People will make pinholes out of anything! How cool! I saw cams made from Legos, matchboxes, shoeboxes, round metal tins and even one made from a 110 film canister. The coolest (and most do-able) was a gallon paint can pinhole, sold on Freestyle (there’s also a quart-sized version). I figured I could make it myself for about $5. Then I thought about film and developing sheet negatives and decided I didn’t want to invest in the developing equipment when I might not be using this camera more than a few times.
I really wanted to make a pinhole but was intimidated by a) making a container light-proof with yards of black electrical tape and b) figuring out how to advance the film easily. Enter the thrift store pinhole cam. In short, you take a junker camera with fixed focus, preferably no flash, remove the lens and pop a pinhole in it’s place. Genius! You don’t have to light-proof anything! I soon found out it was much harder than I anticipated. Rather than re-invent the wheel go to silverbased.org for fantastic directions that even I could follow. In theory, you have a camera in which your lens cover is the shutter and the fim advance still works by clicking the shutter button (which has been rendered obsolete except for triggering the film advance) and advancing the film. Their link is very detailed and has pictures for each step of the operation (and it is an operation in every sense of the word). There’s even a great section on how to fashion the proper pinhole and how to figure out it’s diameter, a crucial element in ensuring proper exposure.
Here are a few handy tips to keep in mind when fashioning your thrift store cam. When you go to purchase your camera be sure to get one with a lens cover that can function as your shutter. While not crucial it makes life a lot easier and you won’t have to worry as much about light leaking in. In my case, I couldn’t get the lens cover back in working order once I went to reassemble everything so I use a piece of black velcro for my shutter and it works really well with no noticeable light leakage. Also when choosing your camera make sure the lens isn’t sunk way into the body. If you can get a camera with a lens that’s almost flush with the body you won’t have to worry about the sides of your camera sneaking into the picture. Since pinholes tend to be wide-angle lenses, this is something important to consider. As silverbased.org suggests, make sure it’s the variety of camera that is made in China as these types are all put together very similarly. It’ll make following their directions a lot easier. One more thing when purchasing the camera, take a good look inside and make sure it’s one you can easily dismantle: Check that the screws in back of the inside of the camera are easily accessible and also check that you can remove the film rewind knob with a simple twist of the screwdriver. I purchased two cams the day I went and one of them did not have a screw to hold in the film rewinder–it was fused into place–so I ended up with a camera I couldn’t vandalize. It was also virtually impossible to remove the back of that same camera once I got inside the film compartment as there were screws on only one side of the back.
Now that you have your pinhole cam make sure you have a few other tools, namely a screwdriver kit that contains an array of small-diameters such as 1.4mm, 2mm, 2.4mm, etc. (sometimes known as jeweler’s screwdrivers), soda can, metal cutters (for the thin metal wall of the soda can), gloves if you’re clumsy like I am so you don’t slice your hands while working with the metal, sewing needle, exacto knife, fine-grained sandpaper and a good bonding agent, such as model glue or a hot glue gun. It doesn’t hurt to have the black electrical tape handy, either. These are your tools.
While dismantling your camera, unless you’re super-mechanically inclined, it might not be a bad idea to take shots with a digital camera so that you can recall exactly where everything goes once you need to reassemble. When I removed the back of my camera some parts fell out and I had no idea where they went upon reassembly. I also ended up with about 3 ‘extra parts’. I even had my very mechanical husband take a look and he couldn’t figure out where those parts went, either. This is how I ended up with a velcro shutter.
Now, why and how did I make a panoramic pinhole you may ask? Simple. I bought a panoramic thrift store cam to gut because it fit all the above criteria. Imagine my shock when I developed the film and it was panoramic! I posted this question on the toycamera.com forum and found that there is probably some kind of mask internally that causes the pinhole effect. It was a plesant little surprise. Another question I get is how do you get your pinhole pictures so sharply focused? First you have to make a precise and clean pinhole. Follow silverbased.org’s instructions closely when fashioning your pinhole. When it is a very clean hole (no ragged edges, no dust, uniformly round) the light doesn’t have a chance to bend around the extraneous particles, therefore you get a very clean image. Another tip? Get really close to your subjects. Your pinhole could be your new macro camera! By far the best shots I’ve gotten with my pinhole were the ones in which I was a few inches from my subject.
I’ve only shot one roll of film through it so far but I’m having a great time with my thrift store pinhole. Next I think I’ll tackle a completely homemade model. If you have any questions, comments or tips, drop me a line!
Long exposure of a window in the museum’s cafe
ipdegirl
