Last week I tried hard to be impartial while writing our brief article outlining the current problems surrounding the first film from The Impossible Project’s (TIP) factory and the backlash surrounding it. Personally I was torn about the new film: I was incredibly happy that they have managed to resurrect the old factory and succeeded in creating an entirely new film, but I was a bit dismayed by reports of the instability of their integral product.
Now that the dust has settled after a frenzy of excitement over the launch of The Impossible Project’s (TIP) new film the PX 100 Silver Shade, people are starting to wonder if it will live up to the hype.
In this modern-age of twittering press conferences line-by-line and avid fan-boys drooling over prototypes, the Impossible Project took a leaf out of Apple’s (Mac)book and took a very web2.0 approach to marketing this film: create grass-roots support, push a strong community-based web presence and the sales will follow. The problem, as with all hyped product launches, is that now the product has been launched and people have had a chance to take a look at the film and the reception is mixed.
People have been taking photographs for over 150 years and finding negatives and films from this long history of photography can be exciting and fascinating. However, this can be a minefield leading to copyright and taste issues. Hopefully, this article will help to keep you on the right track, suggesting places to find films or negatives, how best to look after them, scan them, and even research their origins. I will also look into the copyright and ownership of these films.
“See the fringe at the top is where the pod breaks. I just love the look if it and i think its the signature of the camera. I used to have to fight with them that if they show my pictures they had to let the goo show.” (Elsa Dorfman)
The 20x24 and some of the fantastic results Photo ©2009 Jennifer Trausch
The most spectacular instant camera has to be the Polaroid 20×24. Created in the 70s in a exciting vibrant ‘can do’ environment at Polaroid, the 20×24 is a fantastic photographic feat. An even larger beast, the 40×80 was also created, but the 20×24 still manages to capture people’s imaginations, maybe due to it’s slightly more portability,the 40×80 was almost just a room with a lens attached to one of the walls, and wasn’t exactly portable! At least the 20×24 has wheels…
Our final part to this series is a bit different to normal Holgablog articles. We have been lucky enough to have been granted permission by Pierre Luminet to translate his brilliant in-depth reviews and comparisons of some of the most popular TLR’s ever made. Pierre spent an incredible amount of time and effort performing a side-by-side comparison of 1o different TLRs and we present to you the full translation, along with photographs.
Here is my translation(I hope it is ok, there may be small bits that make no sense…sorry, it’s my bad translation!):
We’ve covered the most popular TLRs out there, however, there are 100′s of other TLRs that are incredibly capable and most are a lot cheaper than their popular-cousins. As already mentioned, while researching, I was astounded by the amount of cameras with ‘flex’ on the end of their names! There is not enough space to cover all of these, so we’ll try and cover some of the most popular and interesting cameras. Some of them are quite rare, but many offer a cheaper alternative to the popular models we covered in part 1 of our guide.
Compared to ‘proper’ TLRs, specifically designed toy cameras are relative youngsters to the camera market. There are some TLRs that enthusiasts have adopted as toy cameras (the Lubitel 2 and 166U/B, plus a whole heap of plastic bodied/plastic lensed pseduo TLRs from the 60′s and 70′s), however these haven’t been specifically designed as a toy camera, and we’ve decided to leave those out of the toy section(You’ll find the original Lubitels in the next part of this series, and some of the plastic TLRs in our previous TLR article). If you can think of any other toy camera TLRs, leave a comment!
Due to the stringent rules we have forced upon ourselves, this article is relatively small in comparison to others! It’s a precursor for our next mammoth instalment where we’ll cover other TLRs we haven’t talked about yet (and there are absolutely LOADS!).
Here are the four toy camera TLRs on the market at the moment. There isn’t much choice unfortunately!
To celebrate release of the Diana Mini and it’s half-framey-ness we thought we’d delve into the Flickr vaults to bring you 20 of the best half-frame diptychs. In this digital age it’s easy to place two photos alongside each other, but with a half frame, or indeed any film camera, more thought must go into the final image.
In the first part of my TLR guide we covered the benefits of TLRs and the heavy-hitters in the TLR market. We were originally going to cover Pseudo, Toy and other TLRs in this article, but it ended up growing into a behemoth of an article, so we’ve split it down into a few separate ones. It’s still pretty huge, so grab a cup of tea, put your feet up and enjoy part 2..
In our first of a series of articles on TLRs, we run through the history of these strange beasts, why people use them, and a brief rundown of the most popular TLRs on the market.
Stay tuned for further articles that will feature some of the less popular,pseudo, and toy TLRs, plus some super-special in depth reviews off the most famous TLRs ever made, courtesy of a guest reviewer.
May I present to you the 6×9 Kershaw Eight-Twenty Penguin. Released in the 50′s and made in Britain, it was crap even back then. One shutter speed (or bulb), and a choice of two apertures, plus some dodgy manufacturing didn’t leave me feeling confident of getting decent photos. On the plus side, the bellows were in good nick with no light leaking, but the lens did have some fungus 
Oh, and the shutter didn’t really work (it worked in bulb mode, but acted like it was in normal mode, if you pulled the shutter button out then pushed it back in!). And the the viewfinder was completed loose and wobbly. And the metal struts that held the lens in place were stuck. And the aperture selection switch pretty much didn’t slide.
The (not real) HOLGA D
Indian industrial designer Saikat Biswas has come up with a novel and frankly, fantastic looking digital Holga. He calls it the Holga D.
Saikat has managed to merge the key elements of the Holga and combine them with a digital sensor. We would love to see Holga make something similar.
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