At the end of last year, I found an absolute bargain on eBay.
Until fairly recently, it was Canon's top of the range 35mm film camera: the EOS1n. Its digital equivalent today would set you back over £5000. Because of the laws of supply and demand, it was mine for £240. It's beautiful, built like a tank (and, to be fair, almost as heavy), and it makes that fantastic kerrrcshinkk! noise as the shutter flies across the back at up to 8000th of a second. That's still faster than my EOS5D mk11 can manage. In mint condition, I reckon it's the bargain of the century.
But that's not what's got me all excited.
My son and I have nearly completed a mindbogglingly difficult to construct printed and die-cut cardboard pinhole camera, which also takes 35mm film, and the fundamentals of the design are as simple as the very first cameras constructed over 150 years ago.
There's a copper plate with a tiny pinprick of a hole punched in it, a means of holding light sensitive film a set distance away from it, and a crude shutter (actually a piece of card which you lift up for between 2 and 10 seconds, depending on how bright it is).
It seems the more advances are made in the digital camera field, the more I am drawn to the very early pioneers of photography. Back then it was considered both an art form and a scientific breakthrough, as making a photographic image had as much to do with chemistry as it had to do with art.
Look at them now, some of those very early calotypes, daguerrotypes and cyanotypes; to me some have never been surpassed.
I can't wait to cause some light to fall on a roll of emulsion containing silver halide salts.
Anybody want a portrait taking?
Phil Keevill
Deputy Creative Director
Likes:
Photography, old cameras, tin toys, Ducati, Abarth, Italy, typography, old high streets, architecture, sailing, palm trees, guitars. Currently in pie rehab.
Comments
14 January 11
By: Julia
Pioneer of photography
Have you seen the Muybridge exhibition at Tate Britain yet? I think you would enjoy it.
14 January 11
By: Phil Keevill
Muybridge
Not yet, but it's on the list! Thanks for the reminder. Phil
17 January 11
By: Mika
pinhole
Pinhole cameras rock. They tend to achieve what is really hard (if not impossible) to get any other way:
* They generate infinite depth of field (everything in the picture is in focus, regardless how near or far),
* And if the hole is small enough, exposures are really really long (15 minutes, or sometimes even hours). This effectively erases all moving objects from the picture. You take a picture of a really busy street, and when it is developed, it looks like you took a picture from the alternate universe (one after all life on earth has been eradicated). Eery and very beautiful at the same time. Check out these ghostly pictures of Paris: http://www.nyclondon.com/blog/archives/2005/02/16/paris_through_a_pinhol...
18 January 11
By: Paul
Hand made artefacts
There's a trend here. Digital cameras are going towards greater and greater perfection, but apps like Hipstamatic, Best Camera and Camera Bag let you recreate all the imperfections of film photography. Perfection is cold and alien. We like things to have the human touch. And above all, what makes a photo great is not the technology, but the photographer's eye.
29 March 11
By: Phil Keevill
An dthe BBC have picked the
An dthe BBC have picked the tren dup.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/photoblog/2010/04/let_the_light_in_world_pinh...
29 March 11
By: Phil Keevill
Sunday 25th April is official
Sunday 25th April is official World Pinhole Camera day, whatever that means!