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This is the world’s first Sony E-Mount 35mm film camera – and it’s open source

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Well, this is an interesting turn up for the books. It turns out that while many photographers are trying to adapt their old film cameras to their shiny new Sony cameras, one photographer, Alexander Gee, was doing the opposite. He wanted a film camera that would work with his modern Sony E-Mount lenses.

LEX, as the camera is called, is a one-man operation, and it seems to have come quite far already. Gee plans to make LEX fully open source, once complete, with much of the camera being easily 3D printable and easy to modify. Don’t have Sony lenses? No problem, just modify it for another camera mount and print that out instead.

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“I’m back” is back – The digital back for SLRs returns

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Last year we told you about I’m Back, yet another solution to shoot digital images with your old film cameras. They were funding the project through Kickstarter and fell somewhat short of their goal, pulling in €35K of their €85K target. Now, though, they’ve rethought the project and I’m Back is back with lower expectations.

Once again, funding is through Kickstarter with a €20,000 goal, it’s already gone way past that, hitting over €30K. It’s still a little short of the amount pledged last time, but there are still 22 days of the campaign left to go. With a few tweaks and price adjustments, it looks like I’m Back might actually go ahead this time. It also seems that it may now be compatible with a much wider range of cameras.[Read More…]

How to make your own medium format camera from scratch with a piece of PVC pipe

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Pinhole cameras are about as old as photography gets. They’re such a simple and basic concept that’s withstood the test of time and are still very popular today. While many modern photographers opt to get a pinhole body cap for their DSLR or mirrorless, it’s easy enough to make your own. In fact, there are many different ways to make one.

I’ve been following YouTuber Joe Van Cleave for a while now. And in between the typewriter and office supply videos, he puts out some great analogue photography content. Some of it covers photographic technique, sometimes it’s a new camera he’s just bought, and occasionally it’s something he’s built himself. And that’s what he’s done here, with these medium format PVC pipe pinhole cameras.

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“I’m Back” is a digital back for old 35mm film cameras

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How would you like to take digital photos with your old 35mm camera? I’m Back is a device that promises to “bring back to life” the feel of vintage cameras, but in the digital form.

With I’m Back, you can use your old film camera, but with the focusing screen in the place of the film roll. The photo is created on a camera module located behind the camera body and saved on an SD memory card.

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Yashica announces Y35, a digitized version of Yashica Electro 35

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Legendary Japanese camera brand Yashica has recently announced a comeback. After a series of teaser videos, they have finally launched the Kickstarter campaign. The camera they are making is called Yashica Y35, and it’s a pretty unusual blend of the analog and the digital.

Yashica Y35 features the same design as the Electro 35, but on the inside, it’s quite different. It “recaptures the joy and meaning of analog photography,” but turns it into digital. Their campaign says “expect the unexpected,” and indeed – this is quite an unexpected camera. And in many aspects a pretty cool one, too.

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Lomography launches small, cheap and disposable Simple Use Film Camera

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Instead of being the only option, film photography is a growing trend in the digital age. Carried by this tide, Lomography introduced another set of cameras for the film lovers – the Simple Use Film Camera. It’s a disposable camera, pre-loaded with 25mm film with 36 shots. You can take it everywhere, it fits inside your pocket, and returns you right back to the ‘90s.

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10 Things I’ve Learned from 10 Years Shooting with a Hasselblad

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This year marks the point at which I have been using Hasselblad cameras for over a decade. My first was a 201F in 2007, before moving to a 203FE in 2011 and adding a 202FA in 2015. They’re the classic 6×6 V series models, although have some additions on the more familiar 500 series that I will get into later. Over the years I’ve put several hundred rolls of film through the various cameras, not a great deal but enough to appreciate the idiosyncrasies inherent in shooting with medium format.

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Two artists built a camera from 32,000 drinking straws

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If you are creative enough, you can make a camera from all kinds of things. And two UK artists, Michael (Mick) Farrell and Cliff Haynes created, were creative enough to make one from 32,000 drinking straws. We’ve seen and made some DIY photo projects with straws, but Straw Camera is the most unordinary and the most demanding so far. The results are truly amazing, and most of all – unusual and unique.

As Cliff explains, he and Mick started the process of creating the camera in 2007. Their idea was to create the images in the most direct possible manner. The idea started from Mick’s interest in pinhole cameras, but the straw camera actually works in a different way.

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Watch: it took 200 rolls of film to create this timelapse commercial

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Today, we see plenty of awesome timelapse videos created with still cameras. Sometimes they are even made from screenshots. But twenty years ago, they weren’t very common. In 1997, Alastair Thain filmed a commercial for Nikon F5, “technically the quickest camera in the world”. And to prove it really was the quickest, he created a timelapse using precisely this still camera. The results are pretty cool, both in terms of the quality and the mood of the commercial.

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