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Mathieu Stern

Turning Paris apartment into a giant camera to capture the Eiffel Tower like never before

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If you’ve ever been to Paris, I’m sure you took some photos of the Eiffel Tower. Photographer Mathieu Stern is based in Paris, yet he realized that he never took a photo of this famous landmark in an unconventional way. And you know Mathieu – lots of his work is unconventional and experimental.

So, he teamed up with BonfotonUP and transformed a Parisian apartment into a gigantic upright camera obscura. He captured one of the world’s most famous landmarks in a new light, and he shares this adventure in a recent video.

Is this the most absurd piece of camera gear ever?

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Freelensing is one of many creative techniques you can use to get unique, dreamy shots. There’s a gadget for that called the Lensbender, and it’s a weird-looking piece of gear that’s supposed to make freelensing and focus pulling easier. Mathieu Stern plays with it in his recent video and claims that it’s the most absurd gear he ever had the chance to review.

How to turn an old floppy disk into a free infrared camera filter

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Remember floppy disks? We’ve come a long way since they were the primary method of data storage, and now we have terabytes of storage on a cloud, hard disks, and even flash drives. So, your old, dusty floppies are lying somewhere forgotten, and they’re entirely useless. Or are they?

Mathieu Stern dug up some old floppy disks and paired one of them with his camera. How, you may wonder? Well, he turned one of them into an infrared filter. It’s a DIY project that costs basically or literally nothing, and it’s also pretty simple to do. So, if you’re an infrared photographer, you’re going to love this.

Found and restored 1910 glass plates show the positive impact of pets on our lives

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I believe we are all aware that pets can make our lives so much better. While in the modern day we have pet clothes, hotels, bakeries, and of course, photo contests, people from 100 years ago weren’t as devoted to their pets as we are today. Or were they?

Mathieu Stern explored a bunch of Victorian-era glass prints. He spent hours in Photoshop and gave them a new life, but he discovered something interesting along the way.  It appears that people in these photos thought of their pets as family members just as we do today.

Make this simple DIY lens from an old disposable camera

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Raise your hand if you still have that old 35mm film point-and-shoot somewhere around the house. If you’d like to give it a new life, Mathieu Stern has a great DIY idea for you. In a few simple steps and with minimum investment, you can use this old plastic camera and make a new lens for your DLSR or mirrorless.

This wooden lens was built using the guts of a Super-Takumar 55mm f/2 and it actually works

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When we think of lenses, we usually think of chunks of metal or plastic with glass elements inside them. If somebody says “wooden lens” to us, we usually think of CNC or laser-cut models of lenses that don’t actually have any optical properties and are simply chunks of wood that resemble a lens. But not this time. Oh, no. This one’s a wooden lens, with glass optics that actually works.

And who do you think made this lens a reality? Yup, that’s right, weird lens king, Mathieu Stern, who teamed up with the folks at Hungarian photographer lens creator, Weird Lenses, to bring the lens to life and regardless of how it might see – which seems quite good – it looks pretty awesome, too!

These crazy looking cameras don’t really exist – They were created using AI

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Cool new ideas for concept cameras come out with alarming regularity. Painstakingly modelled in 3D software like Blender or Maya or something and then textured, lit and rendered to look as real as possible. They’re a great way to see what the general population thinks of a camera design before actually manufacturing it. Or they’re a good way for independents to tell manufacturers “Hey, this is what we want!”

The cameras here, though, aren’t concept cameras. They weren’t even modelled by a human. They were created by the AI system known as DALL-E 2 which attempts to generate photorealistic images based on written sentences. Mathieu Stern wanted to test its limits to see if it could come up with some cool camera designs based on somewhat unorthodox themes and… Well, yeah, it did!

Try one of these seven weird and unusual lenses to shoot your next documentary

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The king of weird lenses, Mathieu Stern set himself a challenge with a documentary short film he shot recently. The challenge was to use only anamorphic and swirly bokeh lenses. But he wasn’t just getting off-the-shelf ready-to-go lenses you can pick up online (although he did use a couple). He ended up using seven different lenses to film his documentary, along with various adapters and doohickies to tell his anamorphic story.

The short film itself, which follows the journey of Louis-Thibaud Chambon, AKA The Waterfall Hunter, is quite interesting in itself but visually it’s also very appealing indeed. The footage itself was shot using the Sony A7III camera and Mathieu wanted to use lenses that not only gave the film a cinematic look but also presented it in an almost magical way. And this wonderful array of lenses and adapters certainly did that!

This photographer 3D printed a 3D lens for mirrorless cameras

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3D printing your lenses or lens hoods has been a thing for a while, and you can make some cool creations. Well, this 3D-printed 3D lens is definitely one of them. George Moua designed a 3D lens for a digital mirrorless camera, and in this video, Mathieu Stern put it to a test to show you how it works and what you can capture with it.

This adapter lets you shoot medium format photos with a full-frame camera

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You don’t need a medium format camera to shoot medium format photos anymore. Well, sort of. FotodioX RhinoCam Vertex adapter lets you shoot digital medium format photos with your full-frame camera. Mathieu Stern tried this $300 gadget, and it seems to do the trick pretty well.

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