In this episode we talk to Daniel Keating about topics wide ranging from homemade cameras and films to bartering with the soviets over photochemistry. Daniel is an amazing resource of photographic and photochemical knowledge, and he gives a freight train of an interview that we suppose only scratches the surface of what he knows and has to share. This is a great one to listen to with a pad and paper, or google opened in your browser.
This week we extend the afghan box camera and talk about developments towards that project. We talk about the RA-4 Color reversal process more in depth, and its potential inside an ‘instant’ camera. Ethan talks about involving Joe Van Cleave in the process.
Ethan talks about trying a Kickstarter to sell the plans for his next camera to a group of people and then giving them away free to the world.
Ethan talks about what it was like to shoot the Homunculus and the Panorama every day.
Graham talks about his trip to North Carolina and why Bass is analogous to Saturation.
Nick talks about the Sunny 16 Podcast’s (sunny16podcast.com) Day Into Night challenge. Graham comes up with an idea of how to troll Graeme. Ethan talks about his Day Into Night camera.
They also talk about the challenge to produce self-developing cameras. Graham suggests our listeners give a listen to the The Lensless Podcast (https://anchor.fm/thelenslesspodcast) Episode 75 with Evil Chutney who talks about his self-developing camera.
Nick talks about his upcoming trip and the concept of what to take pictures of. He asks Ethan about what lenses are the best to use on the Homunculus.
Apologies to anyone who expected this show to be released on the 21st of October, our usual release date (not that any of you actually notice we release on the 7th and 21st of each month); it was delayed due to Graham updating his computer to MacOS 10.15 and Audacity (audio editing) not updating their software to work with MacOS 10.15. He had to scramble a bit to find a computer with the old operating system but find one he did and here’s the result.
Ethan has gone off for a European Vacation so Nick and Graham, left to their own devices come up with a show about… 90 minutes in length. They open the show with a discussion of modified Holgas and how to determine the frame sizes on slit masks and then move on to a chat about the interaction between elements in a photograph is the foundation of an interesting image.
Then, to completely annoy Simon, Perry and Johnny of the Classic Lenses Podcast (https://www.classiclensespodcast.com/), they talk about using modern cheap manual focus lensesthat have been designed to go on modern digital autofocus cameras for homemade film cameras. These lenses are excellent and cheap (did we mention cheap?) and, once a shutter system is devised, can create a competent camera build.
Graham thanks Neil Piper of the Soot and Whitewash podcast (https://anchor.fm/neil-piper) for reviewing the 24Squared which could be back on the market in a few weeks.
They start off talking about bokeh and bokeh balls and Downton Abbey.
Ethan gives a short zine update and then Nick talks about Field of View vs. Perspective.
Narrow terms for optics:
Perspective: The geometry of point of view.
Field of view: With a normal lens, we see about 42mm is the same as our eyes.
Wide-angle lens distorts image: The distortion is an effect of our brains. We can’t normally see it that way so our brains have trouble figuring it out.
Barrel distortion and pincushion distortion are optical effects of lenses that can be corrected in lenses.
They then move into an open discussion about things to think about when building a large format camera. Advantages, disadvantages, concerns, etc. are covered.
The conversation about field of view is continued.
Ethan talks about a new project he has been working on, an 8X10 3D printed camera and why his head smells like soup.
They all talk about what they’ve been doing lately. Nick is thinning stuff out (no, not his hair, though that may also be the case); Graham went to a Viking and Mead Festival where he shot portraits of people in costumes, he’s working with developing more Holga Masks, including a panoramic insert and a 645; Ethan is working on a Day-Into-Night camera. It’s also worth noting that Nick and Ethan appeared on the Sunny 16 Podcast talking about this day-into-night (or night-into-day) photographic challenge the Sunnies are foisting off on the rest of the film photography world (https://sunny16.podbean.com/e/ep-171-made-for-the-job/)
The discussion starts off with a question about the features you would want on a single camera you might have on the desert island with a camera-supplies mini-mart.
This episode’s guest is Lucus Landers, a Brooklyn-based photographer and camera-maker. We learn about how gaffer’s tape bellows on a home-built 4X5 stem from growing up in the great state of Oklahoma. The gaffer’s tape is a recurring theme…
George Daniels writes books about watchmaking that helped Lucus understand the building of gears for a film transport mechanism:
ZINE UPDATE : The print version of the Homemade Camera Zine No. 1 is now available for preorder at https://www.cameradactyl.com/homemadecamerapodcast/homemade-camera-zine-no1 . Orders will end on Sept. 22nd, and Zines will ship by October 7th. There’s a bit of trouble with Squarespace, where if you are in the US/Canada, order as normal, but for UK/EU customers, there’s a $0 where the entire price of the zine and shipping is rolled into the shipping cost ~$23 -$24.
SHOW NOTES:
We start off with a conversation about what size of image is the right size of image, given a lack of “standard” sizes that are available today.
During the rambling conversation, we hit on drawing and how it can make you a better photographer, drawing and how it can make you a better camera maker, the reaction of students to the process, how crazy ideas are the best ideas and other really cool stuff. You gotta listen. Seriously, listen.
Photography in a black hole is contemplated as a bit of a bonus.
We discuss the progress we have made or not made toward the self-developing camera challenge.
And we talk about police shields. Yes, seriously.
We got so caught up this time that we forgot to bring up Heather’s excellent anaglyphic work, which Graham and Ethan have special love for. We’ll have to beg her to come on again to talk about it, but for now, you can see some of her amazing 3D pics at: http://camerakarma.com/#!/2/featured/Anaglyph/196
Nick and Ethan do a small update on the self developing camera challenge, their plans, and some tests Ethan has been running to perfect a reversal process to be used in a number of self developing options that he is prototyping for the challenge. Ethan gets way into the weeds about the reversal process and trials and tribulations with his experiments.
This week the gang talk about cameras that are their own dark rooms. They’re not quite instant cameras but they can produce a final positive image in about ten minutes. Some call them Afghan Street Cameras, Kamra E Faoree, Cuban Polaroids or any number of different names but they all amount to about the same thing: Pure fun for the homemakers of cameras. Hey, maybe we should use that as our new name.
Ethan Moses of Cameradactyl and Butter Grips fame (http://www.cameradactyl.com) officially joins the team as our third wheel (3rd lens?). We get his history and interests and he entertains us with stories of crossing the country looking for Photographer’s Jeans and buying them wherever he can.
They also talk about camera sizes (turns out smaller is better for Graham while bigger is better for Nick and Ethan likes anything smaller than 1.6 Kiev 60s).
