I keep an eye on the sites that link to mine, and a couple of days ago, I noticed that the photos of my D50 was getting many more hits than normal:

The source of all of the hits? A site called picsdigger.com. It seems to be a random automatic photo aggregation site; I certainly can’t find any details about who they are, or what they do.

If anyone has any idea who picsdigger.com are, please let me know!

A couple of weeks ago I took some photos with my Rajar No 6; eager to see whether an 80 year old camera could deliver. Well, here’s one of the results:

As can be seen from the white splodges (that’s a technical term by the way) and general feeling of looking at the scene through a dirty window you can see that I have a problem. Seeing as I had cleaned the lens, I was pretty sure that it wasn’t the glass that was the problem, so I shone a bright light from inside the camera to check for pinholes:

Oops. Not just pinholes, but massive holes in the bellows. I guess that’s to be expected in such an old camera, but I have to say I’m a little disappointed. A little bit of searching online reveals that there’s no accepted and permanent way of mending them, as the bellows need to retain their elasticity in folding in and out. Unfortunately this means that this camera of mine will have to just be a piece to look at….however I would be happy to experiment again with both 120 format film, and vintage cameras. Oh, and maybe also pinhole cameras; where pinholes are a good thing!

Interesting press release from Sharp today as they announce a new 3d camera module for mobile devices. Will we be seeing a 3d camera in an iPhone soon? Who knows! Currently, there’s a 3d app for the iPhone to allow users to take two photos, then combine them within the app into an anaglyph. With this, it could become obsolete.

But hey, I’m jumping ahead of myself – it hasn’t been incorporated into a device yet. To be honest, from the image in the press release, the two cameras also don’t look like they’ll be that far apart, so the sense of depth will not be as exaggerated as with some current methods. It’s a start though, and shows that a lot of people have caught the 3d photography bug!

With two 3d weddings under my belt with mixed reactions, I soldiered on, and experimented at a third wedding with some 3d photography. The feedback I received from this was as follows:

The 3d photos are pretty cool. We both like the confetti photo and the novelty of having 3d photos! Although its fair to say that some didn’t work as well as others and some people have found it hard to view the 3d image. So if they invent another way to view them, that’s probably the way to go.

As with the second wedding that I took some 3d shots at, this couple saw the potential of 3d, but like the couple from the first wedding that I tried in 3d, there was some reservation with regards to viewing the images. The confetti photo was one of my 3d favourites from the wedding too, along with one of the speeches.

This feedback, in conjunction with the previous feedback, was enough for me to invest in a 3d lens for my Nikon DSLR in addition to the one that I already had for my Canon A series. However, I realised that it was essential for me to improve my method of delivery of the photos. Stereoscopic images are great for maintaining depth and colour when viewing, but they’re difficult to see. Anaglyph images are easier to see, but lead to a loss of colour quality. Additionally, the pre-requisite of glasses doesn’t make it particularly attractive.

Once again, this wedding with 3d photos was a good learning experience for me, but revealed there was still a little way to go!

My oldest camera by far is my 1929 Rajar No 6. I’ve had it for a while, but only got round to shooting my second film on it recently. I ruined the first one by not properly aligning the film on the spool, and therefore mashing it when I wound it on. Just this weekend though I headed down to Hastings to enjoy the bank holiday sunshine, and decided to once again try out the Rajar No 6.

The main issue with working with an 80 year old camera is working out where to source the specialised film it uses. It has the same 6cm spool size as 120 format film, however it has a different slot shape than 120 film…oh, and it’s not produced any more! For my first (mashed) film, I went for a Fujifilm 120 colour film, but this time I decided to plump for a standard 120 format Ilford hp5 film, and bash a little metal adapter I have into the end of the spool. As it’s literally just film wrapped around the spool, it’s really important to load it in the dark, as unlike 35mm film, there’s no canister around the film to stop accidental over-exposure. That’s something that just adds to the fun of working with a new camera.

So, onto the taking of photos. Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be any science to it at all – it’s really a point and pray camera. There’s very little to control; just whether the shutter closes as soon as it opens or whether it’s on a “bulb” mode. There’s no aperture to set, no shutter speed, no zoom, and even composition is a bit dodgy. There’s a prismatic bit of glass that acts as a viewfinder and it’s possible to change its orientation for taking portrait and landscape photos, but where the camera is so old, the glass is scratched, and I found myself squinting to see the subjects of the photos. The technique of taking the photos is also a little alien to me; holding the camera body against your chest for stability, then looking downwards into the viewfinder means you’re hardly looking at what you’re photographing.

Obviously with it being film, there’s no instant preview (apart from if you retrofit a film camera with digital innards), so I won’t get the results for a while.