Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Not a half frame camera

I have a Konica EYE half frame camera. I managed to get exactly one roll of film out of it before it broke. You can see in the last few frames that the images overlapped a bit. The drive gear under the thumb lever has since stripped completely and it no longer draws film through its magic little hands. I tried it today, it didn't work. 

I had shot about 50 images when I realized it just wasn't working. You get 48 images out of a 24 roll of film, it's pretty neat. I wondered about trying to recreate the sensation with a digital camera. I have a little point and shoot camera. I put it in 1:1 aspect ratio mode which is the closet to the portrait mode of the Konica that my little camera could do, and then I "stream of consciousness" took a series of photos. Every single one of them are here, in order. 33 of them. Old habits crept in, I took multiple shots of some things, but since you can't edit images out of a strip of film, I left the variants in here too. 

I don't think I was aiming to accomplish anything with this. I probably didn't accomplish anything with this. I would like to shoot more film, this isn't film, and it makes me want to shoot more film. So maybe I accomplished that. 

The broken EYE is going into the trash. I will keep an eye on craigslist for a while and see if another one shows up. I'm not going to hold my breath, I don't think they were a big seller to begin with, there probably aren't many used ones to be had. 

These photos? I like them for what they are. Digital can take better photos but somehow still lacks soul, especially at the entry level. I find it amusing that for years and years the photo industry strived to find ways to better represent reality, to make their colours more realistic, and to get full tonal range out of a chemical process, and when they finally got that we decided to be nostalgic about Kodachrome colour space, and Portra, and old film in general. I batch processed these images, adding a bit of darkness and contrast. The pictures out of the camera were too "good." They needed to be given soul. 

My Yashica T3 still works. Maybe I'll try that one tomorrow.