Vintage, toy, DIY, odd cameras you have seen or used?

ksmattfish · Sep 7, 2003

I've seen a few posts talking about Holgas and some vintage cams.
What vintage, toy, homemade, odd, specialized, weird, strange, unpopular, rare, super-expensive, super-cheap, etc... cameras or photgraphic equipment have you seen or used?

I love learning about and messing around with off-beat cameras. Cameras that do something different to the picture, or have special features, or even just weird quirks.

One of my favorite odd cameras has to be the Widelux. The optics are a 28mm fixed focus lens set in a rotating turrent that covers 140 degrees. It has a fair range of aperture and shutter speed settings, and takes a 6cm long frame on 35mm film. Not only does this camera do some really weird things with perspective, you can get some bizarre effects combining a moving subject with the moving lens. I have a Widelux, but it has broken and is waiting until I can afford to get it fixed. In the meantime I sometimes play with my Viscawide 16, which is a similar camera, but it takes 16mm film.

I read an article (I tried to link, but the photos were gone, so what's the point) a while back about a guy on vacation in Arizona. While out fishing he dropped his new Nikon Coolpix 900 in the lake. He took it back to the hotel and lets it dry over night. When he tried to turn it on it made some noises, but the LCD won't light up, it's not really working. Figuring he has nothing to lose, he tapes it to his windshield wipers and drives all the way back to Kansas with the wind blowing through it. When he gets home, he tries to fire it up again, and it comes on and seems to be working. Except that it turns out that it takes really strange, psychedelic pics now. It senses colors and tones much differently. The photos were really cool, and very strange. This guy has an absolutely unique camera. How cool.

Jeff Canes · Sep 7, 2003

Pinhole Body Cap for SLRs and Medium format cameras, thinking about getting one, I found them at Freestyle Photogaphic (LA, CA)

http://www.freestylephoto.biz/sc_main.php?cat_id=2203

Freestyle also has Polaroid Back for Holga

ksmattfish · Sep 7, 2003

I made a pin hole body cap out of an extra cap I had laying around. Drilled a 1/2" hole in the body cap, put a pin hole in a piece of aluminum (Coke can), and taped the piece inside the cap.

wolfepakt · Sep 7, 2003

My wife just found an old camera at her parents house (and brought home as a toy for my daughters to play with,) a Kodak Instamatic 133 that takes 126 film. It was made in England.

The shutter works on it, but I have no idea if the rotary flash "shoe" on top works and I really want to find a roll of 126 to see if it works.

The front has a dial thing that turns the flash on and off (I think) any one else seen one of these?

WolfePak

Jeff Canes · Sep 7, 2003

The film is available from a few places JandC Photo, Film for Classics and Frugal Photographer, those are some that I know of, but the only place I know for processing is Film for Classics, the film is inexpensive, but the processing is not

http://www.frugalphotographer.com/index.htm

http://www.filmforclassics.com/

http://www.jandcphotography.com/

hojamohoho · Sep 7, 2003

ksmattfish said:
I made a pin hole body cap out of an extra cap I had laying around. Drilled a 1/2" hole in the body cap, put a pin hole in a piece of aluminum (Coke can), and taped the piece inside the cap.

Got any pics you can show us our this in action?

ksmattfish · Sep 7, 2003

I am trying to get some of my prints scanned so I can post them.

I'll borrow my mom's dig cam and take pics of my Pentax ZX-5 with the DIY pinhole body cap, but it really is as simple as it sounds. On a bright day you can actually see the pinhole image in your SLR viewfinder.

Anybody out there have a digital SLR with removable lenses? I want to see it done to a dig cam.

SquirrelNuts · Sep 10, 2003

I have a Nishika 3D camera. It has four lenses on the front and reminds me of a spider or fly. Everyone always gives it odd looks.

-SquirrelNuts

ksmattfish · Sep 11, 2003

I have a Nimslo 3D Quad-lens camera. I've played with it once. I wish it worked more like some of the "action sampler" cams instead of taking all four pics at the same time.

Thinking about multiple lenses reminds me of a Nat Geographic show (or Nova, or something) that I saw. This woman was studying bats. She had a homemade flash unit that was made up of 10 Vivitar 285HV flashes; five stacked on five. They were set to go off one after the other. She would set up her camera facing where she knew the bats would fly, and since it was pitch black, she just locked the shutter open on bulb. She used an IR sensor (like on auto-opening doors) to detect when a bat was flying in front of the camera and to trigger the flashes. The photo she got back showed the landscape with 10 consective images of the bat in flight. She was doing it in BW and getting 11x14 prints. There were some really cool shots. For her it was science, but I thought it looked like art.

manda · Sep 16, 2003

i have a holga
it frustrates me

ksmattfish · Sep 16, 2003

manda said:
i have a holga
it frustrates me

How does it frustrate you? What is it about the Holga that you like?

terri · Sep 16, 2003

I'd like to know the answer to that, as well (about the Holga frustration), as I've been casually on the lookout for one whenever I find myself in any kind of flea market/off-the-wall kinda place I might find old cameras. I love the images I've seen with them - that vignetting look is so timeless. Is it hard to use them?

I've heard of focusing and composition problems, ie, what you see is not always what you get. That WOULD be frustrating. :?

manda · Sep 16, 2003

No, its very easy to use.
Its not the holga essentially but the 120 film. Here in Sydney, it cost me an arm and leg to have it developed so I find it frustrating that I cant go out and snap with it all the time because it does produce some funky pictures.
It cost me around $50 to have 10 photographs developed, some of which, because of the Holga style, came up pretty crappy.
I'd love to learn how to mount a 35mm roll. There are holga mods to do that but it all sounded far too confusing to me!

Bob_McBob · Sep 16, 2003

http://www.theverb.com/holga/modification.htm That's got all the instructions you need to load 35mm film into your Holga. Remember, as I said before, you really should be developing your own black and white film at least. $50 is nuts! I pay something like 50 cents to develop a roll of 120 film (just the cost of a shot of developer...).