Archive for the 'Hardware' Category

No Early Adopter

07/07/2011 / in Hardware, Ramblings and Shortcut. 0 Comments


Guess what?!
YES!

It toke me a long way to finally press the purchase button on the iPad. But I did it. And I do not regret it a bit, now that I finally got to this stage.

The main points for me are clearly that I can update my presentations in no time and look professional. While I was carrying paper presentations around with me, I would actually have to reprint them time after time because they would get messy in my bag and when people leafed through them. Depending on whom you want to show your work to, a coffee stain and crease might be acceptable – or not.

Secondly, I can actually fit the iPad into most of my handbags while still being able to use my 10finger system with the keyboard. It feels a bit like playing on a piccolo flute, but it works, and that is the most important. Every one who learned to type with 10 fingers knows how lost you get, when you all of the sudden have to switch to two fingers: takes me forever and I never know where the letters are. I sincerely do not manage to type with two fingers without loosing my good mood (and the train of thought).

As I am working on three books right now, I have a lot of writing to do, so always having the iPad with me is less of an issue than carrying my large screen macbook pro around or typing stuff into the tiny iPhone. And you probably know how it is with the “perfect expressions and statements”: they do not tend to come when one is sitting at a desk, ready to type, but when one is standing in the ticket line, going out to walk with the dog, having a latte in a little street corner coffeeshop or just sitting at the river or in the subway. Now I flip open the iPad, jot the thought down in no time, send myself an eMail as backup and there I am! Perfect.

Obviously the iPad has more to offer than just this. But even if I merely counted the points mentioned above, I did a good deal with it. Considering the sheer amount of presentations ahead of me, I actually saved money if I use it for more than 9 months.

Amazing thought.


Let me present you my new baby!

05/01/2011 / in Hardware, Shortcut, Various, Workshop and collodion. 0 Comments


It was born over a century ago as a healthy “18×13″.
Just booked a summer workshop in England to learn how to feed it with Collodion … and I have yet to find out how to get the chemicals here in Germany.

Cannot wait!!!


Imago 1:1 – truly large format selfportraits

24/01/2010 / in Hardware and Shortcut. 0 Comments

imago-01This morning, while going through the German Freelens Magazin29, I found an article about an intriguing large format camera. While I usually do not see myself talking about hardware, I will make an exeption for the Imago 1:1, a walk-in camera (begehbare Kamera in German) that makes 1:1 black and white single photographs (no negative) in the amazing size of 60×200cm (approximately 2×6,6 ft) of whomever or whatever is inside and presses the shutter. Large format selfportraits indeed.

The camera was developed and constructed in Munich, Germany, in the early 70s by two friends: Werner Kraus, a physicist and Erhard Hoeszle, a goldsmith. Imago 1:1 is 7m long, 4m high and 3,5m deep (approx. 23×13x11,5 ft) and does look more like a selfpreservation-module from a MadMax movie, or like something out of a submarine, than a camera. Continue reading ‘Imago 1:1 – truly large format selfportraits’


Holga

10/10/2009 / in Experiment, Hardware and Shortcut. 0 Comments

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So I now joined the club. One of the last people on earth to buy a Holga, as I assume. No “early adopter” on this one, that is for sure. Well, so it is.

One reason for me to buy a Holga was the decision to build a darkroom and to learn to make my own prints. Working digitally I do not HAVE to know it but I want to. There is something I am missing in these digital prints from today. You could call it the soul of an object maybe. Something breathing, living, unique, something that makes me shiver. I think there are some images that deserve to be given a soul – and, in this case, a body. Hence I have to learn the technique and will need some film to experiment with. Thus a Holga. Eventually I am after another camera, an old Mamyia or Hasselblad … but I have not found the right one yet and the Holgas are inexpensive enough to buy as an extra. Apart from that they are good to experiment around with and that is just something I like to do next to working seriously on my projects.

My Holga arrived from Vienna shortly before we left for Texas, and I was thankful to have the chance to take it with me along with some Velvia, some Provia and a couple of black & white Ilford films that I inherited from a friend many years ago, without ever having the right camera to use them in.

I admit it was a strange feeling to hold that light plastic camera body, it was just like the feeling on opening the funny and colorful box it came in. It reminded me of the first Barbie I got when I was little … similar feelings, similar smell … oh well. I felt stupid when I had to go through the manual to see how to put a film in this thing, but hey, I am a child of the digital age: I have to learn backwards.
Interesting though how expensive the film was in comparison to the camera … similar to a printer in comparison to ink and paper.

I was set to play mode: I now had a camera, that is famous for giving unexpected results due to light leaks, a plastic lens, film material that would go crazy on colour, a not to be trusted viewfinder and no experience with film from my side. So … it could only be fun!

My highest expectation was maybe one “alright” picture in 12, but actually I was positively surprised. If I had not ruined 1/3 of the film by forgetting to take the lens cover off the camera, I would have actually met my expectations. Just kidding! The results are more exciting than I had hoped for. Apart from the unexposed frames (due to the stupid lens cover) I had hardly any frames that were not at least ok. Some were actually quite nice.

I had the film developed but did not invest the money to scan it. I just do not think it is worth it. I will have a few frames scanned professionally for a project later, but this here is really just to satisfy my own curiosity (which is not used to have to wait so long for results) and so I turned my notebook into a lightable and photographed the film. I should have used a tripod but I had none available. So it is just a first glimpse into some material that was really great to make!

(click here or on the image to see more)