Molography – A parody and commentary

Stole this from a fellow photographer on Suicide Girls named baudot.  If you’ve ever read the 10 rules of lomography, you’ll get the parody.  If not… well Google it or follow the pink link in the quote.

“So I've been around Eastern Europe recently, and you'd be amazed at all the old things you can pick up on the cheap. Even old camera and film companies! I've been thinking about buying this one called 'Molo', but I'm worried that it's on the ropes for good reason. I think with a slick enough marketing campaign, I could make it profitable, though.

Here's what we've come up with. We're going to make using our cameras a "movement" called "Molography" so that kids will buy into it. Tell me what you think of our "10 Commandments".

1. Take your camera everywhere you go. You should always be ready to use up our product, and ready to buy more.
2. Use it any time – day and night. Use, use, use! Every negative is like a lottery ticket, and if you just buy enough film, you're sure to hit gold eventually!
3. Molography is not an interference in your life, but part of it. Don't even think otherwise.
4. Try the shot from the hip. Don't worry about the negatives you're wasting. Consideration is the enemy of art. Be spontaneous. And keep shooting.
5. Approach the objects of your Molographic desire as close as possible. Big images swallow small defects in the lens.
6. Don’t think. Just shoot. Remember, the more you shoot, the better.
7. Be fast. Can we emphasize this enough? Keep shooting, hipster!
8. You don’t have to know beforehand what you captured on film. Remember, art is spontaneous and unplanned and raw and anyone who tells you otherwise is part of the Establishment.
9. Afterwards either. Just keep shooting. Keep getting more film. Remember, each negative is a lottery ticket!
10. Don’t worry about any commandments. Because you are such a rebel. Do you feel good about that? Because you should.You rebel you. Damn it's good you joined this movement. Rebel.

So what do you guys think? I think it can be tightened up a little, but it gets the message across, right? I'm a little worried I should put something in there about digital never being "molo" but maybe I can just make that its own point, bigger than the commandments. Just so long as people keep buying film from me, I'm cool.
Oh, and we're thinking about this for a banner:”

 

Highlight of the whole thing: Consideration is the enemy of art

High Dynamic Range

So, this is a little different than the normal stuff I write about, but I still consider it part of alternative photographic processes, even though it’s something you do in post-processing.  High Dynamic Range, or HDR, describes merging photos using Photoshop or a similar program to achieve photos with a higher range of luminance.

In standard photos, you can usually expose to highlights or shadows or midtones, but our eyes have the ability to see all those ranges is a more dynamic way than our camera can capture.

This is a really great thing to do for all those pictures of white Mt. Shasta and it’s dark tree line.  If you want to give it a try, the first thing is to look into your camera’s settings and figure out how to take multiple exposures (2 or 3) at different exposures using the same aperture.  For my Canon 50D, I set the mode to Aperture priority and go into the exposure settings in the menu and tell it to bracket to 1 stop above and below, so the camera will take a series of 3 photos.

Example of photos:

Standard exposure – this is a decent photo of the mountain and fairly typical for what is seen, but the mountain is actually blown out a little because of the difference in tones.

Over exposed by 1 stop

 

Under exposed 1 stop

Then, these are merged using different programs.  In Photoshop, you use the File>Animate>Merge to HDR function (Google for more comprehensive tutorials).

The result:

You can see how the trees are properly exposed and the mountain is a rich white with dynamic shadows and dark ridges.

Anyway, sometime to play with if you feel like it.  In the meantime, I’m working on a couple different film processes and use of different cameras, but film takes time to process and the COS darkroom is closed this week, so I promise an update soon-ish…

Paint can Pinhole

I originally wanted to wait for this post so that I had a larger set of examples to share of what this “camera” can do, but after an interesting test at COS today, I think it’s too cool to wait.

As discussed earlier this week, you can make a pinhole camera out of just about anything that is light tight and can hold film/paper/etc – like I did with the body cap to my DSLR.  One of the most widely used versions of this is putting a pinhole into a paint can.  Most of them are matte gray or black on the inside, light tight, and the curved back provides interesting wide angles and distortion.

To make a paint can pinhole, simple drill a hole into the side of the can, tape in a brass shim pinhole and make a shutter out of something (I used the black plastic that holds darkroom printing paper and duct tape).  Simply load the camera with film or paper in an appropriate light free or safety lit environment and shoot.  The results will be a negative image that is upside down and backwards.

 

Here’s an example of a negative print and it’s corresponding positive:

 

However, another classmate and I played with putting color printing film into our paint cans and ended up with really amazing negatives (which I converted digitally to a positive because I was curious).

Negative

Positive

  

The sky should be blue and the trees green, but instead the camera created this interested color scheme.  I love it and plan to do a lot more in the future.  Look for updates!

Diana Mini

Diana mini is a tiny version of the Diana that uses 35mm film either in square or half frame photos.  It has all the advantages of the Diana, multiple exposures, panoramic photos and Diana-esque images.  It also has a cable release for long exposures, as well as hookups for attaching a Diana F+ Flash.

Some examples (by the way, these are the cutest little negatives ever, I love them.  Plus the camera can just about fit in your pocket.)

And since I’ve been back in the darkroom, here’s another Holga update.  If you aren’t shooting one yet, or at least thinking about it… well, I don’t know.

Things that have pinholes already in them and a Holga update

While you can build pinhole cameras using a variety of mediums (more on that in the future), you can also buy cameras that are already premade pinhole cameras or cameras that convert to pinholes.  For example, there is a way to break a Holga to make it a pinhole.  Also, if you buy a Diana F+, it has a pinhole setting and removable lens for genuine pinhole photos.

There are a lot of ways of recording pinhole photos, ranging from 35mm film to photographic paper.  The Diana records images on 120 (medium format) film.  Another fun thing about using the Diana to record pinhole photos, is that you can change the aperture setting, replace the lens and continue to take regular pictures.

As with any Diana shot, there is room for multiple exposures.  Pinholes also allow for long exposures during daylight, which can be interesting as well.  These are a couple prints I got off my first roll of film.  Some advice from experience: pay attention to whether or not you advanced the film after each photo!  I ended up with a lot of double exposures that weren’t intentional (although some I loved anyway, which is what makes Lomography so interesting at times).

Double exposure pinhole

 

A little motion blur…

Because of the longer exposure and my puppy’s movement, her head and tail are ghosted out of the photo.

  

Also, as promised, I have a couple new B&W photos from my Holga.  Even if you’re not doing all the off the wall things I want to try with this blog, I hope these at least encourage or inspire you to spend $20 and take some interesting photos.

Pinholes and the things you can put them in

Pinholes are the simplest of cameras.  They basically consist of a very tiny hole punched into some surface that is on one side of a light tight container with either film, paper or something to record a picture.  Then a shutter is used to limit exposure time.

Pinhole pictures are typically dreamy-looking soft focus pictures and depending on how a pinhole camera is built they can be very wide angle or have distorted lines.

The first part of building a pinhole camera is making a pinhole.  As the name implies, it can be made by punching a hole in something with a pin or sewing needle.  I personally use brass shim, which can be obtained in rolls from automotive stores or in small sheets from hobby shops.  Alternative materials include tin foil or repurposing the bottom of Pringles cans, soda cans, etc.

Here, you can see me making a pinhole by drilling the brass with a  needle.  The best way to get a small, round hole is to drill just until a bump forms on the bottom side of the brass, then use a sanding  block to sand the brass down until there is a tiny hole, like so…

For this particular pinhole camera, I want to put it on my Canon 50D.  The easiest way to make a DSLR pinhole “lens” is to put a pinhole into a body cap.  You can pick these up on eBay or Amazon for just a couple bucks.  Then drill a hole in the center where the pinhole will be placed…

  

Use electrical tape to tape the brass pinhole in place…

And you have a pinhole “lens” for your DSLR (or film SLR if you’d like to try that instead)

 

Since this version of a pinhole has a relatively low focal length, you won’t get photos that are as sharp as is possible from some other pinhole cameras, but I recommend using a low ISO and try making a couple of brass pinholes to experiment and see which ones work the best.  You’ll also notice these pictures require a long exposure time, meaning you’ll need a tripod or stead surface and a wireless remote or shutter release cable can come in handy.  (Some of mine had exposures of up to 20 minutes on ISO 100 inside my lit house).

You might also notice dust showing up in pinhole DSLR photography.  Don’t worry, your sensor isn’t that dirty, but the super small aperture of pinholes means that you have almost an infinite depth of field and will see dust in your photos.  Nothing a minute or two in Photoshop won’t fix.

Another pinhole option (which I haven’t tried but am considering) is obtaining a laser cut pinhole.  You can also buy body caps for certain cameras that have premade laser cut pinholes.  I personally like the DIY approach and the trial and error of it.

I only have 2 days of successful pictures (and I like them more as I keep experimenting), but here are some preliminary examples.

Diana Polaroid/Instant Back

Remember all those cool attachments I said you could get for a Diana camera?  Well, one of them is a Polaroid back.  We bought one from Urban Outfitters, but they’re also available at freestyle.  Since Polaroid film is out of business, these actually use Fuji Instax Mini film.

These are pretty fun little pictures.  They can do all the weird things that the Diana can, including double exposures and long exposures.  However, they’re teeny tiny little prints (about 2x3 inches).  I think they’re cute as hell, but not good for anything other than just fun.  I scan mine into film strips.  All of these were taken either in Santa Barbara or Mt. Shasta and I had a ton of fun.  I’ve just ordered more film from freestyle, so expect to see more in the future.

Hint: Click through to open the picture in a new page.  It’ll be easier to see each little photo.  The first pictures on the 2nd and 3rd strips are double exposure and the fourth on the 3rd strip is long exposure (and my favorite!)  Enjoy :)