When we were in Tokyo earlier in the year, I found a collection of cameras for sale in Kiddy Land and couldn't resist coming home with a photographic souvenir.  I chose the cheapest of the Superheadz cameras I could (my Blackbird, fly is by Superheadz so I figured it was a low risk purchase).

It is a very simple camera, but with a lovely wide lens (22mm) and is incredibly light for carrying around.  It takes 35mm film and has a slightly rubberised surface.  These cameras come in different colours, with different names.  Mine is the Blue Ribbon, because it's blue.  They are also available in other colours, each with their own names, which makes finding photos taking with them on flickr more of a challenge.

I have now taken 5 films with this camera.  4 of them using the delightful Kodak Ektar 100 film.  1 of them cross processed using Agfaphoto CT Precisa.

My observations are:

• it is incredibly light, and so really very portable and great for taking out with the dog
• the lens is so wide, that keeping my fat fingers out of the way can sometimes be challenging
• there is quite a lot of vignetting normally, so cross processing a film makes it ultra vignetty
• loading and unloading a film is very simple
• it loves Kodak Ektar 100 (but then again, so do I!)

Some sample photos:

More photos can be found on my flickr stream under the tag blue ribbon

As with my review of the eyemodule, this review was originally on the janeandrichard site and dates from early 2001.

The Review

During our trip to the Maldives, we used underwater disposable cameras to take photos of fishes. These came out reasonably well, but weren't of wonderful quality. So, we decided to invest in a proper underwater camera. We'd also been carrying a small panoramic camera around with us, which again didn't produce all that good quality images. So, an APS camera appeared to be the ideal solution. Ironically, we haven't had the opportunity to take it snorkelling since.

We bought the Weathermatic camera at Heathrow Airport as we left the UK for a long weekend in Iceland. It was the only waterproof APS camera we could find at the time. Although for the trip to Iceland we didn't need a waterproof camera, one that was weatherproof and didn't object to being dropped in the snow was a good idea.

The photos it produces are of a pretty high standard, and we've had no problems with it in the 2 years we've had the camera.

The specification claims that it can go underwater to a depth of around 10 metres (we've taken it down in swimming pools, and lakes and things to 3 or so metres and it has been okay).

The controls are designed to be easy to use underwater, and this also makes them quite easy to use with gloved hands. Of course, this makes the camera quite bulky (and also, being bright yellow it isn't subtle).

We're in no rush to replace this camera, and it is used as our main camera for all events.

Over Christmas I adopted Richard's old iPhone. He'd upgraded to a nice shiny iPhone 3GS, and his old 1st generation iPhone was sitting around doing nothing, so I thought I should give it a reason to live. That, and the fact that my trusty Nokia Navigator 6110 was on its last legs.

I only got my hands on it the day before we flew off on our holidays, so I added a few applications that I already had on my iPod touch, and bought a few photography applications that Richard already had and found useful, or that I'd seen impressive reviews/results from. I also took pot luck and bought one that I just stumbled upon.

One of my uses for the iPhone within photography so far has been for updates to flickr/twitpic/email on the go - using wifi where I found it I managed to upload 104 photos whilst we were away keeping friends and family in touch with our progress. I almost always have a backlog of proper photos (by which I mean taken on either my d80, or on one of my, ever expanding, family of film cameras). So, processing as I go is important to enable these to be shared quickly.

Applications

I have 3 types of photography applications on my iPhone.

• Applications for sharing
• Cameras
• Processing

Applications for Sharing
I only have the one application in this category - flickr. It allows me to look at my photos and those of my friends, to access my favourites, to edit the details of my photos and, most importantly, to upload my photos at full resolution adding tags and sets as I go. Whilst we were away I used email to upload photos to flickr as I could queue them up, so that next time I found a wifi connection they'd just go, however this only emails a smaller version of the image. Being back at home where data roaming is cheap (if not a bit slow), using this application is my preferred upload method.

Camera
I have 2 camera applications in addition to the standard one, NightCamera and Hipstamatic.
NightCamera is my first choice whenever I'm lacking in natural light - so, early mornings out with the dog, indoors, night time.
Hipstamatic is a new purchase, so I haven't had a chance to work out when I'm going to use this application yet, so I'll probably revisit this in an additional post sometime. Up until now I've liked taking the photos on a "normal" camera application and applying filters afterwards - this is a change as I'll have to get it right first time.
The standard iPhone camera isn't the best camera in the world, but it is adequate in most situations. The thing that makes the photos more usable, at least for me, is the ability to use different applications to achieve different effects.

Processing
This is where the iPhone comes into its own for photography. My rules are that everything taken on the iPhone must be processed on the iPhone and uploaded from the iPhone. No post processing on my laptop (as I mentioned earlier, I've got enough of a backlog already). So, the ability to do some element of processing is important. I have 4 applications that fall into this category.
The 4 applications are, in no particular order, ShakeItPhoto, CameraBag, MillColour or Adobe Photoshop Mobile.
ShakeItPhoto tends to get used for photos which are primarily signs, or bright expanses of colour.
CameraBag and MillColour tend to get used for images which are more landscape or people related, or which I'm trying to make a bit arty.
Adobe Photoshop Mobile tends to get used to put borders on things, and sometimes to do the nice blur effect.
In all cases, I'm using the pre-defined filters, rather than adjusting individual levels. I don't find the representation and resolution on the iPhone screen to be quite sufficient for fine adjustments, so I'm happy to default to a more pre-defined effect.

I'm still looking for an application which allows for custom rotation - i.e. correcting a slightly wonky horizon. If you know of one, please let me know.

Sample Photos

Standard Camera + ShakeItPhoto

Standard Camera + CameraBag

Standard Camera + Mill Colour

Night Camera + ShakeItPhoto

Night Camera + Camera Bag

Night Camera + Mill Colour

Night Camera + Adobe Photoshop Mobile

Hipstamatic

The Review

One of the attractions of the Handspring Visor, has to be the springboard modules. What a totally neat idea. The first modules released though, weren't really that interesting to me. The eyemodule on the other hand, was a really cool concept.

So, I own one of the original eyemodule cameras (there are two kinds now). It's very small, and adds very little size or weight to the Visor. The images it takes are pretty good for something so small, but you're not going to want to throw away your proper camera and rely on this.

It loves bright light conditions. If you would consider using a flash on your normal camera, don't even try with the eyemodule. The images may look okay on the screen, but they'll probably turn out speckly. But, in the right conditions, it works well, and can produce some great pictures.

The original eyemodule cameras can take three formats of pictures, small black and white - 120 x 160 pixels, large black and white - 240 x 320 and large colour - 240 x 320. The small black and white ones take about 9k of memory, the large black and white ones take around 40K and the colour ones around 180k. So, you can fit quite a lot of pictures into an 8MB visor. When we were on holiday in New Zealand, I had around 250 pictures in there, mostly little black and whites, but with 10 or so colour ones too.

The eyemodule 2 cameras can take short video clips too, these use up more memory obviously, and if using a colour visor then the film will be colour, otherwise it'll be black and white (sounds strange, but that's how it seems to be).

So, will I be trading my eyemodule 1 in for a 2? Not yet. I'm happy with the camera I have, and maybe the 3 will be even cooler.

Looking back
This was my first digital camera, and I replaced it with a Canon S20 when the eyemodule, along with various other toys (and my bag) was stolen. As part of the clean up operation my eyemodule photos have moved on to flickr. It is quite strange reading what I wrote about it producing some great pictures when now I'm used to a much higher standard of digital imagery. It is also quite amusing (to me) to see what I took photos of - the building of Richard's Dad's shed, toys in the office, and lots of people - none of which I would have taken film based photographs of at that time, so I guess it recorded 6 months of my life which would have otherwise gone (mainly) unphotographed.

This is the toy that gave me an interest in digital photography, and I remember enjoying using it very much, and being delighted with how it worked and what it could do and I've enjoyed revisiting those images whilst moving them over to flickr. I've also spotted that there is an eyemodule-related group there too - so I may have to submit a couple of images to it. I'm delighted to see that the eyebrowse gallery still exists too.

So, sample photographs:

More photos can be found on my flickr stream under the tag eyemodule

Today is World Toy Camera day, and so I thought it was only right and proper that I took the opportunity to blog a quick review of my Aryca Autosampler.

This camera was a Christmas present last year after many years of me hankering after one or other of the mutli-lens cameras. I asked for this one for one main reason, the ability to select which of many different modes to shoot in. This makes it mimic the possibilities of both the lomography pop and the actionsampler.

The Aryca Autosampler has 4 lenses, arranged in a 2 x 2 square.
There are 7 different modes to choose from. They are selected using the button with a person on it on the top of the unit. This allows you to select

• to fire each lens separately, effectively getting four times as many shots out of your film
• to fire the two horizontal lenses together, effectively getting twice as many shots out of your film
• to fire all the lenses at once
• to fire the lenses one after another at a slow speed - this fires the shots in the following order (when looking at a print) - top left, top right, bottom right, bottom left
• to fire the lenses one after another at a medium speed
• to fire the lenses one after another at a high speed

It has a built in flash with 4 modes (auto, flash-on, flash-off, night scene) - set using the button marked M on the top of the unit
It comes with a removable waterproof casing (although I've haven't tried this yet)
It takes 35mm film
It has no focussing modes/zones, but starts focussing at around 1.5m
It needs 2 AA batteries
It has a focal length of around 30mm
It has a self timer set to around 10 seconds

I use the camera mainly on sequence mode 3 (the slowest) as it works the best (in my experience) for capturing the movement of people and small animals (ok, mostly a small dog). I've found it to work really well for snowboarding, and other action based photography were you have a good idea of where the action is going to happen next. It doesn't get a lot of use, but will definitely be accompanying me on my next snowboard adventure, probably filled with either Kodak Ektar or Koda Portra VC film and is best filed under fun

Some sample photos:

More photos can be found on my flickr stream under the tag autosampler

As of October 26th 2009, Geocities will be closing down it's freely hosted sites. The site I've referred to in the past for Balda Baldixette details is such a site. As such, I'm taking the pertinent details and putting them here for my, and anyone else's references - I haven't taken any of the photos across, just the text. I'm sure this is tantamout to content theft, and if the owner of the information (jgpyke?) has hosted this information somewhere else that I haven't spotted then I'll gladly remove this post and re-direct people to the new page. Just let me know!

Built some time in the 1950's by Balda Werk, in West Germany (BRD), it is a typical 1950's 6x6 camera, pretty much the point-and-shoot variety. In many ways, it is similar to the old Diana or the contemporary Holga. However, the optics are considerably better than the Holga, although that's not much of a comparison. The build quality is much higher than the Diana or Holga: it is nearly all metal with a minimum of plastic used, and there are no light leaks nor vignetting whatsoever. In addition, it has a pressure plate inside to keep the film flat.

The Baldixette has two aperture settings, f9 and f16. The two-element Baldar lens is a little soft overall, especially at f9, but stopped down to f16, it produces acceptable pictures for the type of camera that it is, with minimal distortion. It has two shutter speeds: 1/60 (designated as "M" on the camera), and B, for timed exposures.

The oddest feature of the camera is the retractable lens plate, which pops out to the ready position by touching the button on top of the camera next to the film advance knob. The extending apparatus is a cylindrical and spring loaded chrome housing, and it retracts by simply pushing it back towards the camera. This "folding" action adds to the Baldixette's portability, as it loses more than an inch in profile when retracted.

Simple "modifications" that I have made on the Baldixette include using a lid from a pill bottle as a lens cap and adhering a laminated exposure chart to some Velcro (which, in turn, covers the red window on the back of the camera). I also affixed an updated film speed reminder to the top of the camera, using paper and tape.

Overall, it is a decent camera for the price. If you want a sub-$20 camera and had considered the Holga or Diana, I would suggest that the Baldixette is at the top of the class for these types of shooters. Disassembly of most of the camera for cleaning is quite intuitive for even the novice.

One of the useful modifications that is referred to is the updated ISO film chart. As I haven't taken the photos across, I'll lay this information out in tabular form.
On the /10 DIN area of the wheel:

The first was a couple of weeks ago at Kingley Vale. As is getting quite common now if I'm primarily out to walk the dog I'll carry one or two of my film cameras rather than the d80 as they're much lighter and take up less space in my bag. I was standing at the view point with the Blackbird, Fly out trying to think about what would work well (see photo below) when a chap wandered up and asked me what camera this was. I explained and we had a conversation about film vs digital etc - he'd just switched to his first dSLR after disapointment with the processing of his films from one of the US National Parks (5 failed films out of 12 - odds not good). He was interested in the concept, and we talked a lot about the different types of film cameras, and how good eBay was for picking up old bits of kit.

The second and third were both whilst on holiday in the Gower Peninsular. The second guy was a bit sniffy about it and didn't really see the point - which is fair enough - not all cameras suit all people. He said he thought I must have painted an existing camera orange. I tried to explain about lomography, the concept of toy cameras and the Superheadz concept. He went on to express an option that film was dying because "everyone is using digital now". I disagreed saying that Kodak have brought out a new film in the last year and so have obviously still been investing in the medium and they wouldn't do that if there wasn't a demand. As a side note I liked the results of the new Kodak Ektar 100 and have ordered some more. I also said that I thought it depended on what you were doing. I mentioned landscape and detail and medium/large format films and he nodded. I also got the d80 out of my bag to show that I was in no way anti-digital and we then moved on to a conversation about the importance of buying good lenses. He classified himself as a nature photographer and said he couldn't afford to do this if he had to pay for the processing of the films - fair enough I guess.

The third conversation was with a young guy at the remains of a castle. I got the Blackbird, Fly out and he was interested in what it was and why I was using it and whether I'd loaded it with black and white film. I hadn't, I'd loaded it with Kodak Ektar 100, but do have a couple of black and white films waiting in the wings.

So, three quite different conversations and reactions. I think I am going to have to brush up on my one line explanation of what the Blackbird, fly is, why I use it and what the point is in readiness for my next conversation.

When Richard returned from his trip to the US for Java One, he brought me a Superheadz Blackbird, Fly back. I'd seen these, and photos from them on flickr over the past few months and thought they looked fun.

It has 9 focussing zones - 0.8m, 1.5m, 2m, 2.5m, 3m, 4m, 5m, 10m and ∞
It has 2 shutter speeds 1/125th of a second, and bulb
It has 2 apertures f7 and f11
It has a flash hot shoe (which I haven't tried yet)
It has a fixed 33mm lens
It has 3 formats - standard 35x24mm, square 24x24mm, full (over the sprocket holes)

It is a very light, fairly simple camera available in a multitude of bright colours. Mine is the lovely bright orange colour.
I've now taken 4 films with it, all with Kodak Portra film stock, 3 VC400 and one VC160.

After a couple of months of use, my observations are:

• looking down into the viewing area shows the scene in reverse due to the mirror. This makes getting horizons straight pretty tricky (as evidenced by this, this and this)
• it's incredibly light and really easy to transport making it an ideal companion for dog-walking
• the ability to change the format on a film by film basis (square, standard, full) makes it pretty adaptable and good to experiment with and play
• loading a film can be a bit complex
• I'm getting better at remember to check the zone before I take a photo although I still have my moments...
• I need to get better at estimating distances to get the right zone at the right time :-)
• overall, it's good fun

Some sample photos:

More photos can be found on my flickr stream under the tag blackbirdfly

After consuming LomoKev's excellent and inspiring book Hot Shots (which has been on my todo list to review for months now) I was inspired to dig out some different cameras and go back to film to see what it could teach me rather than relying so very heavily on the LCD on my d80. I'd already got my autosampler for Christmas (review coming soon) and figured that digging out my Mum's old camera, the Balda Baldixette, could be fun.

The Balda Baldixette was made in West Germany in around 1956. It takes a 120 film, and is similar, at least in function, to a Holga.

It has 3 focussing zones - 5ft-10ft, 10ft-25ft and 25ft-infinity
It has 2 shutter speeds - 1/60th of a second, and bulb
It has 2 apertures - f9 and f16
It has a flash hot shoe (which I haven't tried yet)
It has a fixed prime lens

I put the first film through it to see if it still functioned, and after being delighted with the results I took it to Clock Tower cameras for a general clean and service, after all it is over 50 years old and deserves a little care and attention. To be honest, this didn't make that much of a difference to the resulting images - there are still dust marks and scratches but I'm not too bothered by this - a perfect camera after at least 20 years neglect would have been rather too much to ask.

I've been using Kodak Portra VC400 film which, combined with the in-camera vignetting, seems to bring out the vintage feel rather nicely and I've been getting them processed and scanned at Colourstream.

Some sample photos:

Other photos taken using the Balda Baldixette can be found on my flickr stream under the tag baldabaldixette.

By using this camera I've learnt:

• it's harder getting the horizon completely straight through a viewfinder than post-processing in lightroom (and I'm not post processing any of these scans at the moment)
• that the square format takes some getting used to - seeing the world as a square instead of a rectangle makes composition different - not easier or harder, just different
• that the Balda Baldixette is simple to use
• that spending time before taking the shot to ensure that all the camera parameters are correct (aperture, focus zone, shutter speed) is something I'd stopped doing because I was relying on the camera too much
• that the guys at colourstream do a great job
• that I love the Kodak Portra 400VC film stock
• and that there is something very sentimentally pleasing about taking a photo of your Dad with a camera that your Mum used to use - no idea if the photos will come out at all, but I'm pleased with the emotional connection it made for me

I'd recommend getting hold of a simple camera, popping a film in and going for a wander - it's a great way to rediscover the simple side of photography and if it has some family value then even better - now, where did I put that Conway Camera Popular Model (also my Mum's I believe) or the Kodak Instamatic 200 (my first ever camera)