brain fizz

Poloroid no more.

nobody@vox.com(jelene) — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 21:55:24 -0500

Remember instant poloroid film? I used to love that stuff back in the 80's. My mother had a camera similar to this, that folded down into a brown case. Then my dad back in the early 90's bought her a bright blue poloroid at Woolworth's before they went out of business. My mother loved to take quick snapshots of friends and family and liked poloroid for it's ease of use. Half the time if she used a regular film camera, her thumb would be the subject of the photos. I liked the ease of use of poloroid too. It was something about sitting there watching the picture develop right before your eyes. It was just, cool. It's sad to hear that digital technology has basically buried poloroid. I knew this would happen when digital started becoming more popular by 2000. As this article below states, hopefully another company will buy the rights to the poloroid instant film technology and start selling it again in the future.

Polaroid Abandons Instant Photography

It was a wonder in its time: A camera that spat out photos that developed themselves in a few minutes as you watched. You got to see them where and when you took them, not a week later when the prints came back from the drugstore.

But in a day when nearly every cellphone has a digital camera in it, “instant” photography long ago stopped being instant enough for most people. So today, the inevitable end of an era came: Polaroid is getting out of the Polaroid business.

The company, which stopped making instant cameras for consumers a year ago and for commercial use a year before that, said today that as soon as it had enough instant film manufactured to last it through 2009, it would stop making that, too. Three plants that make large-format instant film will close by the end of the quarter, and two that make consumer film packets will be shut by the end of the year, Bloomberg News reports.

The company, which will concentrate on digital cameras and printers, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2001 and was acquired by a private investment company in 2005. It started in 1937 making polarized lenses for scientific and military applications, and introduced its first instant camera in 1948.

The Lede remembers fondly how magical it was to watch the image gradually manifest itself from the chemical murk right there in your hand. But truth be told, the Lede’s own scuffed Polaroid SX-70 camera, which used to get regular use in all manner of situations, from producing a quick step-by-step primer on how to do the Ickey Shuffle to documenting a problem with a house he was buying that cropped up the day before the closing, hasn’t come out of its cabinet drawer in years.

Loyal users take heart, though — Polaroid said it would happily license the technology to other manufacturers should they want to go on supplying the niche market with film after 2009. NYTimes.com

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new fish eye lens toy

nobody@vox.com(jelene) — Thu, 10 May 2007 20:40:58 -0500

new fish eye lens toy, originally uploaded by jelene.

i bought a fish eye widescreen lens for my kodak on ebay. just got it today and tried it out... my camera isn't a SLR, but they have adapters that you can purchase for some cameras that you can then put filters and lenses on. i was happy to find this for my camera and it was only around $30 :)

playing around with the new lens today... this was my 2nd shot i took... i zoomed in, however i like the rounded edges in the shots too... the sky was so amazing today. since that tropical storm andrea hit our coast of SC for the past several days and has moved on up through NC... the sky just popped out this brilliant blue with amazing white cumulous clouds. i haven't seen it like that in a long time. gorgeous!

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New TTV shots

nobody@vox.com(jelene) — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 21:43:07 -0500

Just a few new TTV shots for now. My eyes have been burning for the last couple days, so I had to go to wally world and buy some allergy eye drops and that helped some. I had to take my new glasses back to wally world too because the lenses already scratched on them and I've only had them for about 10 days. It makes me really frustrated because of all the problems I've been having with America's Best messing up my glasses before, not once, but twice, and now the new glasses I got at wally world are now scratched. I'm not hard on my glasses either. I wear them or when I'm not wearing them I lay them on my desk... I'm scared that the case will even scratch them... Also I've been sneezing most all last night and today and feeling terrible with a headache. I got some work done, but not as much as I would have liked to finish.

I really must finish some custom orders asap before the end of the week. I'm kinda behind on things again. Gah.

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TTV of Mae Starr doll and my room

nobody@vox.com(jelene) — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 14:10:53 -0500

TTV of Mae Starr doll, originally uploaded by jelene.

Shot with my kodak through an argus 75.

About this doll, the oldest doll I have in my collection: The Mae Starr doll is another doll that played music with light blue cylinders. Phonograph dolls talk, sing and play cylinders like a record... Mae Starr is 29 inches tall, four inches larger than the Genuine Madame Hendren. The Mae Starr doll was made from 1928 through 1944, when doll production stopped because of the shortage of materials due to World War II. On the back of the shoulder plate is the identifying name: "Mae Starr Doll". There is a rare advertising cylinder for Mae Starr titled "The Mae Star Dolly", which carries this title on the rim of the cylinder. These cylinders were supplied by the Averill Company.

Shots in my room... a little blurry, but it was hard to get light in some parts of my room for them to be clear enough.

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Experimented with TTV shots on my camera

nobody@vox.com(jelene) — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 19:35:56 -0500

I've been reading about how to do TTV shots, "Through the viewfinder", by getting an old camera and shooting through it. I went to a downtown antique mall, that I haven't visited in awhile and was looking for a Brownie Hawkeye or the like. I found tons of old cameras... but ended up buying an Argus 75 and a Kodak Starflex Brownie which were 30% off. So they were just a few bucks each. I take my Kodak DX7590 digital camera and put it on macro, holding it above the old camera, and shooting through it. At first it's fairly hard to get the knack of holding your camera, and holding the old camera, while trying to weed out glare. I will make a poster board contraption soon, which is like a tube like device that you put over the view finder of the old camera. This guy shows how to make it on his website...

Here are my old cameras... Yashica-A, Kodak Starflex Brownie, and Argus 75

Here are the shots...

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