The Photography Pages » kit and caboodle

Durst Laborator 138S

TPP — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 21:36:02 +0000

A few days before the holiday began, and a camera fair in Boston Spa was rendered inaccessible by the snowdrift completely immobilising this here damnfool clement-day automobile. The most excellent Mr Cordes from Classic Photographics collected the Durst on my behalf and today we finally installed it. Dug a basic process timer out of the store, attached a new connector for the electricity to said process timer, and it still needs a couple of condensers and some spare lenses of different focal lengths (or light seal blanks) to fit in the lens carousel. It could also do with a fair amount of tlc: a good clean, repairs to the neg carrier and some new rubber bushes to the feet.

Fantastic thing though. The base does a 360 tilt-shift.

If you’ve read this far, you’ll know what these are…?

You do? Wey-hey!

Checklist for producing 5×4 photographs:

- film carriers aka dark slides or DDS (double dark slides)

- black bag or cupboard for loading and unloading them, or head-in-a-sleeping bag might do in an emergency

- pack of sheet film: comes in boxes of 10, 25 and 50. 100s are being phased out but they’re still around. You can get black & white film cheap from China, but Velvia and many types of colour neg are still available.

- beg, buy or borrow a camera. You won’t regret it.

- developing tank & chems for the black and white, and somewhere useful to send the colour neg or slide film. The jury is still out on who can do the best job of this but currently it’s Digitalab in Stepney Bank or Colorworld in North Shields. So far I think RBG in Boro has stopped doing 54. Anyone with better sources or info please let us know.

- enlarger.

Ah. That last essential item.Similar Posts:

Guess The Gizmo [2]

TPP — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 08:55:05 +0000

Three different sized holes in the middle, a ridged rubber mat across one surface, two screws with threads of the same size running freely, and underneath are handly thumbwheels presumably for tightening them.

This is a terribly easy one. I’m sure most people will have one of these in a drawer somewhere, yes?

No?

Guess The Gizmo [1] was soon identified by the incredible all-seeing Murdoch, and was much harder. I give this one 24 hours: it’s the weekend.

Probably need to paint that windowsill.

Update

Pete Ashton using a very similar gizmo to make a film and take photographs at the same time. Remarkable man.Similar Posts:

MI5’s Mysterious 3ft SLR

TPP — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 11:38:55 +0000

Much interest is being shown in Christopher Andrew’s new book Defend the Realm: The Official History of MI5 with various luminaries popping up in the press 1, 2, 3 to tell us what good, no good, lies and misdemeanors we paid our spies to commit while following a random and rather large contingent of citizens for many decades, the inevitable suspect communists, student revolutionaries, protest groups, artists, oh any manner of lefties, righties, shoppers, coppers.

This photograph allegedly shows a 1970s surveillance camera/lens combination being pointed at ah, ‘Soviet Bloc Intelligence officers’ (not my caps). With a lens like that you’d be able to see inside their pockets. Anyone like a guess at its focal length? And what’s the silvery SLR? Surely it can’t be a ZenitE, can it?

Mine’s got a f2.8 practika lens on it at the moment. More Zenit?

You can get these for around £10-15, maybe even less at a car boot or flea market. Or try Paul Cordes at Classic Photographics. The Zenit 11 has a better viewfinder:

.. and you might even be able to find a snazzy strap. Superb black and white negs, MI5 style, for a tenner, plus about £2 for a roll of film.

Similar Posts:

The World’s First iHole

TPP — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 11:37:36 +0000

First published back in Feb 2008, full instructions for making a pinhole camera from an iPhone box here, and another one for using Frankenstein parts and a wooden shoe box. One does miss a lot of things when not blogging regularly. There is also this. Possibly not quite as much fun to install, but just as funny.

Similar Posts:

Loading 600 film into a SX70

TPP — Wed, 13 May 2009 02:28:48 +0000

Loading 600 film into a Polaroid SX-70 from dotsara on Vimeo.

And just in case you’re one of the last few people on earth not to have seen it: The Impossible Project.

It’s the 100th anniversary of Edwin Land’s birth. “Don’t undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible”, said he.Similar Posts:

SX 70

TPP — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 12:52:52 +0000

Via Jason Hynes, who went to Darlington to pick it up. Thank you.Similar Posts:

Handy Zone Ruler and Another Rebuild

TPP — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 20:47:58 +0000

The idea is that if you can’t distinguish the black on the far left from its near neighbours, and ditto the white on the right, your monitor needs recalibrating or your print needs more or less contrast. On many newer LCD monitors, the two darkest blacks are difficult to distinguish. If that’s the same with your darkroom print, experiment with the filters. A higher number (4 or 5) will bring out the detail in the whites, a lower or zero grade will help with the blacks.

Click to embiggen a version that can be downloaded to print.

A rebuild of this site this morning and The Photography Pages was caught by a couple of dawn readers who reported rubble and debris. All should be okay now; please report anything that doesn’t work or looks weird. We have more hard coding here than normal, so there will be glitches. The new Contact Me form seems to be working okay now though! Do please go ahead and test.

New look for the site for my own photos only, the version people seem to be calling ‘portfolio’ or the ‘professional’ site. Not entirely happy with it yet, but the bones are definitely there.Similar Posts:

Handy Exposure Calculator

TPP — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 07:10:15 +0000

A really handy little make-your-own exposure slide rule, for the days when you forget your light meter, or you simply haven’t got one. Click through to print off the PDF file, stick to the back of a cornflake packet, a bit of sticky tape, and away. All the best cameras have no meter.

Cannot recall where this was found to do the appropriate credit. If you know, please share in the comments.Similar Posts: