Wednesday, June 18, 2008

How about a new camera ??? Free!!!!

Man I feel old when I am compelled to start a post with "back in the days...".

But ahhh well... It is a little bit ago that I was starting out with photography and developing the negatives and photos in a darkroom (not that thing on your computer but the really dark room with funky odors and red light).

At that time I was also trying some slightly alternative photography skills such as making a camera myself.

At the time I made a pinhole camera using a shoe box. The process was fairly simple even though it turned out to be a one shot camera before taking it back in the darkroom.
The way I constructed it was that I took the shoe box and painted it black inside. This to ensure that no stray light would bounce around in the box and when doing the exposure it would only be the light coming through the pinhole that would hit the paper.
I would make a little pinhole (hence the pinhole camera name) on one side and mount a photographic paper on the inside opposite the pinhole. A piece of black tape covered the pinhole and to make the exposure I would remove the tape and replace it once the exposure was done. This for sure was a hit and miss adventure. You just never know exactly how long the correct exposure is but hey... that's kind of part of the fun.

Now I just got a new magazine in the mail and for once it had something useful :-) hidden away on a left page in the margin with a little note was a link to make your own pinhole camera.

I just had to check it out ;-) It is way different from when I created mine and now you can just download and print a PDF document, do a little cut and assembly and voila you got your very own pinhole camera.

These ones are a little more advance than mine. They are using 35mm film instead of photographic paper. So you can advance the film and take multiple shots while being out :-) and there is actually a shutter on them and a guide on the camera for exposure times.

Here is one of the pinhole cameras that you can download, print and create. All for the price of .... (drum roll please) .... FREE



But check out the available cameras that can be downloaded for free. You can find them right here: http://pro.corbis.com/creative/readycam

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