6cm x 6cm

Flickeur... What is Flickeur?

A Wired article on Flickr mashups took me to Flickeur.

Flickeur is... Weird. To quote the Wired article, Flickeur "loads a bunch of Flickr photos and plays them back as a short film set to music". However, that doesn't go quite far enough. The photos are random. The music is always the same, but it's randomised in some ways. Certain effects are applied to the photos, which merge into each other, mutate, morph, collage... There are also text effects. The end result looks like a documentary made by a deranged artist, armed with a Holga and a set of faulty musical intruments.

This could be an amazingly useful tool if you wanted to come up with a plot for a novel or a screenplay or just let your mind drift. As you watch, your mind makes associations and you begin telling yourself the story. But there is no story. Everything is supposedly random. ("The Truth Is Out There....").

To use Flickeur, you need Flashplayer 8. The site itself analyses your computer and gives you a link to the Flash player if you don't have it installed. I've tested Flickeur on Safari 1.3.2 and on Firefox 1.5.0.1 (on Mac OS X 10.3.9) and it works happily on both. It's worth a few minutes of your time if you'd like to see what can be done with stills.

It's full of answers to standard newbie questions about using Holgas and you can read it here.

Interesting thing. I blogged Anupam's photos below. They were taken with a Brownie. My mother's Brownie is sitting on a shelf behind me. Many of my childhood photos were taken on that camera. I saw them again recently and was surprised by how much detail is visible in many of them. I should scan a few for interest. My mum has many photos she took while youth hostelling and cycling with friends in the 1950s, also taken on that brownie camera, so it wasn't a new camera when she took shots of me and my kid sister in the 1960s.

What's interesting me more at the moment is that when she used that camera, it was still a fairly commonly-seen model. It wasn't a "toy" camera - it was just an ordinary camera. It has one shutter speed and a waist-level finder and takes 127 film (4cm x 4cm). The sort of camera ordinary people would have used in many places. Not new technology then but maybe no more unusual than a family having a ten year old car or a ten year old washing machine today.

So when did so many of these cameras become toys? Today's Holga wouldn't have been cutting edge in the 1960s, but many people then were using simple compacts which might now be seen as toys but were then seen as average family cameras, the way a simple Canon or Olympus might have been seen as a family camera ten years ago and a 5mp digital camera would be seen as a simple sort of family camera today (ignoring the fact that everyone in the family has a mobile with a camera built in).

So when did the "toy" epithet appear? Who decides? Is the bicycle of the 1960s a toy bicycle? Is a 1960s VW Beetle a toy car? Is the mirror (or chair or crockery) you inherited from your parents a toy mirror?

Is an IBM 286 with WordStar and MSDOS a toy computer? I'm inclined to say yes. But the VW isn't a toy car, despite today's turbodiesel Beetles being so far beyond the Beetles of the 1960s in fuel economy, speed, emissions... It's an interesting perspective.

Take Leica's M3. I have what I think is an awesomely good film SLR: Nikon's F75. It was cheap, it meters perfectly, it's lightweight, reliable, does everything for you or does some of it or can be purely manual. It can use AF lenses or P lenses, does PASM, flash, spot... All the usual stuff. Does that mean a Leica M3 is a toy camera?

Is it a toy because you'd be embarrassed to be seen with it? Is saying something is a "toy" a way of excuising yourself for being somehow "uncool"? A sort of inverted snobbery? If it's not a "classic", is it a toy? If your 1960s car is a Hillman or a Simca instead of a VW, is it a toy? (Actually, Simcas were quite classy...).

So is the Brownie or even the Holga a toy or a camera? I've commented on photo.net somewhere that I was surprised by the Holga - get it right and it can take remarkably good pictures. Which is probably why people use them - they do take good photos. But what makes one obsolete product a toy and another obsolete product not a toy? It's an interesting question and comments would be appreciated.

Found Anupam Basu's small, simple gallery of black and white brownie pics. Most of the photos were taken in the American midwest. The work is excellent and shows what a "toy" camera can do when used well. The site also has some other galleries, info on toy cameras and a bibliography.

I'm not into pinhole photography. Friends wonder why the person who is usually the techiest person present sticks with film cameras in an almost neo-luddite way when digital is so cheap, instant, self-gratificatory... Well, I do, but pinhole photography seems as bad to me. Too much fuss about nothing. Okay, you can make a camera with a biscuit tin, a hole-punch and some 120 film... Big deal. That's not much more complex than a Holga anyway.

How small can you go, though? How about a pinhole camera in a matchbox that does 24x24mm photos? How about that? Even I was impressed...

Emil Schildt is one of my favourite photographers. It's very hard to describe his work. Let's say... If the idea of beautiful sepia-toned pregnant naked goddesses in fairy-tale half-darkness does it for you, it's worth a look. It's not all like that. He does single portraits as well. I love this one, which was taken with a Diana F toy camera - not something he uses very often, though. It's an exquisitely beautiful photo. Just enough light to see, not enough light to see. Perfect. Here's the whole gallery.

He has also a gallery on photo.net (where else?) and another on a Danish site that I can't pronounce. The content is much the same but arranged differently - the Danish site might be easier if you use a modem.

If you like Emil Schildt, you might also like this p'net folder by Haleh Bryan, which is a bit... well... brighter than Emil's work and somewhat more middle-eastern, in tone. Have a look and if you like it, then click Haleh's name at the top of the screen for more. There's quite a lot more, so it could take a while on a slow connection.

Neither of these photographers uses toy cameras much. I just happen to like them and it's a vaguely Holga-sepia-arty-6x6 look.

Lunchtime! :-)

FreestylePhoto have a Holga manual in PDF here.

The Lubitel Resource site - well worth a visit - has an online Lubitel manual.

I found a great article by Wim van Welzen on composing with the square format. It's not the easiest thing if you're used to 35mm. Obviously, using strong diagonals and the rule of thirds can help any photo. Wim shows some other ideas as well. It's a good article with some great photos. Wim is a wedding photo and a glance at his website shows a pathway into both his landscape and wedding photography. Most of his work is 6x6. I'll add him to the gallery links as well.

Photo.net has made Luis Henriques' folder the folder of the week. Most of his work in the folder is square format, shot on a Hasselblad 503. The work includes landscapes, abstracts and environmental photos and is really worth studying if you like square format. It doesn't matter whether you shoot with a Hassie or a Holga - this is about stunning 6x6 composition, not the hardware.

Luis has his own website at: http://perso.wanadoo.fr/luis.henriques/.

Beginning to think I need a list of square format galleries.

"My other Blog's a Porsche..."

My other's blog's about my beloved Mju-II. On it I have some photo tips, which I've picked up from various places and from my own observations. One is to look behind you as you walk - you may see some good photo opportunities behind as you walk along - but only if you look back occasionally. Sometimes the angle works better that way. Most people - even people who are tourists - never look behind them as they walk. Watch them. It's amazing. I'm usually one of them, but I'm trying to cure myself of it.

So... another tip is to look up. Looking around is all very well, but you need to look up too.


Folkestone, England. Holga, Fuji Superia 400.

This is my mum's twin-lens, which is more or less on permanent loan to me these days.



It's a Brownie Reflex - like the Lubitel or other twin-lens cameras, you look down into the camera. What you see is reflected in through the top lens. When you press the shutter, the photo is taken through the bottom lens. The design ensures there's not a lot to get wrong. The shutter is pretty much the only moving part, unlike a single lens reflex, which has to flip the mirror up out of the way as well. This Brownie dates from the early 1950s and quite a number of my childhood photos were taken with this camera. I saw some of those photos recently and was impressed with the detail. I didn't know much about 127 film - I thought it was smaller than 35mm. It wasn't until I looked inside the camera that I worked out why the pics were so good. 127 film isn't small.

127 film

This Brownie used 127 film which measures about 4cm x 4cm. That's smaller than the 120 rollfilm the Lubitel and Holga use but still bigger than 35mm film which measures 3.6cm x 2.4cm. Any film that's bigger than 35mm and smaller than large format (4 inches x 5 inches) is reckoned to be medium format, so 127 film is a medium format film. Nobody is making 127 cameras any more. But they are making the film, because a lot of 127 cameras were made over a long period and many people still use them.

I got interested in seeing if the Brownie still works. I know my mum would love to try it. So I dug around. I found that a number of companies in the UK sell and/or process 127-type film. Retrophotographic sells two types of 127 film and I plan to buy a couple of rolls of 127 from them in the near future and put them through the Brownie to see how well it still works. I would guess that Jessops probably sell some 127 film as well.

Other good 127 sites I found...

The Brownie Camera page is the best place to start. The Frugal Photographer has a full article on loading/using 127 film. onetwoseven.org.uk has a wide variety of information about the cameras and the film they use, as well as other articles, galleries, a forum and some links to supply and processing. Photo.Net has a forum dedicated to using Brownies. Wikipedia has an entry on 127 cameras.

I'll post some Brownie shots when I get them.

My Holga came with both filter packs. One filter pack has 4 x coloured filters (red, blue, orange and green, I think) and the other pack has 4 x clear centre filters (these are coloured filters with a clear centre - there's no green and one is not coloured). I thought the standard coloured pack would work best with black and white, but you can use them for colour as well.

A Flickr user called TWB! has shot four identical photos, using a different coloured filter each time. They're in TWB's Holga set. Look down and you'll see four photos of a small wooden jetty. Each has a slightly different tone. I like the red and the green especially, but they're all subtly different.

Well worth a look if you have the filter pack or are thinking about one. Looks like fun. Probably a bit more fun in some ways than messing around with a graphics program.

Gorgeous gallery of giraffes on toycamera.com. You have to see it.

The photos were all shot on a Diana camera. The Diana is a classic toy camera.

The Lubitel has the word "LOMO" on its lens surround. So far as I know, the "L" in Lomo stands for Leningrad, formerly and now again known as St Petersburg.

When I was in Tesco last night, I saw this new brand of beer. I couldn't quite read the label. That's because it was in Cyrillic (no, I hadn't been drinking....). Off to the side there's a translation: "Baltika". It's a Russian brand. Russian vodka isn't a surprise, but beer is. What'll they be selling us next? Cameras? Anyway - I read the label and guess where it's brewed? Yeah - St Petersburg. So I couldn't resist putting these two Leningraders together.



Slainte.

Feed your newsreader: this blog now has an Atom-feed. The url is http://6cmx6cm.blogspot.com/atom.xml - hopefully you know what to do with that. If you need an Atom-compatible newsreader, go here. Mac OS X user? NetNewsWireLite 2.0.1 supports Atom.

Just discovered this great resource: the toy camera webring. Mostly focussed on Holgas, Dianas and others. They also state that Lubitels are not toy cameras, which I have to agree with, pretty much. The Lubi works well, when you get it right. On the other hand, it feels like a toy. The site leads to all sorts of Holga-related galleries, websites, tipsheets, etc.

While on the subject of collections of Holgiana, my links collection over there on the left side of the page is well worth a look. The Toy Camera site contains numerous galleries, a forum and some articles (cruel and unusual things to do to your Holga). Some of the galleries are great, while others are so-so.

Digital Sucks is a weirder place, but has some great photos.

Photo.Net and Flickr... Both have great content. Photo.Net tends to be more thoughtful, a bit more "pro"... But they know their cameras and are very helpful. The alternative camera forum is a bit quiet but the classic camera and medium format forums are busy enough and members are very knowledgeable on such things as what bayonet size your Rolleiflex is. Flickr is Flickr - but there are plenty of good Holga and Lubitel shots to look at, as well as some good photography.

These are all in the links as well.

Just for interest - pictures of my cameras (Holga and Lubitel) were taken with an Olympus C-150 (review): a 2MP Olympus compact. Any 2MP camera that's not contained in a phone probably counts as a toy camera these days.

Both the Lubi and the Holga can produce 6cm x 6cm or 6cm x 6.45cm photos by way of a mask which is inserted in the camera before loading the film. 6x4.5 (or 645 as it's known) is similar to the 36mm x 24mm of 35mm photography. 6x6 is the familiar square shape produced by many medium format cameras, including twin lens reflexes like the Rolleiflex and Lubitel as well as classic Holga shots. Most people shoot 6x6 on Holga, partly because... Well, the photos are often blurry or surreal-looking and the archaic-seeming square format seems to add something to that.

But many people like square format. Square is interesting. You don't need to worry about whether the photograph should be in landscape or portrait mode. It can be easier to fill a square sometimes - it's good for full-on head and shoulders photos. But it can also be good for landscape, if you're that way inclined. Look at what Charlie Waite can do with square format. You can shoot squares at angles... It's an interesting diversion from rectangular photos. It's not the best photo - and it'd be interesting to try the same thing with a wide-angle lens - but I like this shot of my car.



I know I'm just rambling here, but I like these little square photos. They're fun.

I posted a photo from Tarragona (Spain) over on Mju-Mju a while back. This one is also from there. I won't repeat my rantings from the other site except to say that if you're ever in Catalonia, Tarragona is one of the must-sees. Small, compact, gorgeous. Kinda like the woman I was with, in fact, but that's neither here nor there.

Anyway - this photo was shot on the Lubitel. It's sharp, with good colours and shows the bright areas next to shade. Looks good here and even better on a print.


Tarragona, Lubitel 166U, Fujifilm Superia 100.