With 30 days to go, Lomography has exceeded all its expectations with over 200K pledged on a 100K required funding on Kickstarter. That is a resounding cheer for analogue photographers but the biggest winner has to be Fujifilm, the only remaining instant film maker on the planet. The consumables don't cost much, which at US$1 buck a print, it makes for good memories.

The Lomo Instant Camera is a generic Fuji Instax Mini as it uses the same type of mini instant film but it goes one step further by offering a choice of clip on lenses for the camera that gives you fish eye and portrait angle shots. The colored gel filters are not going to be much of a hit for me, at least in a traditional sense but hipsters will no doubt double down on them.

Long exposure is included if you want to get creative but you have been warned as this is essentially a bulb mode for instant photography. Get the exposure wrong, and you'll wind up having an overexposed pile of goo.

To be fair, I think the portrait lens is a great inclusion but the fish eye is pure rubbish. Then again, Lomo intends to sell the camera kit within the ballpark of US$150 for the camera that comes complete with a wide angle lens. This bodes well for photographers who want a choice and can ante up to the portrait lens clip on as an accessory.

Shutter controls are pretty limited, just at one speed, 1/125 sec. The Mini Instax film is rated at ASA 800. The only way to control the exposure is through the aperture setting. 

But my main beef with this system is the sheet film size. It is small. Probably not as tiny as the first generation Zink prints but close. This means the instant film format isn't suitable for scenic, architecture or even street photography for that matter. It is a format meant for having fun with, shooting friends and family and the family pet. There is no macro capability either, so it would be a hassle to shoot anything smaller than a canary. Size wise, it's not much bigger than the Fujifilm instax mini cameras though I must add that it does bear some resemblance to Lomo's Belair series of cameras in terms of design. The Belair X6-12 has a Fuji Instax wide attachment to allow you take larger size instant pictures but from the initial test samples offered by users, only the 90mm lens seems to perform up to expectations. So if you gotta have that camera, then I suggest you wait for the Lomo Instant which should be made available to users all over the world in 2015. 

Film Format: Fujifilm Instax Mini Film

Exposure Area: 42mm x 64mm

Shutter Speed: 1/125s / Bulb

Exposure compensations: +2/-2 Exposure Values

Ejection Mechanism: Motorized

Multiple Exposures: Yes

Built-in Flash Guide Number: 9(m)

Automatic Flash Output: Yes

Battery Supply: 6V (4x AAA batteries)

Tripod mount: Yes

Cable Release Mount: Yes

Aperture: f/8, f/11, f/16, f/22, f/32

Is there hope for analogue photography? Seriously? Well in the day of 3D printing, it might just be what you need to keep those rolls of film going.

The Open Reflex camera is completely printable camera designed by Leo Marius. The idea behind it was to adapt a camera body to a lens mount which takes in a spool of film. This camera is only capable of firing at a fixed 1/60s shutter speed. This might ruin a lot of moments but at least you have a good lens to pair with it.

The whole project will cost you less than 50 bucks, that's provided you already have a 3D printer at home.

There isn't much room for analogue photography other than the stuff you find on Lomography, much of which take less than normal photos. The Open Reflex camera on the other hand makes for a very good kit camera, which can be adapted as a complete kit sans the lens. 

Trusted that the lens will be the problem, I reckon the only way around this is to package a cheap Russian made lens as part of the kit. It just doesn't make sense for kids to assemble something and look out for a used lens on eBay.

As you already know, much of the picture quality (which you can see here) is determine by the lens. Color negative film don't have much contrast and even with b/w film, you can see that may have to tune it up a few notches with Photoshop.

Leo likes the idea of having this turned into a kickstarter project of some sort but seriously folks. Film is in decline and unless it's for a school project, there won't be many backers.

Homebrew, all you need is a 3D printer. For that alone, I think it rocks!

OpenReflex by LeoMarius on Sketchfab

Amazon.com has just gained the ability to sue photographers who use a white background to capture a product photo with this patent award from the US Patent Office (USPO) which means they can technically ask for licensing fees if you ever thought otherwise.

Yes, you heard me. White background. Here is an except of the Patent text filed:-

a background comprising a white cyclorama; a front light source positioned in a longitudinal axis intersecting the background, the longitudinal axis further being substantially perpendicular to a surface of the white cyclorama; an image capture position located between the background and the front light source in the longitudinal axis, the image capture position comprising at least one image capture device equipped with an eighty-five millimeter lens, the at least one image capture device further configured with an ISO setting of about three hundred twenty and an f-stop value of about 5.6...

Amazon is an online retailer and for that, most if not all of the photos captured for use on their site has a white background. D'uh. Apparently the text also mentions the use of a 85mm lens so if you happen to get sued, all you gotta do is prove that you used a 75mm or a 90mm lens to shoot your object and you're home free.....provided you hired a lawyer to defend yourself which can run into thousands of dollars.

First, let's be clear. This patent is not an innovation. The patent was filed by Amazon in 2010 and granted this year.  For me at least, the idea of such a photographic exercise is really to fight other online retailers who would use a picture of a product shot with a white background. This gentle art of arm wrestling your competitor to the ground with a lawsuit is one of the best ways to perform a take down without using too much effort. Smaller online retailers who cannot fight Amazon's lawyers will have to move on. The very act of hiring a lawyer to defend yourself in corporate America is a dangerous proposition as it cost a lot of money.

This patent can be used only for sites hosted in America. Amazon in this case can't use it against say, China's Taobao or any online property hosted outside of the US.

Photographers probably need not be too worried but you should tell your client that you won't be using a 85mm lens to shoot a product. Instead, why not try using an iPhone? With the right lighting and a portable lighting studio like the Foldio, you can add a watermark that says "shot on an iPhone with Foldio", to deter the legal sharks from Amazon.

 

What's my Take on the Picture?

What this will eventually mean is that the professional photographer will be obsolete. The only reason why clients would want to use you for a studio shoot is that the object in question is so damn large that it will need a whole room with lighting just to ensure that it is properly lit. That said, you could soon be mothballing your DSLR until your client shows up at your doorstep with a product so large that it can't be shot with an iPhone.

"I am sorry but I can't do this" I said, of which the Marya said "good bye".

This is the story of image theft and it happens all the time. I was looking for some freelance work and came across a posting in freelancer.com, they were looking for writers who knew about travel destinations. The idea seem simple enough, the client wanted a short write up on travel destinations and people could pitch their worth to them. Unknown to the writers, the client has hidden a few "caveats" by not revealing that they also want you to steal high resolution photos.

The idea behind the job was at best, questionable. I suggested they would need to buy photos from a stock agency, with a bulk purchase, it would cost less than US$0.70 a photo for Royalty Free images.

The client went on to say that the purpose is completely different. With that I thought maybe they are using it offline as a training document in a school room. Then I decided to ask if it was off line or online use. The answer shocked me....it was for online use.

Any image for public use should be cleared for public use. You cannot go around taking photos in that manner. I know that some may use images gleaned from Flickr to illustrate a Powerpoint presentation for internal use. I am still ok with that but there are limits. If you use a presentation online for any reason, this is a business exercise and for that you have to buy photos.

The client doesn't seem to care and since it was a Malaysian company, there is good reason to suspect that the online use will be hosted outside of the US, meaning a DCMA takedown will be totally ineffective.

Why Companies should go Legit

It cost you next to nothing. Sign up with a stock image agency on a monthly or annual basis and you can download all the pictures you want for a subscription fee if you have a budget. There is no such thing as not having a budget for even the cheapest of photos from RF Stock Image agencies.

When I worked alongside Sony Asia Pacific, there was never a moment about not paying for Royalty free or Right Managed photos. I would seek them out, research them and buy them for Sony. I have paid over US$40,000 in photo royalties to photographers on behalf of Sony for one project alone.

To not pay a dollar or less for royalty use is like stealing candy from a baby—its no easy! These days, medium resolution RF images can easily be bought for a dollar a pop. We all know that life is bitch when you can't get something easily and for free on the Internet. But there are limits to what you can do and ripping off photographers isn't one of them.

I came away from that episode completely frustrated and angry. For me, I don't think photographers are making a killing out of selling their photos. In fact, the whole business of selling photos has gotten so complicated of late to the point there is no way to address the issue anymore. Which pictures should you be offering for RF, and what should be rights managed? With smartphone photography muscling in on the stock image business, there is literally no point in charging more for a photo just because you shot it on a ten grand worth of equipment. The value of an image has depreciated so much these days that anyone with an iPhone can compete with you in the RF stock market sphere.

Print publications don't buy photos like they use to. In fact, thanks to royalty free photos and image scaling software, they can use any image in print without breaking a sweat.

I am constantly reminded of the kind words I got from photographers such as Michael Yamashita, Abbas Atta of Magnum and author Michael Freeman. They need people to champion their rights and change the mindset of clients who are out to buy photos. Don't think for one moment that a stock image agency will do that for you. Litigation is an expensive process and the last thing they want is to lose customers. That is why co-operative image agencies owned by the photographers themselves work best. They have to protect their own interest when no one else will.

Every year, new film stocks are being discontinued by either Fujifilm or Kodak, the latter being a target since it is emerging from bankruptcy. So it should not come as a big surprise that the sort of new gear you can buy on the Internet these days are limited. Film is forever they say but film sales has been in a comatose state for years. What's out there today? If you are going to start on film, what is available?

Medium Format Rules

How do you get started on medium format photography? You could go buy a new camera or an old one from eBay but your best bet is still on a camera which is still in production. There are many old used cameras you can buy online but the danger is that it will break on you. Having experienced this first hand, you need to appreciate the working value of a camera versus an unreliable used unit. This is not to say that you should not buy used cameras. For beginners, I think you need to find a place to fix a camera should it break down. In big cities, its often very easy to find a camera repair shop run by those old dudes in glasses. But in a smaller city, such folks can only be found in retirement homes.

Wanderlust Travelwide 4x 5

Kickstarter funded Travelwide medium format camera will be on sale soon this summer at US$149. Not a bad price for a medium format camera except that it is not really a camera in the first place. What you get is a body and a pinhole lens cap which essentially lets you start shooting but they don't tell you that you also need to have a film back and a set of real lenses, 90mm type, which could cost you anything from US$150 to US$450 on eBay. The film backs are cheap, you can find one at Keh for less than 10 bucks.

Lubitel 166+

Nice little number from Russia, this TLR plastic bodied camera is capable of a variety of shutter speeds—a serious consideration if you want to shoot on the go. As a packaged  TLR camera, the features are good so you can shoot the moment you take it out of the box. It comes with a fixed lens, 75mm and cost about US$350. Sold on the Lomographic store, I think you can buy this and get it delivered anywhere in the world.

Kiev 60, 88, 645

The Hasselnyet cameras are great value for money and unfortunately, with the ongoing problems in Ukraine, I am not sure this camera will still be manufactured. The Kiev 60 sells for US$390, while the 88 model goes for US$475, the 645 sells for US$430. Not a bad idea really as all the camera kits come with a 80mm lens. The 88SWC model is a wide angle version, sells for US$775 with a 30mm lens.

Buying Used Equipment on eBay

Very risky affair but it might be worth it if you can find something that is of value. These days, eBay sellers are a dime a dozen. Almost anyone can sell something they consider a piece of antique and it is only the more experienced among us who will know what is a piece of junk.

All mechanical parts have a life span. It could be the shutter, winder or the photocell that measures light. Then there is wear and tear, like the glass being used as a mushroom farm, where it gets really foggy.

I would not advise anyone to get something they do not know enough about and with used cameras, there are heaps. Technically speaking, mechanical wear is less obvious if the item has been rarely used but the gunk they used for parts lubrication (often of animal origin) would have to be cleaned out and you need to send it for a CLA (clean lubricate and adjust) that is performed by a professional. Do not for one moment think that you are handy with the screwdriver and thus have the license to take it apart. Cameras are not like cars, they have delicate parts and once broken, you may have just inherited a junk heap.

Medium Format Film Development

Developing film isn't all that difficult. It's actually quite fun if you happen to have a dark room but in most cases, you don't really need one if you are only going to develop negatives.

If you don't plan on playing with chemicals, be sure to look out for color labs that still process film found in big cities. You can mail in your exposed roll and have that digitally transferred onto a CD.

Analogue photography is very rewarding. It is difficult to master but once you do, it's like getting that license to drive and own your first car. Medium format allows you to think about big pictures, and to have the film as mementos to share with others in later life is a real blast.

By now, everyone would have heard of the Leica T. It's a first for Leica as it taps a mirrorless camera market segment with a spiffy new T mount lens. 

We had heard the rumors, that maybe Leica would produce a MFT type mirrorless but that would be watering down its image. 

Presently, the MTF segment, dominated by Olympus and Panasonic already offer mounts to use Leica M type lenses as well as mount Panasonic made Leica camera lenses. The Leica T for that matter uses custom T mounts, so it won't be backward compatible with any of the other Leica lenses on the market. It would only be be appropriate that Leica found a way to squeeze more money from a user with this US$1,850 body designed specifically for a point and shoot photographer. 

The APS-C sensor is the same 16 megapixels and should not perform any better than the current crop of cameras with similar specs. The Leica comes with the option of having a Vario-Elmar-T 18-56mm f/3.5-5.6 zoom or a Summicron-T 23mm f/2 prime (non-zoom) lens. Both lenses will cost $1,750 each. You could add on a US$500 M mount made by Leica just to mount those old M type lenses. 

This means you will have to fork out US$3,000 for the privilege of owning one should you be devoid of any M lenses to begin with. 

Leica has partnered with Audi to make the body. It is cut from an aluminum block just like the engine block of a Audi R8 so this could be the reason why the featureless camera is so expensive. 

It looks pretty normal from a design point of view, like maybe a brick that has been crafted to fit a camera's body and not the other way round. No much thought has been used in this process, precision equipment shaved the block into a heavy skeleton of a camera and hopefully it will qualify as a weapon once you decide to toss it at your enemies once it stops working. 

Photography is a Gentleman's Hobby

Leica can do no wrong with this model. You don't have to make many to make that much money and with the Leica brand name attached to it, people will line up to buy it. The demand for premium cameras is growing. Pros will carry Nikon and Canon to do their job, casual photographers will turn to Fuji, Panasonic and Olympus for everything else. 

This means there is no one company able to tap the luxury market. Carl Zeiss isn't in that line of business even though Sony thinks it could hack that market with the wildly expensive A7s. Leica, well, they just fit in like a glove. It doesn't even look out of place in a Prada handbag. So there you have it. Luxury in photography is Leica. 

For those who do not have the money to buy into such madness, well, consider eBaying one of you your kidneys. It might just do the trick. 

Pure Digital. What does it all mean? It means that it exist only in a digital form and no where else. This is what Lytro pioneered and now they are coming in for seconds with the US$1,600 Illum.

Pure digital also means you can't print this, at least not yet, until the whole saga of pixel technology is addressed. There is promise in Lytro Illum as a 3D camera, with 3D parallax capability but they don't seem to be leveraging on that. Instead, they are using the technology as a refocus-able image, which exist only in the Cyber world. Makes me wonder what good is all  that.

Lytro is not about Megapixels

There is no megapixel information on the sensor because it doesn't work that way. From the current iteration, the Lytro Illum is VGA quality if you so choose to print a copy of a refocused picture. You cannot for example, refocus a shot, crop it and print a copy out without pixelation as the size of the digital image is very low. The lightfield techology used here needs the extra sensors to capture depth and color information so as to give you the ability to refocus a point.

Lytro has no Commercial Applications as Yet

Besides being able to refocus, a good tool for selling highly detailed products of art, the technology does not offer any commercial value to photographers. 

As more people move to the mobile sphere to access the Internet, there will be less demands for desktop browsing. This also means that Lytro has to transition to a mobile capable browsing experience. 

At the moment, Lytro only has an iOS app, which allows you to view and upload image to the Lytro site. Lytro images cannot be used on a desktop unless you have the desktop program— free to download and use from their site. There is no plugin for Photoshop or Lightroom. In short, there is no other way to enjoy the whole experience except with dedicated software from Lytro. 

You cannot upload Lytro images to Flickr or 500px either. What you can do is to share a link to your images to social media sites, nor is there a way to generate a gif image. 

Lytro Potential yet to be Realized

This is my biggest beef with the technology. I am not sure where it fits. Or if it really has a niche of some kind for photographers to exploit. Sure, there will be those who want to jump onto the bandwagon before it becomes a big but that clientele is limited. Photographers who want to access this technology can do so at their own peril as there is no apparent return on such a investment. 

The quality of the images, which you can see here, offers very little in terms of dynamic range and color accuracy. In fact, the pictures looked washed out, the images just don't quite jump right at you. 

Until such a time the technology is further enhanced to address such short comings, I am afraid there isn't much use in investing in a camera like this. It is at best, an expensive toy. So if you happen to have some spare cash lying around, you could consider this as a distraction. After all, that's what a toy is all about.