Check out this bizarre looking homemade medium format camera spotted by tokyo camera style on the streets of Tokyo, Japan. That bizarre glass bulb you see sticking out of it is the 360 degree lens that projects panoramic views onto the 120 film inside the camera.
Read the rest of this entry »
Designer Kelly Angood created this cardboard pinhole camera that looks exactly like a Hasselblad medium format camera. The design is screen printed onto the cardboard, and the camera accepts 120 film. See sample photographs shot with this camera over on Angood’s website.
Pinhole Hasselblad (via Make)
Update: Angood published a PDF with templates and instructions for those of you who want to make your own.
How do photographers get those wide images that bleed through the edges of the negative, showing the sprocket holes? It’s a technique that allows your to create stunning panoramic images — these little bits of film become art in themselves. These photographs are achieved by loading 35mm film into a 120 medium format camera. This tutorial was written with the Holga in mind, but the same technique works for other 120 cameras as well.
Read the rest of this entry »
For those of you who still shoot film and are adventurous, have you tried double film photography? Flickr user Chuck Miller stuck two 35mm Fuji 200 films — one normal, one redscale — into a Holga 120N and shot the films simultaneously to get these unique sprocket hole, layered photographs.
Read the rest of this entry »
This strange looking device is the Leica S1, the first digital camera created by the company back in 1996. At at time when film was still the medium of choice in the photo industry, the S1 packed a whopping 26-megapixels, shooting 5140x5140px medium format images. The strange looking handles on either side help the user frame the shot, but aren’t designed for handheld stabilization — each shot took three minutes to expose. Only about 160 of these cameras were built, and were mostly sold to museums and research institutions.
The Leica S1 (via Gizmodo)
Fernando Ramírez Martínez (snipfer on Flickr) created this awesomely geeky medium format camera using Lego pieces.
We started sorting bricks out and after a couple of afternoons working on the camera obscura we managed to get some shots out of the thing. It was built using Lego pieces, duct tape, black cardboard and some glue. The camera shoots 6×6 and the “lens” sports a focal length of 150mm with an aperture of 1:300. All measurements approximate.
In the front there is the shutter and the pinhole. In the back, the gear on the left is the film advance. The white gear on the right has a clutched axis that prevents the film spool from moving freely. The “suspension” does not allow the film advance to turn backwards.
Earlier this year when Hasselblad announced the H4D-40, we found it interesting that Hasselblad claimed to be trying to reach a younger generation of photographers with the $20,000 camera. At Photokina today, Hasselblad introduced the H4D-31, a camera that actually makes digital medium format photography considerably more affordable (albeit still pretty darn expensive for a “young photographer”).
The camera weighs in at 31 megapixels rather than 40, but the 22.5% decrease in resolution translates into a generous 35% decrease in price: the H4D-31 costs about $13,000. You also get your choice of a 80mm prime lens or a lens adapter that allows you to use V-System lenses you already own.
Hopefully some day we’ll be able to give such a camera away here on PetaPixel.
Most of the time we come across an absurdly large and expensive lens on eBay, it’s some sort of lens with focal lengths in the thousands of millimeters (e.g. this 5200mm Canon lens or this 2000mm Nikon lens).
The lens shown above is the Kilfitt Zoomatar 250mm f/1.3 and is currently for sale on eBay. It doesn’t have an absurdly large focal length, but is pretty standard at 250mm. See the little box handing off the end of the lens? That’s the Hasselblad medium format camera this lens is designed for.
The price? A cool $33,751. Needless to say, walking around doing street photography with this lens would earn you some pretty strange looks.
Thanks for the tip Jon!
Pentax has just released five full resolution photographs taken with their new medium format DSLR, the Pentax 645D. These 40 megapixel photos are 7264×5440, and weigh in at around 17 megabytes each. The sample shot website also has EXIF data, though most of the page is in Japanese. There’s still no word on when (if ever) the 645D will be released outside Japan.
Pentax has unveiled the 645D, a medium format DSLR with impressive specs and a (relatively) low price of ~$9,400. The 40 megapixel camera has a 33mm x 44mm sensor, 3 inch LCD screen, and is designed to be compatible with the existing 645 lens system. Features include 11 autofocus points, a dust removal mechanism, 77-segment multi-pattern metering, 1.1 fps, ISO 200-1000 (expandable to 100-1600), a built in HDR mode, and dynamic-range expansion.
Last month, many of you balked at the $19,995 price tag of Hasselblad’s newly announced H4D-40 camera, which also contains a 40MP sensor. However, a vast majority would also consider switching to medium format digital photography if it became more affordable. Looks like things are heading in that direction.
The 645D will be available in May 2010.
Update: Photo Rumors is reporting that there are currently no plans for the 645D to be sold in the US. Here’s what Adorama tweeted:
Pentax’s US rep just told me there are no plans to sell the 645D or 55mm lens in the US. Bummer.
