Dacora Digna + Cinestill 120 Alpha?!

I don't really remember where I found this camera. After arriving back in the US in january, I was digging through boxes and came upon this camera. I liked it because the lens collapsed into the body of the camera. Also, It's made out of aluminum, so its pretty sturdy. It has similar functionality to the Holga or Diana... Or any toy camera.  

A couple weeks ago... well let's back up a bit. Maybe a year ago, I funded a kickstarter. (when I had some extra dinero lying around) It was for the manufacture of medium format cinestill film. I hadn't shot it before, but If you're a company trying to make film, than I'm you're guy. I had a chance to shoot Cinestill50 a few months ago, and after that experience, I was even more pumped to get this kickstarter backed project rewards in hand.

The film tended to have a lot of weird things happen to it, such as static on the film causing some red streaks, which I've never encountered before, along with some other weird things. Since It's the alpha run, there are bugs being worked out. All in all, I'm really happy with this new film on the market.

Fujimoto Semi Sport

So this is a story of sheer will. This camera came into my collection as I was traveling the streets of Seoul. If you're unaware of the flea market scene in Seoul, Its enormous. I'd regularly frequent the market when I visited. The city attempted to contain this market by moving it inside, yet it was a futile effort. On the weekends, there would be blocks and blocks of people selling vintage everything Every street looked like this or this. A few streets down, I found this little guy. It had a roll of film, (Which I now know was only the backing paper of a roll of fujifilm) from the early 1950's.  

After quick inspection, I thought it was a great find, only later to realize the shutter lever had been snapped off. It took me several months to track down another one of these cameras in disrepair to harvest its parts.

The Fujimoto Semi Sport is a clone/ knock off of the zeiss folding cameras, much like the Kiev 66 is a Knockoff/ clone camera of a Hasseblad. It was nice shooting 6x645 format, since I tend to shoot square format in 120 film.

Here are a few images I shot not too long ago. I went to a park close to me.

Images shot on Fuji NPS 160.

I guess there was some debris left in the camera I didn't clean out... Created a pretty weird, but interesting image.

Canon AutoBoy Tele

This is one of those cameras that have virtually zero value. But for me, finding cameras to sell is only a small component of finding cameras. This model, the Autoboy Tele in Japan and the Canon Sure Shot Tele/ Top Twin in the US. I thought this was a cool little camera.

I began testing it out at a wedding, I found quickly that it operated okay, but the gears that switched from Telephoto to normal were old and cranky, so there would be a loud high pitched screech as when I switched between the two.

It also had a date stamp feature that seems pretty antiquated, but possibly conceptually useful as a tool when making images. The lens reminds me a lot of the cameras I would use when I was a kid.

I shot a lot of different cameras while living abroad. (I lived in South Korea for the year of 2016.) Korea had a good supply of interesting architecture, and cheap cameras.

I guess I've been on a Kodak kick lately. This was also shot on some Kodak Gold 200. I tend to buy film that is expired, and I don't freeze or store my film in any particular manner. Maybe I'll add a photo of my current film stock in the future.

Olympus XA

I found this little camera in Tokyo. I was camera hunting for cameras, and I wasn't finding much things I was realistically interested in. Japan's camera market is amazing for vintage cameras, but they're all in superb condition. I tend to prefer the throw aways. Much like buying a fancy brand new, or perfect condition car; a perfectly pristine camera is typically wasted on me. I began collecting because I wanted to use the tool to make an image, not to sit on a shelf.

Intro: The Olympus XA

I decided to make a purchase in one of these shops into something, that I somewhat stumbled onto. I was looking at busted section of the store, and I was curious what camera this was, from the side it looked like a Minox camera because of the orange button. This camera has become one of my stand by cameras, so it may surface occasionally on this blog.

Anyways, onto the photos. Images Shot on some expired roll of Kodak Gold 200

Hello

Is this thing on? Let's see what camera and film combination I can come up with.

While you wait, go check out my Tumblr. It's got some images.