The closest I've got to Holgaising an image is by playing silly
buggers withg the lens on a decent body. Thus a Holga lens/cap on a
5D or a funky Kodak accessory tele lens on the front of a Zuiko 25mm
(it just happened to be 43mm!) But that's sort of cheat I think.
I'm hoping to happen upon something in the 2-3mp range with a truly
woeful lens. That would be more like it, especially if it's in an
ugly body (I want a Kodak DC260/265 - what were they smoking when
they designed that?) Failing that I'll dumpster dive for old early
didges and stick something on the front of those perhaps.
I do like the VistaQuest though - I may go look for one of those.
<http://www.camerahacker.com/VistaQuest/VQ1005.shtml>
- it's better than the other keyring cams I've seen, like the
L'Espion I saw today. Didn't buy that because it lacked charm.
Andrew Fildes
afildes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
On 05/08/2008, at 3:31 PM, Moose wrote:
> Jez Cunningham wrote:
>> http://www.luminous-landscape.com/essays/funkeycam.shtml
>>
> I think the analogy is very loose. The Holga/Diana/? cameras have
> wonderfully bad lenses, as do the funkycam and its ilk. However, the
> Holga records its 6x6cm images on 120 film. Thus, the results of
> various
> abberrations, soft focus and random asphericity of the lenses is
> recorded with considerable dynamic range, long, smooth tonal
> distribution. The subtle details of the lenses faults are recorded, in
> effect, in quite high resolution, both tonal and spacial.
>
> I was given a funkycam by a friend as an alternative to simply
> throwing
> it away. I have since acquired another version of the concept, a
> VistaQuest VQ-1005. In these cameras, the poor lens is supplemented
> with
> a very low resolution sensor with poor dynamic range and somewhat
> 'chunky' tonal graduation.
>
> This is not to say that they are not capable of creating artistically
> interesting images, only that the quality/feel/whatever of these
> images
> is very different from those of Holga and Co.
>
> For one thing, the images from the funkycam are really small. A
> 352x288
> pixel image (0.1 MP) is just a big thumbnail, to me. Upsizing so as to
> retain the essential character of the image and without obvious
> pixelization is not trivial. With primitive auto exposure and no
> controls at all, a lot of shots just don't come off. Bright subject
> with
> darker surroundings? Fuggedaboutit. I get a blob of white
> surrounded by
> decently exposed stuff. On the other hand, the funkycam is much better
> than I expected in modest light.
>
> You may not have noticed that none of the sample images in Michael's
> paean to the funkycam are taken under sunny conditions.
>
> The VistaQuest has a much more useful image size of 1280x1024 pixels
> (1.3 MP). It's not so much that it resolves much detail - an early Oly
> digi Stylus with a real lens and 1024x960 image size (1.0 MP) resolves
> much more detail. The point is that the image size is big enough to be
> easy to work with. The VQ is sort of the reverse of the FC, with far
> better exposure outside and pretty useless in less than bright
> light. It
> will still blow highlights, but not all of them all the time. :-)
>
> Anyway, these little thingies seem to be a way of creating, mostly by
> accident, I suspect, some interesting "bad" images, but images with
> quite a different character than those of the 120 film Holga & Co.
>
> A few more notes for anyone looking to try one of these things:
>
> The funkycams provide power to their internal memory full time,
> resulting in battery life measured in single digit hours. Battery die,
> images go bye-bye. So you actually are tethered to a computer, in a
> way.
> Also, they require proprietary software to download the images.
>
> The VQ is a bit thicker, in return for which it has an an SD card
> slot.
> With a card, the internal memory is ignored, which may or may not
> improve battery life, but with rechargeables and an SD card, it is
> less
> important, as no batteries are wasted nor images lost. It has a USB
> mass
> storage interface, so the card shows up as a disk drive. In fact,
> it may
> be used in a pinch as an SD card reader.
>
> It has two focus settings, portrait and mountain. They are very
> approximate. On mine and those of others who have posted about them,
> portrait seems to mean 18-24" or so and mountain something further
> away,
> but not too far. However, I saw a post somewhere saying focus, such as
> it is, is adjustable inside by screwing the lens in/out. Apparently
> turning the lens is how the external near/far switch works. I haven't
> tried that yet.
>
> Ah, it's true. I just opened it up. Yes, there is a trick. One may
> indeed adjust the focus range. I got it to focus on this missive at
> about 15". Wow, there is a lot of sharpening being applied, bright
> halos
> on text. Tomorrow in daylight, I'll see about setting distance focus.
>
> Moose
>
> Moose
>
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