Fixing old cameras
On how to get half creative again My appeal for photography has been consistently low the past few months. Last Christmas, like every year, I took part of the migration that leaves Paris empty in winter. On the road to Southern France, it came to mind that I forgot to take a film camera for […]
Minox 35: Size does not matter When I was in high school, my father brought me a funny camera from his travels to Ukraine. It was a Kiev 35A, an almost perfect copy of the Minox 35 GT. It was manufactured by Arsenal in Kiev, along amazing lenses and copies; but this is a whole […]
An amazing community Quarantine hit in March 2020. Not long after, I started to contribute to an analog photography zine launched by a few dedicated Twitter users: The Quarantine Zine. Every month, the team picked a theme. Anybody could submit a photo and a caption. Those contributing received a printed version by mail. Holding this […]
Nikon F4: heavy duty In 2019, my grand father passed away. Back at my parents’ house, my father set all the cameras my grandfather owned on a table. From Leicas to Rolleiflex, the selection was quite remarkable. At the end of the table throned a bulky monster: the Nikon F4. I immediately developed an aversion […]
5 years already! 5 years ago, I started a blog. My first post what about the Minox 35. What better homage is there than using a photograph taken by this very camera last year to celebrate this birthday? Since 2015, I have been experimenting new chemicals, repairing old cameras and testing new films and paper. […]
The Story Is it a Leica? Close enough. This is a Zorki 1 type e. This camera, produced between 1950 and 1956, was, at the very beginning, attempting to copy the Leica II in order to offer the Soviet people a cheap, reliable and luxurious camera. The intent to reproduce the Leica is evidenced by the first models […]
I had the honor to be featured on the ILFORD Photo blog. I have been using their films, papers and chemicals for quite a long time, and I am glad to see they do have a strong presence online and on social media. I wish that every 137 years old company could benefit from such a strong […]
For an upcoming project — Do not worry, I will keep you informed —, I acquired a view camera for forty euros on eBay. No brand, no logo. It comes with 6 glass-plates holders. That is all the seller’s description contained. When I unpacked it, I expected to discover, under the protection paper, a stack of […]
#1 A time machine camera 1930s, Germany. The economy is booming, and Dresden is an important European center for camera manufacturing. Since the 1850s, this eastern city easily became the German heart of photographic paper, and from then, of camera manufacturing. This remained until the 1990s. At that time, Welta, Balda and Certo offered a similar range of cameras: medium format […]
If you read my blog — thank you for that, you saw that the Meopta Flexaret VI I own was not working anymore, which is a shame since I really like that camera. Shadowed by the legendary Rolleiflex, the Czech Meopta Flexaret were luxurious, discrete, twin-lens cameras at least as mechanically complex as the Rolleiflex. It […]
Around 1900, photographers only used medium format cameras, for the 35mm format did not exist at that time. The main problem was that the bigger the film is, the further the lens must be. That is why we have the image of the old days’ photographer, carrying his wooden box around, deploying the beast into a long leather […]
