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Showing posts from February, 2021

The medium format camera Zenobia in its Gold Edition

  Browsing the eBay listings, I came upon a medium format foldable camera for which I saw great potential... for being upgraded. Indeed, it seems that every single Medium Format camera of the brand "Zenobia" that I came across have all more or less suffered a similar fate: the leather coverings are chipping and falling off (a similar fate is found on Semi Leotax models and maybe some others).  But what a fantastic opportunity to replace the dying material with brand new clothes! Zenobia before Restoration pt 1 After cleaning the camera, the idea crossed my mind to simply use it as such... but I quickly discarded the idea, as the camera's body was very sharp and very cold... Something strange was discovered when peeling off the old "skin": the makers had used a piece of Japanese newspaper between the leather and the metal of the camera's back. Or maybe this was a way for people during the war to exchange super secret messages? But since the camera was bui

Making a shiny new camera from a sad old Kodak Disc 4000

I was planning on trying a format I have never tried before, the Disc format.  But the Disc camera I have... let's just say it looked a little lame. Not only that, but everyone I talked with except a few experimenters and risk-takers was being critical of my project to shoot Disc format...  Of course, when you see what the cameras look like, I can understand that the gear doesn't appeal to most. So I planned to give it a new look, a look none of these usually boring cameras had ever had before. To make it a little more "wow", a little sexier to use and to be seen with. By luck, I had just ordered some sample iridescent adhesive sticker samplers that I thought would do well and were the right size. I went through the process described in my previous post about the Kodamatic, carefully measuring the protrusions of the camera's body, tracing cutting lines with the AxiDraw V3 and cutting them up with either a cutter and a ruler, hole punchers and an Olfa rotary cutter