Fabrice on Film

 Or how I crafted a super fast camera lens from bits and parts... fun! As a photographer, I've had many photographer friends in my life, amongst which fast lenses were often a highly sought after item. The price of such lenses - for example the Leica Noctilux - is usually a ridiculous amount of money to spend on a camera lens, ranging sometimes up to 15,000$. Some of my photographer friends would save up for long periods of time before they could finally buy one, others would simply give up on the idea, bitter or saddened by the unattainable perfection of their dream lens. Among filmmakers and cinematographers, the sequence in Stanley Kubrick's "Barry Lyndon", which was lit only by the light of candles and shot using a very fast lens that Kubrick had the Nasa make for him, is also the stuff of dreams. After doing some research, I found that, there were lots of lenses that were built by various manufacturers and for various purposes throughout the history of optical le...

  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...

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...

 When I obtained the old Kodak camera, built around 1920-30, in 2020, roughly a hundred years later give or take, it wasn't in great shape. (I'm saying "obtained" because I didn't buy it knowingly, I bought a camera lot and it happened to come with it). The leather cover was very worn, and the outside as well as the inside of the camera was really dirty and grimy. I had no idea how to proceed, but I knew it was possible, so the thought that I could try and replace the leather covers of the camera to give it a new look, a new life, and possibly feel rewarded by the experience started to appear at the back of my head. I had bought replacement leather covers for my cameras before, from a store that sells precut leather stickers, but I had never been able to remove the old leathers (the timer screw on the Pentax ME super just won't come off), and I felt pretty stressed out thinking I might destroy one of my favorite SLRs. But here, the camera had no emotional or f...

After photographing for over 25 years, I realized the ideal camera(s) for me has to have the following: -Very small in size / light -WYSIWIG viewfinder if possible -Manual focusing capable -Cell / under or overexposure indicator -Freedom to shoot - aka not having to worry too much about reaching the end of the roll too fast -Give me an "analog photography" feel - aka the results need to feel like film -Double Exposure capable -Interchangeable lenses These are my 8 Golden Rules for me to fall in love with a tool and incorporate it in my workflow. Therefore, my favorite cameras to own and use are the following: 110: -Pentax Auto 110 - 6 out of 8 Golden Rules, one extra point for being a SLR that fits in a jacket pocket and giving out outstanding results 35 half-frame: -Olympus Pen F (with two lenses) - 8 Golden Rules attained! - extra point for the freedom brought by half-frame (72 exposures...)     35mm: -Minolta X-300 - 8 Golden Rules attained! Medium Format: I'm still s...