Fabrice on Film

A lot of the cameras I use from the 70s to 90s have fluorescent paint in the number or markings on the lenses. I decided to use neon paints to make numbers easier to read on some old lenses, or simply upgrading their looks. 1- I used Ikea Mala paints because they're cheap and come in 5 colors that will react to black light (pink, orange, purple, green and yellow) for less than $10 and have a needle point bottle. But you can also use any acrylic paints. 2-Daub paint on the numbers or letters you wish to paint after putting some tape to cover other areas, avoid making bubbles 3-Scrape excess paint with a piece of cardboard (like a business card, which is flexible). Wipe the other areas either immediately with fingers or qtip or wait for it to be dried to chip it off   4-The painted glyphs will now be more legible under low light and pop out under black light. Here, the orange paint I used very closely matches the one that was the manufacturer used on the zone focusing markings: Yo...

 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...

My project was to build two light anamorphic setups - one for my Pentax Auto 110, which I really love, and one for the Pentax Q, which I never use but does yield decent results in the "digital aesthetics" field.  Since the project didn't work out for the Pentax Auto 110 for now, I will share the more successful results of the Pentax Q. This was the base idea: Find a filter that can be screwed onto the best zoom lens (to avoid cropping) Remove the glass from this filter to keep the ring with the thread Replace the glass with a donut-shaped piece of wood or cardboard Fix a small cellphone anamorphic lens onto that  Here's how it went: Find a filter that can be screwed onto the best zoom lens (to avoid cropping) This one was easy. I decided to use the 02 "Standard Zoom" lens for the Pentax Q which has a thread of 40.5mm. And used a Fotasy Pro 1-D as filter. Remove the glass from this filter to keep the ring with the thread That was equal parts fun and dangero...