Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Box Camera Scans

Our annual autumn vacation to Vermont is just a month away . . . a realization that started me thinking about photographic and painting possibilities for the trip. So I started digging through my camera collection, trying to decide which of these "heavy metal" cameras would join my Canon digital for the ride. And what a happy surprise! I remembered the undeveloped roll of 120 film in a 75-year-old box camera (a Zeiss Box-Tengor) that I had shot last year in Vermont. Here are scans of four of the negatives. Not bad for a camera that essentially no more than a box with a simple lens and three-speed leaf shutter. They almost have a 19th century feel, as if I had taken them on a view camera with glass plates for film. Hmmmmm, maybe I should use this camera again.




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2 comments:

Barbara Butler McCoy said...

These photos are stunning.

To start, they bring up memories of visits to my Grandpa's farm in Michigan when I was little. He very sweetly let me practice shooting arrows into the barn door! For a Catholic school girl from the city that was pretty big stuff.

The thing about these pictures, I think, is that your eye sees beyond the physical and your technical proficiency taps into that 'beyond.'

Kitty said...

wow, how utterly cool?
There is something about the square format which is pretty interesting. I guess you could crop it, too if you wanted, but I like the negative look.

I think Diane Arbus shot with a square format for a while. I remember seeing a retrospective of hers in LA, and she either changed to the square format or from. I find these decisions by photographers intriguing.

Go for it!