Finally: the Harman TiTAN 8x10 inch Pinhole Camera

The new Harman TiTAN 8x10 inch Pinhole Camera should be available from March 4th, 2013. It will be formally announced on Sunday at the Focus on Imaging show in Birmingham, UK, and available shortly after (through http://www.ilfordphoto.com). It is expected to cost about £400 (Wow!).

It is rather a large beast compared to the previous 4x5 inch TITAN pinhole camera.

(Photo: techcentral.my)

The concept of the 8x10 inch version is the same as the 4x5 inch version.

(parts of the 4x5 inch version)

Leon Taylor (from filmwasters) got his hands on an early pre-production model and made a nice film about his first tests on the cold coasts of Kent.
You can view his video (12 minutes) on Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/60680136
"This special edition of the filmwasters video podcast features the new Harman Titan 8×10 pinhole camera. Leon got his hands on a pre-release camera to put through its paces and see what this over-sized beastie can do."

(Mike Walker & Leon Taylor holding the 8x10 - photo: Leon Taylor)

For more (coming) info, check also these sites once in a while:
http://tinyurl.com/pinhole group
and
http://www.apug.org/forums/forum62/116152-harman-titan-8x10-pinhole-camera-review.html
and
http://filmwasters.com/podcast/archives/258.

Interesting film about Ansel Adams (1957, 20 min.)

I found this interesting film from 1957 about Ansel Adams, telling about his work, on Youtube.

See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-BhJQqHXfQ

(Ansel Adams standing on his car shooting Large Format)

It's an old 16 mm documentary (in B&W) on Ansel Adams with commentary from Ansel himself. He tells about his practices and views on photography. It's nice to see his equipment, his home and his interests from almost 60 years ago! A small piece of Photography History ;-)

Ansel Adams wrote several books. I would like to mention his trilogy: The Negative, The Camera and The Print. A must read; even if you only use digital cameras! These books are still in print.

(the covers of his trilogy)

One of my favourite quotes from Ansel Adams:

" ... avoiding the common illusions that creativity 

depends on equipment alone ... "

(quote from his book: The Camera)

I have one of the lenses Ansel Adams liked to use: a Kodak Commercial Ektar 10". You can see the lens in the film at 4.00 minutes on his 8x10" camera.

(Kodak Commercial Ektar 10" f:6.3)

Making dry plate glass negatives with a LF camera

I followed a course in making dry plate negatives (on glass plates) yesterday given by Dutch photographer Norman Post. It's a very nice and old technique.
I made these 2 portraits with this technique:

- Iso = 1 (yes: only one!)
- Exposure time = 1 second
- Apperture = f /4.5
- location = outdoors in the shade.

I used an old Russian large format camera: FKD 13x18 (almost 5x7") with an Industar 215 mm lens and an Industar 300 mm lens.

I'm gonna use this technique with my own FKD 18x24 cm LF camera (almost 8x10") and with my self build wooden pinhole cameras. These glass plate negatives are perfect for contact printing (like cyanotype or gum printing).

See flick.com for my images.

See some of the portraits made by Norman Post (scanned from dry plate negatives).

(photo made by Norman Post)

Check the Pinhole Photography & Cameras Group on LinkedIn for more info on pinhole cameras.