Retro Thing

Retro-8: Sleek New 8mm Film Digitizing System

Movie film can last for many decades if stored in a cool, dark and dry environment. The problem is that few of us still own projection equipment, so the film shot by our parents and grandparents goes unwatched. Moviestuff in Utopia, Texas provides an impressive lineup of film digitization gear that helps you to revive old movie memories for the YouTube era.

Moviestuff's latest transfer machine is the Retro-8. This high quality device resembles a reel-to-reel tape player more than a film projector, but it can handle both Standard 8mm and Super 8 film using a state-of-the-art sprocketless film gate that allows you to mix the two film types without worrying about sprocket hole damage.

Designer Roger Evans tells us, "It runs at 2fps so it takes about 30 minutes to scan 50 feet. However, you can intermix Regular 8 and Super 8 on the same roll and it is totally automatic. The unit will stop itself at the end of a run, or in case of film breakage or jam. It is designed for home use and requires a PC with win 7 64 bit and 8 gigs of ram.

The unit connects via USB, so no special capture card is required. The software will eventually handle color negative film, too. We know neg works but the beta version of the software will be reversal (projection film) only. The final version of the software will also have a notification feature that will message your phone when the unit stops or completes its run. The gate features zero image area contact and the guide rollers are rubber that handle the film by the edges only."

The introductory price for the Retro-8 scanner is $2495. Understanding that many hobbyists don't have that kind of money, Moviestuff will also rent the machine for $100 per day, with a 5 day minimum. While that might seem expensive at first glance, if you've inherited a large stash of film reels it can work out significantly cheaper than paying a film transfer house for a decent copy.

For more information, visit the Moviestuff site.

Color Photos of Paris, circa 1914

July 18, 1914, days before the outbreak of war.

These stunning Autochrome photographs were shot in Paris on the eve of WWI. It always astounds me how much more realistic images from this period seem when captured in color - the ethereal other-worldly quality of B&W is cast aside in favor of heightened realism that seems like a modern recreation.

A street scene. The absence of cars is jarring.

Follow the link for more: Париж 1914 года на цветных фото

iPhone Shutter Release Disguised As A Film Canister

Though I don't have an iPhone, I do like a lot of the camera add-ons. Maybe this is where I turn into an old man, but I can't get over what a good job it does at taking pictures (it's also a nice map, portable game machine... now if only they could get the whole "phone" aspect of it licked...). Apps like Instagram have made it easy to get a retro look reminiscent of Holga toy cameras without any fuss (still not sure how I feel about that), so it feels to me like more people are interested in retro photography than ever.

One of the first accessories you pick up for a traditional film camera is a shutter release, the long snakey cable that pushes the button on the camera to avoid vibration (or put yourself in the picture). Here's a decidedly retro take on it from Photojojo.com. The retractable cable connect to what looks like an old film canister. Unspool the springwound cable and plug it into the headphone jack of your iPhone. Then depress the button on the side of the film canister, and smile.

This is a new product - so new that this is the first day you can get one, and we've got the scoop! You'll also be helping Retro Thing if you use this link to order yours.

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Help out Retro Thing when you order your iPhone Cable Trigger

1974: Super 8 Bicycle Ride Around Vancouver

We tend to be fairly lax in photographing our day-to-day existence. Sure, we gather periodically in front of the Christmas tree or at the pub to smile into the camera, but the little details usually fall by the wayside -- we don't snap panoramic shots of the street on which we live, the office, the messy interior of our car, the kitchen, our favorite restaurant, or the train station platform we loiter on for a few minutes each and every day.

We ignore the mundane, assuming that it's not very interesting because tomorrow will be much the same. But flash forward two or three decades, and something as ordinary as a weekend bike ride around the city becomes a precious time capsule.

As if to prove my point, photographer Hans Sipma shot this timelapse film with a Braun Nizo Super 8 camera mounted on his bicycle during a cool autumn day in 1974 or 1975. The camera was configured to snap a single frame every few seconds, allowing a single cartridge of Kodachrome to capture his epic cycling adventure around Vancouver for us to enjoy in the distant future.

For those interested in a little more detail, Hans created a longer edit that slows things down and intersperses a number of present day stills along his route. It's fascinating to see how much has changed and how some things remain virtually unchanged.

Retro Picture Frames At Target

I was just at my local Target store and found a couple of cute picture frames that cater to those of us who are Old Media Old Timers. They're not available from Target's website - these are specialty items that you have to go into the store to find.

I'm not sure what they're made of (a testimony to the modern world that I can't tell what sort of space age material we're dealing with here), I think they're made of wood, but the frames may be some sort of plastic. In any case, they're adorable and affordable.

For $5.95 you can pick up either a television inspired frame, or a sketchy looking cassette (with room for two photos appropriately). Funny to have reached the age that even a mass market retailer like Target is catering to my nostalgia. I've found that these non-catalog items are sometimes not stocked too deeply, so you may want to trot to your local Target soon. Let us know if you need some pictures of James and myself to fill up your snazzy new frames.

[For the cynics among you, no... Retro Thing didn't get paid for this post.]

Is A Fake Security Camera Like A Scarecrow For People?

Some parts of the world keep a watchful CCD eye on the people all the time. It hasn't quite happened here in the states yet, but obviously some places are old hands at it. Stores and banks have always had a secret room in the back that's a nest of wires and a sleepy art school student keeping a bleary eye on a row of black and white monitors.

The tech may have changed to tiny discreet cams and a single computer, but has always been tremendously expensive to set up a real security camera network. Some places will mix a few fake cameras in with the real ones to save money, then someone discovered that as long as the staff can keep a secret (and the bad guys never open a Radio Shack catalog), ALL the cameras can be cheap fakes and still be an effective deterrent.

This camera is far too heavy to be a fake. I can't tell too much about this cam. The only information is a sticker on the back and "Video Surveillance System" helpfully stencilled on both sides. The sticker is for "Advanced Metal Technologies" in O'Fallon Missouri which looks to be more of a manufacturing company than a security service. The camera is a heavy sucker, so let's open it up to see the technology powerhouse keeping our lives safer.

Whoops...

Let's review... we've got a fake camera that sees nothing, does nothing. Oh wait, to be fair, it does blink a little red LED on the front. I expect that giant lantern battery kept that little flashy LED circuit going for months, maybe years! I can't tell when exactly this phony camera is from, but I'd guess the 70s or perhaps a misguided 80s. Real security cameras were ugly affairs, and this fake sure qualifies. So even though this camera looks quite fake, I think that in the dark it might just pass. Just.

Obviously it's all about saving money on an elaborate security system while still fooling the non-distinguishing criminal element. One shabby video store I used to go to employed the fakeout camera, but were a little too cheap about it. They nailed up an old super 8 camera. Perhaps the bad guys aren't also camera connoisseurs, but it does seem a bit of a giveaway to have a big bolt sticking through the word "Kodak".

Today's security conscious don't need to concern themselves with a phalanx of expensive fakes. There are dozens of models of fake security cameras out there, many for just a few dollars. More elaborate models have what looks like a glass lens (instead of a shiny black plastic fake like most cheapies), and use a motion sensor to start panning and blinking a light when someone lurks nearby. Even the cheap ones look relatively convincing, and the light and motion may draw the potential thief's eye and enourage him to pack up his stripey shirt and domino mask, and head back to the hideout.

It may even be easier than that to make your place look more secure. So many genuine security cameras look like a little golf-ball webcam, and no one expects those to move or beep. You can just hit the thrift store and dot an armload of webcams all over your store and hope for the best. Though it stops working if someone nips in and steals the webcams...

Polaroid Z2300 Digital Retro Camera - It Prints!

Polaroid has never been willing to let go entirely of their on-the-spot printing roots. From time to time they march out a new "fun" camera, but with the individual prints costing good money, and the ubiquity of camera phones for sharing memories instantly, who was going to carry around an old Polaroid camera these days?

The new Z2300 is an interesting hybrid that just might hit the right balance of old and new ways to share photos. For $159 you get a 10 megapixel pocket sized digital point and shoot (note the nod to the retro styling of older Polaroid gear with that rainbow-esque stripe on a white body). The camera has got built in  special effects filters, shoots video... it even mentions something called "Classic Polaroid Border" which I hope means you can create pictures with the offset white frame like an old Polaroid print.

Speaking of printing, that's the remarkable part of this camera I'm going to like. You can go through your digital shots, and chose to chug out an honest-to-goodness physical print. The camera even has simple cropping so you print just what you want. The camera uses Polaroid's "Zink" cartridges which have paper and ink in a single cart. A cartridge can print 50 2x3" images (that are also stickers!) for $25.

I was a big fan of Polaroid's i-zone camera from some years back... tiny 1" prints with sticky backs so you could put pictures up anywhere - which was a big part of the fun. It was still a fully "analog" system, so you didn't really know what your pictures were going to look like until they popped out of the camera. This new Z2300 camera promises a new breed of photo sharing fun. Not only can you share your photos digitally, but your choicest snaps can enter the real world via a mini print you can create anywhere. With the Z2300, stick your photos up on Facebook, or stick them right onto your face.

Help out Retro Thing when you order your Polaroid Z2300 from Amazon

A Retro Kitsch Look At The Olympics

I'm not much of a sports fan (which you can probably tell by my soft-serve ice cream muscle tone), but I've always had an admiration for the Olympics. The opening and closing ceremonies of the UK Olympics were lavish, though occasionally confusing - and it didn't help at all that U.S. TV correspondents felt obliged to fill the air with nervous prattle whenever the action dipped below a fever pace.

Before this year's Olympics started, I had a running list of what world-famous UK icons would be recognized in the ceremonies. I was happy to see James Bond, Monty Python, and of course The Beatles well represented, but felt a bit slighted that Doctor Who - a show about to celebrate its half-century, and a worldwide hit like never before - was not in sight. Though my ears did prick up in the opening ceremony when I heard the unmistakable sound of the Doctor's TARDIS during a musical number. There was apparently supposed to be a salute to British TV that got nixed, so all I can figure is that a kindred sound man sneaked the signature sound effect into the broadcast anyway (it'll be hard to forgive the current producers of Doctor Who if they don't figure out a way to fit this real-world TARDIS event into the plot of their show.)

Lots of retro musical acts, but I wasn't treated to my UK favorites. No glimpse of Peter Gabriel, no historic reunion by The Smiths, and the only sign of the mercurial Kate Bush was "Running Up that Hill" (a signature song for one of the bands I was once in) used as a backing track in the closing ceremony - replete with an unnecessary re-recording of the vocals. If you're a U.S  Kate fan wondering how you missed the performance, it's not your fault. The number was cut from our broadcast for some reason.

So the Olympics may be gone, but as always the souvenirs will live on. In 1988, Kodak offered The Winner 110 camera, with a small Olympic decal to make it all official. If you remember 110 film, it was scarcely a "winner" format. The negative was a quarter the size of 35mm, so prints were always a bit grainy, helped little by the low quality cameras that usually used the format. It wasn't too bad a compromise though for a cheap and portable camera.

The other item I came across was this Hallmark ornament from 1996. Sold as a $30 collectible then, nigh worthless now. It's one of those ornaments that you plug into a light string and watch while the ornament itself lights up. This one has a cute flickering flame effect to emulate the torch being lit at the Atlanta Olympics. It seems a bit out of season to depict the feiry symbol of the Summer Olympics on your winter tree, I won't make a fuss. Open flame was part of every Christmas when I was growing up, but that's a story for another time.

So I enjoyed the Olympics overall, and it was fun running across these past souvenirs of Olympics gone by... but if they want to bring back full-on Olympic fever, maybe the Games shouldn't happen every 18 months.

Cat Flash Fever! Flashbulbs + Sad Cat = Internet Gold?

We love it when people share something they've found on Retro Thing. We've been lucky enough to have some of our work go viral, but we'd love it if something went super viral... like in the multi-millions. I finally figured out what it is that we've been doing wrong. I don't know when the internet turned into a super kitteh photo engine, but if we want to compete, we're going to have fight back with cats.... retro cats. Get ready for Cat Flash Fever!

Who art-directed this photo shoot for flashcubes? "You know what will sell flashcubes? We need the cat to look more mournful..." Flashcubes are an interesting part of the whole razors/razorblades marketing model in photography. Inexpensive cameras with a built-in flash weren't common in the 60s/70s when these cubes hail from (I think). Instead of selling you an add-on flash, these little flashcubes are an entirely self-contained system. It's actually a wad of shredded zirconium that burns very quickly and brightly. You don't need external power either - the cubes are an entirely self-contained system. If you wanted to annoy your parents, you could waste the expensive flashes with just a paperclip poked in the right spot.

What surprises me is just how expensive these flashcubes were. At nearly $5 in the 70s. that's like $20 today according to the US Inflation Calculator (that can't possibly be right, can it?). This product is made for Polaroid cameras, so you were already paying through the nose per print, let alone adding another $5 to get 8 more indoor shots. And of course let's not even bring up the environmental impact of these cubes - after 4 shots, the cube was garbage.

But let's get back to the main goal here. You can tell everyone you know that you remember reading the website that gave the internet Cat Flash Fever. Any great captions out there?

Convergence X: Fake Camcorder Does It All - Except Shoot Video

Flea markets aren't jst a lot of second had stuff. You'll also find lots of strange new products that come from far off lands (I'm trying to be nice here...). I've seen this Nokina camera countless times, usually priced at $30-50. It looks like just another castoff 90s camcorder, but why so cheap?

Looks like Nokina has learned that the cheapest way to make a camcorder is to leave out the camcorder part. This is a 35mm still camera. The fixed-focus lens has a filter thread, an what looks like auto-exposure electronics. You can line up your shot in two ways - neither of which actually work very well. Either use the hokey viewfinder which gives you some vague idea of where the camera is pointing, or fold out the hokey fake side "monitor" to get a misty and vague idea of framing via a mirrored (that's right... the image is backwards) upright finder.

Four AA batteries juice the camera's powered film advance and rewind (a surprise luxury in an oddball unit like this). So when you're buying film don't forget to pick up some batteries... and cassettes - audio cassettes. Yes, there's a built in tape player. A little door pops open on the side where a video cassette would typically go, but it's really a Walkman type mechanism. You can either listen to music via headphones, or built in crummy speaker. So I guess you can use music to soothe your subjects before you snap a pic.

So there you have it. A fake camcorder that is really a somewhat advanced 35mm point and shoot and walkman in one. The viewfinders are both so crummy and misaligned, that maybe they actually DO give you an accurate preview of the rotten photos you're likely to get with this thing. The Nokina has some heft though, so I was curious what sort of image processing power was weighing the thing down. Turns out to be a metal weight inside. Always the sign of a quality product.

So who in the heck is this for? I can only imagine that it's for duping people at flea markets, or duping your family that you splashed out for a new 90s camcorder? The Nokina is too expensive to be a novelty or a toy, and clearly a lot off work went into creating such a bad idea... so who is the market for this?

The Image Of Women In Ads For Photographic Gear

I was recently looking through a pile of old advertising for photo gear. It was much stranger than you'd think. On the one hand you think of the stereotype of  tech hobbies like shooting photos and home movies being the province of dad. There's no good  reason for that, of course. Anyone can load film and take nice pictures.

Yet if you look at some of the earliest photo ads, you see a very different image of women. Kodak actively courted women photographers in their earliest ads. They're not just shown as the subject of photography - they're out there snapping pictures, sometimes going so far as to depicted femme photogs as adventurers. Thumbing through the ads I found plenty of early Kodak ads and how-to books that prominently featured women taking photos.

Even after this early start of photography being for everyone, for a long time we still ended up with this idea of photography being a guy thing. When did advertisers chose to appeal mostly to a male audience? Let's take a look at a couple of advertisers advertising their cameras by accessorizing with ladies.

No real problem with the Bolex projector ad, just a glamorous lady sitting between a couple of movie projectors. No sleaziness or goony puns in the text of the ad either. Put aside the use of a woman as a sort of prop, I don't see any egregious problems here.

Yashica's Electro 35 tells a different story. A voluptuous nude lady (except for her highly trained scarf) stands astride a giant camera. A lot of the writing in the ad is rather breathless in the description of the Electronic Brain - what we'd today called Auto-Exposure. The other copy in the ad is okay (though they make the point of referring to the camera as "her" as well as use the word "naked"), but it gets extra weird at the bottom: "There's a little red light... that says, "Stop, man!" when you're over. Electro 35 lets you take her when you want her and never over-expose her." You don't have to be Felini to figure that out - especially with visual aids like Ms. 70s Custom Van art over there...

Finally, even though the lady in our final example is fully clothed, Sabrina's jutting out over the Bell & Howell slide projector is just as bad as the Yashica ad - possibly worse.

I don't know if it bugs me more that we're talking about her "projection equipment" (check the possessive pronoun in the copy), or that the product is called "headliner". Everyone I've show this ad to so far has looked twice in disbelief. Also, most of them helpfully pointed out that she may not even know there's a projector down there. I've got some really great friends, you know...

We've long since looped back around, women and men are both happily snapping off pictures - have been for years. Photography as a hobby for everyone is healthier than ever. I just find it amazingly progressive that Kodak's early ads promoted photography to both men and women. I guess it just took the rest of the industry us a few more decades to finally figure that out.

35mm Slide Show In Your Pocket

So your friends are wise to you - they won't come over to your house anymore in fear of a slideshow breaking out. You can't just keep those Kodachrome slides of your trip to the canyon and your gall bladder surgery to yourself. You're a natural showman! IF you forgot to bring your Minolta pocket sized 35mm slide projector, you can always whip out your Arrow-View pocket viewer.

With a heart made of two C batteries and a flashlight bulb, there's not a lot of tech going on here, but you've still got just about everything you need for a slide show - one slide at a time, of course. Just drop the slide in the slot and push down. The slide pushes a contact into place, and the rear light fires up. The bottom knob physically moves the magifier to adjust for any level of focus and/or myopia.

Of course these days practically any MP3 player can display a much more elaborate multimedia slideshow. This viewer hearkens back to somewhat more "monomedia" times. I still think this is a kicky little slide viewer - especially the mysterious marble-ized finish and the shape reminiscent of a camera. It's no smartphone powerhouse, but at least the 50's were trying.

Kodak On The Verge Of Becoming A Memory

You've probably heard the news that Kodak is preparing to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Pundits around the world have been quick to declare that the company simply didn't embrace digital technology and fell out of step. However, I think there's more to it than that.

In actuality, Kodak was at the forefront of the digital revolution. One of the first portable digital cameras was cobbled together in their R&D facilities in 1975. The company released a lineup of digital point-and-shoots and has tens of thousands of digital photo printing kiosks installed across North America, ready to print stacks photos at the touch of the screen. They spent decades developing first-rate digital image sensors. They even launched the highly regarded Kodak Theater HD Player to let you view slide shows and videos on your TV in gloriously modern HD.

So what went wrong? Why aren't there lineups ten people deep to print photos of their latest pub crawl or cousin Sarah's Bat Mitzva?

The company isn't struggling because of a lack of digital know-how. They're struggling because our photography habits changed virtually overnight. As I commented in a thread on the Filmshooting forum:

The company did an excellent job of positioning themselves in the Kodak Memories business—use Kodak when you want a keepsake that you can hold onto for decades and share with your grand kids. But people simply don't use photography that way anymore.

These days, my wife snaps interesting and timely photos to share on Facebook. Those images are used to spark conversation and they have a very short half life. Tomorrow, it'll be something new.

The confluence of mobile phones with decent point-and-shoot capabilities and fast data connections makes it easy to beam images directly online, and there's simply no place for Kodak in the new business model. The shift is especially pronounced in the teen and young adult segment—they have Hipstamatic. It's instant, cheap and makes everything look retro cool.

Meanwhile, the Kodak photo kiosks at the local big box department store stand unused for hours on end. Yeah, someone will eventually come along and order an 8x10 enlargement or prints of Christmas morning for grandma, but it's definitely not a growth industry.

The Kodak story is a classic example of a mass technological shift. In this case, it's a double whammy—a seismic move away from film and paper photography, but also a social shift in how we perceive and share images.

What do you think? Has photography changed forever? Is there a place for Kodak in the 21st century?

An $80 Hand-Cranked 35mm Movie Camera

The LomoKino is a hand-cranked 35mm movie camera that shoots up to 144 frames on a roll of 35mm film. Once you've shot your footage, just get a film lab to process it without cutting it into shorter strips. The resulting movie can be viewed on the accompanying LomoKinoscope viewer -- just point it at a light source and you can watch your film on the tiny opaque screen at the rear.

The real fun comes when you scan the film and share it digitally (oh, the irony...). However, that could be a tricky task because standard desktop film scanners aren't set up to capture and align widescreen movie frames. Still, I'm sure someone will figure out a reasonable work flow and post details on the web in no time.

The secret to this device is that each incredibly skinny film frame measures 24mm wide x 8.5mm tall, allowing far more shots to be captured on a roll than usually possible. It's capable of shooting at 3-5 frames a second, so don't expect realistic motion. That said, there's a flash hot shoe mount that would make this camera ideal as part of a low budget animation rig.

The 25mm lens has an adjustable aperture of f/5.6 to f/11, giving you the rough ability to control the amount of light that hits the film. It has two focusing modes - Close-Up (60cm) and Normal (1m to infinity). The top-mounted inverse Galileo viewfinder will give you a rough idea of what you're capturing, although shooting from the hip is probably far more appropriate with this quirky movie camera.

Learn more at the LomoKino microsite.

The Camera Data Bank

The Kameradatenbank features a fantastic collection of movie camera photos from six German library and museum collections. Twenty four different film formats are represented, ranging from Regular 8mm through massive 60 mm cine monsters.

I wasn't initially going to post the site because it's in German, but it's too cool to pass up. From the main page, just click Stöbern (Browse). You'll be presented with a list of options:

Hersteller (Manufacturer)
Herstellungsdatum (Date of manufacture)
Objekttypen (Equipment type)
Filmformat (Film format)
Standorte (Collection)
Herstellungsort (Place of manufacture)

I'm sure you can take it from there. And, as always, Google Translate will do a nice job of mangling the accompanying text into almost-but-not-quite Klingon.

Explore the Kameradatenbank