The Phoblographer

Yesterday, Lomography introduced their new Spinner 360 Motorizer unit. For those of you not familiar; the Spinner 360 essentially takes panoramic images on 35mm film by letting the user simply spin the camera around on a handle. The motorizer is powered by 8 AA batteries and will spin the camera around itself as long as the user activates it via the handy little matching radio transmitter: which works from a fairly far distance.

Hands on photos and demo videos are after the jump. The new unit will run you a cool $179.00.

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Kodak has been in the news quite a bit recently. Besides, declaring that they are out of the camera industry, they’ve also been under lots of pressure to change and restructure. Because of this, we’ve known them for one thing for many years: film. I personally have been a lover of their film for years, and shed a tear like many of you the day that Kodachrome died. Further, I’m also a lover of Portra: having using it with some Zeiss lenses recently, during professional shoots, and even Gevon loves it.

Like many of you, I dread the day that they kill Tri-x: especially with the look it gives off with medium format cameras.

Kodak now often states that Ektachrome is the closest thing to Kodachrome that they have. And while that all depends on who you ask, one can’t deny that the film is indeed quite beautiful. Even though digital may come close, I still personally feel that it can’t totally capture the full look.

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The Kodak Brownie No. 2. Source: Wikimedia Commons

Eastman Kodak, situated in Rochester, NY, pioneer of film photography and inventor of the famous “Brownie” — the first widely available photographic camera for amateurs — just announced that they will completely back out of the camera business. Despite never being really successful on the digital camera market, the brand name “Kodak” is associated with photography like no other.

After the continuous decline of their stock market value during the past couple years, this January Eastman Kodak finally had to declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Read more after the jump.

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Why film? This year I hit a point in my photography where I had learned a great deal, but I realized that I needed something to challenge me. After seeing Chris Gampat shoot film and reading about the form, I finally decided to take the plunge. It felt like a fine way to refine my photography. The first roll, which recently got developed, came out better than expected. The camera, a used Nikon N2020 from B&H, worked much better than expected. It was an interesting learning experience. Film is not dead. It has been re-purposed for shooting when I want to slow down and wander the city looking for arty images. Which one do I prefer? For speed, convenience, and cost, digital. For getting back to the roots of photography, film.

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Before I unhappily sent the Sigma 85mm f1.4 EX back to the company, I affixed it to Nathan Blaney’s Canon 1N and loaded up some Kodak Portra 400. Why? I wanted to see just how well the lens did when shooting film instead of digital. Though I loved the look of the lens on my 5D Mk II, it needed to be tested on a film camera.

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Portra 160 35mm

Not long ago, Kodak got in touch with me and wanted me to try out their latest Portra films: 160 and 400 in 35mm. At Photo Plus, I was also given a roll of Ektar to play with. Admittedly, I’ve mainly been a user of Portra 400, Tri-X 400, Fuji Pro 400, and Ilford XP2. However, I decided to give it a shot and reawaken the excitement that comes with not knowing what your image looks like until it comes back from the lab.

A giant thank you goes out to Nathan Blaney for letting me use his Canon 1N for this post. Blaney is a wonderful photographer, and you should take the time to look through his site.

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