Topic: Out of the Box

[Sandeha Lynch]

When you think of Box Cameras you might imagine roll after roll of poorly exposed and slightly unfocused images of nothing in particular, usually shot within yards of the family home.  I think that idea probably encapsulates around a century of box camera history ... except and unless the camera has been picked up by a way-beyond average individual with an eye for the exceptional. 

I hope you don't mind me plugging your work here, MikeC, but I seized a copy as soon as I saw it and I think others would appreciate it:

http://www.blurb.com/b/6836206-out-of-the-box

[jharr]

NICE!

[mikec]

Thank you for the kind words.  Especially nice to find them at my favorite photo site.
With thousands of negatives in binders and boxes I decided to ease up on making new pictures and to try making some sense of what I already have.

[Domingo A. Siliceo]

Really beautiful.

Mike, your fanzine is catalogued as a magazine and not as a book - does that means you plan to publish more?

[mikec]

I chose to use the Blurb magazine format mostly to keep the cost down.  The shipping charges that Blurb tacks on are pretty steep.  I also kept the page count down to 30 to help control costs.  I made all of the pages available in the preview.  If you click on the full screen widget you can get a pretty good view of the whole thing on line.

I have another about ready to go.  It is a collection of my pinhole work along with some stories and thoughts about the pinhole process.  I'm kind of stuck at the moment on the last page, but hope to get past that hump soon.  I could do more of these, but I may satisfy my curiosity about desktop publishing with this one more.

[Francois]

I haven't checked the shipping charges but MagCloud seems to be a good alternative.
http://www.magcloud.com/

They can produce a 60 page magazine in color for 12$
And US shipping is an additional 5$
To the UK it's 6.44$
And 7.47$ to Canada (Hey, we're getting cheated here!)

[mikec]

Thanks for the tip on MagCloud.  The price certainly makes it attractive.

The main reason I chose Blurb for the first go was its free desktop publishing software which is very intuitive and gives predictable results with quite a variety of styles and formats. 

MagCloud has tutorials for using several dtp programs, but I don't think any are open source.

I do have Scribus, which is open source and free.  It will produce pdf files which can be uploaded to MagCloud.  I haven't tried producing anything with Scribus yet, but will give it a try to see if I can make something that is compatible with MagCloud.

[Francois]

Scribus is really great. It does take some getting used to (like if you want auto page numbers, you have to set it on the master page), but it does a fantastic job.
The fun thing about PDF files is that they are universally compatible.

If you have another program you want to use but that can't make PDF files, you might want to check out PDF creator forge. It's a special printer driver that will turn anything into a PDF. If you install it, just make sure you do a custom install and don't install the architect component. It's a commercial and a bit of a piece of junk.

[Sandeha Lynch]

I just got my copy through the post.  Impressive, and the magazine format works well for their paper so the prints do look good.  I hope you do more, Mike.

[astrobeck]

Wow Mike!
This is very nice and I like the idea you are printing or publishing more photos from your archives.
Ordering my copy now.  Can I get your autograph?  You are still in the neighborhood right?

Becky

[mikec]

Of course.  Anything for another Panda lover.

[Aksarben]

Up in the cabinet resides the Kodak Hawkeye camera that my Mom used to take pictures of me growing up.  Born in 1953 it was probably pretty new when she started taking pictures and it was the very first camera that I ever operated.  It is interesting the quality of the resulting photographs, due in part to the design of the lens and the large negative.

[Domingo A. Siliceo]

Received my copy a couple of days ago. It's a charming fanzine filled with useful information and delightful photos, a very pleasant publication.

[Gimenosaiz]

Hello!

I've just placed my order!
Wonderful blog, by the way ;-)

Thank you
Best regards from Spain