Topic: World Toy Camera Day!!

[moominsean]

Weather was kinda cold and rainy, just shot some 690 with my $5 Colorpack III on the way up to visit my grandmother.

[tkmedia]

Scan-131020-0001m by Studioesper, on Flickr

[Ed Wenn]

Reading a thread with Becky AND Beck, talking about Don Brice's famous fisherman photo and then segueing into GAK talk....Wow, it's like 2000 all over again  I arrived at TC.COM a year or so after the transition from GAK, but some of the material from those days was still online then and I loved going through it all. Sigh.

The icing on the cake was the post from Adam asking what constitutes a toy camera Perfection! And I mean that in the most affectionate way possible. Oh the 'discussions' people used to have on TC.COM about that.

Francois, certainly archive.org is amazing for going back to old material, good call on pointing Becky to it.

Sorry I missed WTCD this year, but I'm so glad a load of you got out there to pay your respects.

[mcduff]

My first foray into the world of holga was not that successful -- mainly due to having relatively slow film on a cloudy, dark, pissy fall day (and a my first attempt at stand development due to a comedy of errors around pushing the film to 400*). At any rate, if for no other reason than to get an "E for Effort" I present to you our hoop...


world toy camera day by dsmccrac, on Flickr

*Regarding the comedy of errors over pushing film: Note to self... when you push a roll of film, don't toss it in a pocket with a bunch of rolls of identical (but not pushed film)  -- this is the reason I decided to try stand developing as I had a (correct) hunch this was the pushed roll but was not sure and thought stand developing may be more forgiving in case it was one of the non-pushed rolls. It likely was more forgiving but nonetheless most of my shots were seriously underexposed.

[tkmedia]

not TC related, but I'm gonna try stand dev as well mostly because of the same reasons... I messed up the metering because I forgot what film was loaded in the camera. Or maybe I had my meter settings wrong, or I think I also changed rolls in the middle and forgot to change the meter settings.. or all of the above! It took months to shoot the rolls and I'm forgetful and did not have any notes.

[mcduff]

not TC related, but I'm gonna try stand dev as well mostly because of the same reasons...

Sorry for footnoting us into OT, haha, but now that we are there, in my very limited experience I think it is more forgiving for issues like you are describing. I think it did a better job with my pushed film than if I had just processed it normally. I am realizing that like most things (sadly) it goes not ignore the laws of physics ;-) I am going to play with it some more although I am not sure my current devel ( hc-110 is the best choice - not a lot of talk out there about it as full stand, although a fair number using it semi stand).

[Verian]

I should get my prints tomorrow from a Diana Mini. Never used it before so I'm really rather excited and how they will turn out. Currently I'm in an office on my own and I took a picture with it of everybody who came into my office on the day (which was only 5 or 6 people, some reluctant). I ended up trying to entice people in but they did a runner when they cottoned on to what I was up to!

[limr]

Some shots from the Konstruktor. Kentmere 100 stand developed in Caffenol.

[Verian]

Here are a couple of a fat beardy bloke having a fag,  taken with a Diana Mini.

[jojonas~]

about three weeks later!! here's one from me.. shot with the sprocket rocket

[mcduff]

I wanted to make this before this year's WTCD but got lazy or sidetracked. But a cold November morning resulted in me putting together one of those TLR kits. I was sort of fun deciphering the somewhat confusing instructions - although my family probably got tired of me saying things like "must you breathe so loudly!?!" as I was attaching the fiddly bits. Haha.

Will put a crap roll of film through it to see if I wasted the $10 I paid for it (counting shipping I think). P

[Francois]

I have one and the corner of the door leaked like a sieve! Fixed it with hockey tape on the inside. Tape is very highly recommended with this one as the quality is even inferior to that of Lomo!

[mcduff]

Haha. I bet! Thanks for the tip on use #876 of hockey tape, Francois ;-)
I put a roll though it today just to have a baseline. Popping the lens out, flipping it around, putting the aperture dusk (or whatever bizarre term it was called in the crazy instructions) in front of the lens, etc. I fully expect to have wasted a roll!
I am having a slightly frustrating experience on eBay with a purchase of a Mamiya 645, so building this crappy camera was cathartic :-)

[limr]

There's a guy on another forum I'm on who put that TLR kit together. Here are some pictures he took:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/j__e/sets/72157636764192813/with/10386209843/

Looks like it could have some potential for funkiness

[Francois]

Ton of people tried these. They are often found under the names Gakkenflex and Recesky.

McDuff: did yours come with a completely transparent "groundglass" like mine? I ended up cutting a bit of clear diffusion plastic from a Rosco sample pack to that I could see the actual focus. This made things 1000% better.

[jojonas~]

I wanted to make this before this year's WTCD but got lazy or sidetracked. But a cold November morning resulted in me putting together one of those TLR kits. I was sort of fun deciphering the somewhat confusing instructions - although my family probably got tired of me saying things like "must you breathe so loudly!?!" as I was attaching the fiddly bits. Haha.

Will put a crap roll of film through it to see if I wasted the $10 I paid for it (counting shipping I think). P

cool! I loved the results I got with mine.
You might find some good info here: http://filmwasters.com/forum/index.php?topic=2570.0

[Francois]

This kit requires a few things:
-a phillips head screwdriver
-tweezers to handle the springs
-tape
-patience
-swear words

The hardest things I found were putting the horseshoe shaped holder on the top winding crank (there's one side where it pops off when you turn the knob), assembling the sides (the screwdriver needs to be long and thin, no replaceable bit driver will do the job), inserting the mirror wedge (it's not hard, just annoying).
The rest is pretty much the easy part. There is a direction in which the side viewfinder panels fit. Get it wrong and the hood won't close properly.

[SLVR]

swear words... I got lots of those.

[mcduff]

Francois, thanks for the suggestion about the "groundglass" hunk of crappy too-clear plastic! I was thinking about that when I was building it, but then it left my mind and I was left to wondering why I could not discern any effect of focusing! For my first roll I was really just zone-focus guessing. I will take it apart tonite and try other things - i think I have a piece of frosted mylar around.

And Francois hit the nail on the head for most of 'fun' parts of the kit. What I found most challenging was the frequently the instructions were kind of hard to understand. To further the problem the illustrations were sometimes not very clear (I feel my kit had a nth generation photocopy).

But good news is that it worked and not any big light leaks!

But I will not post the pics here as they were not shot on WTCD and to post toy camera shots from other days would just not be cricket! As good jojonas pointed out a link to a thread about the gackenflex I think I will post them on the old thread about those cool little kit cameras! Maybe I will see some of you over there!