EMF2024 Day 3 - Camera Fun

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What a lovely day

It’s the final day of the festival today. And the weather is perfect. Started the day with one of the best talks so far, all about the fun and games that were had when open-sourcing the Covid app. The good news is that Open Source is now firmly part of government policy when embarking on large projects. But it took a fair bit of pushing to get there. Then onto a talk about train timetabling. Then Jenny List did a great talk on her fun and games converting a Super 8 movie camera into a digital one.

Old cameras by an old camera

After the session, in the speaker questions tent, there was a lot of discussion about analogue photography and how much fun it is. I left with two thoughts in mind. Firstly that the next EMF will have more analogue film content. And secondly that I’m going to try to track down a Super 8 camera to play with.

Badge hacking

After a bit to eat it was a talk from the EMF badge team. The badge is a really nice piece of engineering, a lot of which is going to get carried forward into the next EMF event. This is a great idea. It means that we can work on apps knowing that they can be used at the next event. One problem with the badge is that there is so much going on at EMF - and you don’t want to miss any of it by spending too much time coding. Next time we should be able to turn up with a bunch of things that we will have tested on the real hardware before the event, which is lovely.

After the badge talk we went to one about 3D printing rocket engines and finally one about sending anything to anywhere. Then it was time for the closing ceremony (very sad) and another trip to the bar and Null Sector (slightly less sad).

EMF in good weather shock

Hacky Racers

Old telephones!

The food was all great

EMF2024 Day 2 - Blast from the past

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Just when you thought it was safe….

One of the highlights of EMF is their “bring and buy” tent. You get all kinds of “tech junk” coming up and there are always folks at the tent picking things up and putting them down again. As we were walking towards it I joked that it would be rather amusing to discover one of my books on sale there.

Turns out that fate has a sense of humour too. There on the table was a copy of the first book I ever had published. Way back in 2007 myself and Donald Thompson from Microsoft wrote a little book about C# development with the .NET Micro Framework. It wasn’t a best seller, but they did ask me back to write some other books, which was nice. I decided to get it because I didn’t like the thought of it languishing there for the entire festival, waiting for a buyer….

After that it was time for some sessions. Started with a very good talk about why gas boilers suck. I’ve resolved to do something involving measuring the flow temperatures of the boiler. And possibly something involving peltier devices and radiators. Then on to a talk about how awesome the BBC Micro Elite game code is. Then a scary session about the way influencer-based techniques are being used by being used by governments. Then a session about fiddling with tech and finally something about making my projects more professional. All very good stuff.

Then, after tea, we took a wander around Null-Sector trying to take pictures with an old Polaroid camera. Such fun. Today I switched to a digital camera and grabbed a few shots..

I did a lot of coding on one of these.

Bubbles

Clocks at the bar

Apparently these are the most eco friendly propane gas jets youi can buy

EMF 2024 Day 1 - Shower memories

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Quite an impressive lighting rig for a tent

I’ve written before about EMF shower etiquette. And this morning, as I stood in the shower soaking wet, with the my towel at the bottom of my bag and my jeans in a puddle on the floor, I wished I’d read my notes before I set out. But once I was clean and presentable (ish) it was time to head out for breakfast (crepes) and the opening ceremony.

You can tell it’s Jonty if you know what he looks like..

Then on to some great sessions. Saw a childhood hero (Tim Hunkin) do a talk, along with sessions about coffee machine hacking, living off the grid and small production run artworks. Then tea (a burger) followed by a screening of the Hackers movie. This film is an EMF tradition, I remember seeing it at EMF 2018. This time they actually had the director present for a discussion afterwards, which made it even more special. I’m looking forward to watching it again in 2026.

The sign for this year is also a water feature

Some of the letters on the sign are made of circuit boards. I think I recognised my current PC there…

Fantastic

Heading for EMF

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This is the view from our front door. Note the friendly fluffy clouds. At least, i hope they are.

Heading to Electromagnetic Fields 2024. I’ve been looking forward to it for ages. I managed to get packed and on the road by 9:30am. Go me. Nothing quite like blasting through the countryside with Supertramp on full volume. I’ve taken a bunch of cameras, including my current snapshot favourite, the Canon Dial 35. When I arrived I found that number one son had already put the tent up. Which is either good luck or good planning. You choose.

Grabbed a pizza for tea and then watched the David Lynch version of Dune – which was as good as I remember. Nothing like watching a movie with a bunch of like minded folks. The next few days are going to be awesome.

RFID Tags at the Hardware Meetup

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Testing the latest robot colour scheme

We had a nice little Hardware Meetup this evening. There were robots wandering around and also a bit of surface mounted soldering action. We’ve decided to take a look at RFID tags as means by which robots can find their way around the arena. So for the next meeting I’ll bring some along and we’ll see if we can get them to work.

Fun with Captain Flip

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That’s a human canonball I’ve not seen before…

Captain Flip is a fun little board game where you add crew members to a board that represents your ship and try and maximise the number of points. Each crew member confers a specific advantage and the trick is to get the most profitable mix. You crew turn up on random tiles that you pick out of a bag. If you don’t like the one you got, you can “flip” it to the one on the other side. This is a bit chancy, but adds a lot to the fun. And gives the game its name.

You’re not going to play this all evening (although the game comes with a bunch of different board designs so you probably could). However, we certainly had fun with it.

Lomomatic 110 Camera with Purple Film

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I’m not sure ifyou should buy a camera just becuase of its looks. But then again…

The Lomomatic 110 camera is the first completely new 110 film camera to be made for a while. Lomography (who specialise in interesting cameras) released it a little while back. It’s a rather expensive alternative to a cheap second hand 110 camera, but it does have a ton of style. It also has a proper electronic shutter and a glass lens with adjustable focus - which are not things you usually find on a 110 camera. Of course, I got my hands on one and loaded it up with Lomo Purple film. It’s a fun camera to use. You wind it on by opening and closing the body and you can also attach the cutest little flash gun to the side. It is very plasticy though and I found the shutter button a bit fiddly to press (best to use a fingernail and press it with that). The 110 film has tiny negatives, but I wasn’t too unhappy with the level of detail.

This is not how I remember Dalby forsest looking…

Should have held the camera horizontal

I think the camera shake adds a lot to this one…

The camera didn’t get the colours wrong, that’s down to the awesome film. But it did get the exposure and the focus mostly right. The only times things went wrong were when I forgot to adjust a setting. I took some pictures of people and they came out sharp and snappy, but with weird colours which added a lot to the atmosphere.

It’s a nice enough camera, very stylish and beautifully presented. I’m not sure I’d advise anyone other than a camera nerd to get one though. Probably better to pick up a cheap second-hand 110 camera if you want to try the format, or perhaps a Pentax Auto 110 (which is an awesome tiny SLR camera of which more later).

What I would advise you to do though is pick up some of the funky Lomographic 110 films. They are available at quite appealing prices in 110 format and you can get them developed at around the same cost as a 35mm film. I’m presently trying the “turquoise” film (which seems to turn people cyan). I’m looking forward to seeing the results.

I am an idiot

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This one is almost artistic

A while back I made the mistake of sending the same film through the camera twice. At the time I vowed never to do that again. Well, that worked. Above you can see the results of doing it again...

The first pass was with a Canon Dial 35 and the second with a Canon AE-1. While it saves me a bit in film it has the disadvantage of leaving me with lots of unusable pictures.

Radioactive Lenses

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Some of the lenses in my cameras are radioactive. Not in a particularly dangerous way, although if you managed to swallow one or left it in your underpants for several weeks it might not do you much good. As the radioactive elements decay they turn yellow, which means that some of my pictures have a yellow/gold tinge that I don’t really mind that much. It gives pictures taken in Hull a nice “French Riviera” look. The solution, when I get around to it, is to shine a bright UV light on the lens and speed up the decay process and turn the yellow white again.