ChatGPT Exif Update

One of the problems with film photography is that when you scan the film negatives you get an image file that doesn’t contain the metadata (called exif data) giving details of when the photograph was taken, the camera used and whatnot. I’ve found a lovely tool called ExifTool which I can use to set the required values in a image file. But what I really wanted was a little program with a Graphical User Interface that lets me select a folder full of images and then set all the images to the specified camera make and model.

I had a quick chat with ChatGPT and it wrote two programs for me. One in Python and the other in PowerShell. I fired up the Python one and it just worked. It made the menu you can see above, using the TkInter interface. The formatting of the window could use a little work, but the program itself seems to do exactly what I want. All I had to do was describe what I wanted and out popped the code. This is both highly impressive and deeply scary.

I’ve now decided that I don’t want to have to enter the make and model of the camera each time, I want the application to use the folder hierarchy to work out what the name should be (i.e. for the above image I would have a parent folder called Mamiya which contains a subfolder called Mamiya Press 23 Standard in which the image files are stored). I’m going to tell ChatGPT about my idea and then get it to create that instead. When I’ve got it all working I’ll put it on GitHub for anyone who has the same problem as me.

Old New Mamiya

So, I’ve got seriously bitten by the Mamiya Press bug. These are big old cameras designed for press use. I’ve just bought invested in another one.

I actually bought this one for its lens. It has a 65mm lens, which on a negative this size counts as wide angle. It is usually much more expensive than this whole outfit. The lens has such a wide angle of view that you have to use the special viewfinder you can see on top of the camera above. When the lens was made Mamiya decided that it wasn’t sharp enough at the designed aperture, so they simply limited the maximum aperture to 6.3. This means that you get a “free” dose of depth of field, which helps keep images in focus. The downside is that in low light conditions you’ll have to reach for a tripod much sooner than you might like.

The camera was sold as in only average condition, but I reckon it is actually in pretty fine fettle. The rangefinder gives pretty sharp focus and everything works as it should, although it does bear the marks of time here and there. We took a little trip to the seaside yesterday and I grabbed some shots.

I’m very happy with how they turned out. The camera is a bit of beast to carry round, but it is totally worth it.

Leeds for Light Meters

Went to Leeds today and didn’t buy a camera. But did buy a light meter It’s cute. It has a little white hemisphere you can slide over the sensor so that you do ambient/incident metering. This measures the light falling on the subject. Hold it close to the subject with the hemisphere pointing towards the camera and you can get a reading that will make sure the subject is properly exposed whatever the light conditions.

This is a bit trickier than just pointing something at the subject and measuring the light reflected by it (which is reflective light metering) but much more accurate if you have light or dark areas around the subject. The meter also has a setting we can use to set the exposure for movie cameras, if we ever get rich enough to be able to afford film….

Cute Cassette Light

Makes a nice torch too

It is often very useful to have something you can use to add a splash of light to a photograph. These lights are packaged to look like 35mm film cassettes. They give out a nice solid light for around half an hour or so and you charge them up using their USB connection. Very nice and not too pricey.

Pentax 110 in Turquoise Mode

The Pentax Auto 110 is a tiny single-lens reflex camera that was sold in the 1970’s. It takes tiny pictures on a little cassette. I picked one up a while back for a very low price. Just for laughs I got some Lomo Turquoise film and took a bunch of shots with it. It was great fun, and really easy to carry round. The results were…. interesting…

All the colours are wrong, but in a really interesting way. Greens don’t really go anywhere, but all the other colours go all over the place. People turn cyan. The Pentax did a lovely job of taking a bunch of properly exposed, sharp pictures. My advice; get yourself a Pentax 110 and a roll of Lomo film (it is surprisingly cheap) and then go out and have a ton of fun.

Three Reel Circus - Adventures with a Patterson Developing Tank

It turns out that if you only get eight shots from each film you end up with lots of rolls to develop. I thought I had the answer to this. A while back I bought a cut price developing tank which can process three films at the same time. The first problem was the height of the tank. It won’t fit under the sink for rinsing. This turned out to be quite an easy fix.

Half an hour with OpenSCAD and I had the above adapter design. It took three goes to print out one with the correct size to grip the hose pipe and fit in the top of the tank, but all I needed to do was buy a shower adapter, cut the end off the pipe and then pop this on. It works very well.

The only snag that I hit was the difficultly of loading the film onto the spirals that fit inside the tank. The film kept getting stuck. This was not fun for a variety of reasons. Mainly that I had my hands in the dark bag when all this was going wrong. Eventually I managed to get two films into the tank and was able to process them,

The images came out quite well, but fighting to get them into the spiral took its toll, with a few scratches here and there. I’ll have to decide whether the hassle of loading up the film is worth the time saving.

Contax G1 Lenses on a Sony Camera

I’ve been after one of these for ages but they’ve always been too expensive. But last week, thanks to a bit of eBay shenanigans I managed to pick one up for a really good price. What is it? I hear you ask. (actually I don’t. That’s not how web pages work). Anyhoo, its a Techart G-NEX TA-GA3. I’m surprised you didn’t recognise it.

It’s an interesting piece of kit. It lets you use lenses from a thirty year old film camera on your digital camera. The lenses in question were designed by Zeiss and made by Contax and they are really, really good. They are supposed to be used on the Contax G1 or G2. These cameras contain a little motor that turns the lens to focus it. The Techart contains a tiny motor along with a microcontroller that manages to convince the host camera that this is “just an ordinary lens guv”.

There are one or two issues. Not all auto-focussing modes are available, you have to set the aperture manually and the adapter makes amazing noises as it moves the lens mechanism back and forth. I popped a 28mm Contax lens onto it and we headed for the Humber Bridge to see what it can do. This time we went up onto the bridge deck to take some shots.

These pictures were taken with the lens wide open which is when the optics have to work the hardest. The images are super sharp in the middle of the frame and then that sharpness fades off a bit towards the edges. But the colour rendition is splendid and I’m very pleased with the results. I’m looking forward to taking more pictures with this setup. The only problem I’ve noticed is that the effort of moving a big metal lens seems to take its toll on the power source. The battery in the camera drained a lot faster than I’m used to.

Zenith Flower

Last 1970s picture for a while. This one was taken using my brand new Zenith B which I bought for the princely sum of 15 pounds. It had an Industar F3.5 lens (which was described by one expert as “the closest thing to a bottle bottom ever attached to a camera”). However, the pictures weren’t that bad if you were prepared to fiddle a bit.

Mamiya Super 23

Is it wrong to buy a camera just because of the way it looks? In my opinion the answer is no. Above is my latest buy investment. It’s a Mamiya Press Super 23. These were made in the 1960’s for use by press photographers that didn’t want to carry around heavy 4x5 press cameras but couldn’t afford to buy a Nikon 35mm camera. Or something.

I like it because it comes completely to bits. The lens contains the shutter and fits in the hole on the front of the camera body. The film is in a holder which clips over another hole at the back. Push the handle on the side, connect the shutter trigger to the front of the lens and away you go. And if any one of these elements fails in some way I just have to replace that bit rather than junk the whole thing.

It’s not a light camera, but it is nicely weighted in the hands. It takes enormous 6x9cm negatives on 120 roll film. I’m looking forward to posing taking some pictures with it.

Canon Selphy 4000 for Cheap Colour Printing

Selphy Portrait (sorry)

After having watched a video of someone using a portable printer at an expo and producing large, high quality colour prints to order for the folks there I thought I’d investigate the possibility of obtaining a cheap printer to maybe put in a box. Instant camera pictures are all very well, but they are a bit variable in quality, expensive and hard to duplicate. I had a look on “the world’s favourite on-line auction site” and found that I could pick up a used Canon Selphy 4000 for well less than 20 quids. A bit of research convinced me that I could drive it from a Raspberry Pi Zero and even make it into an Apple Airprint device if required. So I bought one.

It arrived today. For giggles I checked to see if there was a Windows 10 driver for it. There wasn’t (boo) but it turns out that the Windows Vista 64 bit drivers you can find here worked fine with my copy of Windows 10 (yay!). The printer I got even had some ribbon and paper with it. The image above doesn’t really do the printer justice. The printed picture is vibrant and really nice to look at. You can get Canon branded film packs delivering 36 images for around 12 quid from Cartridge People. They even sent me a free deck of cards with my first order. Next step is to start designing a case to carry everything around in.

Taking Phoenix Photos at Harlow Carr

Today we went to one of my favourite places in all the world. Harlow Carr. The weather was fantastic and I was using the new Phoenix film. I didn’t have much success last time I tried it, but this time I was going to make sure that I gave it plenty of light. I’m not unhappy with the results.

There is plenty of grain, but the pictures are also pretty sharp and the colours really jump out. If you fancy something different (and you are going somewhere with plenty of light) it is worth a look. I took a bunch of pictures of people (which are not the kind of things I ever put on the interwebs) and they came out really well.

Taking a Leaky Camera to the Humber Bridge

We took the Light Leak camera to the Humber Bridge today and took some leaky pictures. The one at the top shows the original shot with no leaks. The one in the middle has “benefitted” from a single pixel yellow light leak. The one at the bottom got a blue light leak from the entire pixel row.

I’m very pleased how these have come out. I need to work a bit on the level of the light. It turns out that colours which use more than one led are much brighter (who knew?).

Minox Cassettes Now Public

YOu can print a case too

I’ve put my Minox Cassettes on Thingiverse so you can download them and have a go at printing your own cassettes. You can find my other Minox resources here.

Taking a Rabbit to the Formula E Finals

this is about the best I could do on the day. Turns out that racing cars are hard to photograph

Formula E is a bit like Formula 1, except that the cars are powered by electricity and sound a bit like turbocharged hair driers. We went to the final event of the season in London today. We watched the practice, the qualifier and finally the race. In between these we wandered around looking at stands in the exhibition attached to the race, watched a mini-concert from Craig David and generally had an all-out wonderful time. I took a camera and the Rabbit R1.

I took a bunch of pictures with a proper camera, and lots with the Rabbit R1. I was lucky because for some reason we had good mobile phone connections and the Rabbit was able to take the shots and do “Magic Camera” type things with them. I really like the results. They are not photographs in the proper sense of the word, but they provide a lovely record of the event and I’m very pleased to have them. And if you bear in mind that a Rabbit R1 is a fraction of the price of a new camera lens I reckon it is a good investment if you want a quirky record of what you’ve been up to.

This is what the rabbit thought of the race

Some of the racing got quite intimate

A “Rabbit’s Eye View” of one of the cars on display

The Racers

Yes, there was a Costa

Tyre smoke at the start

From now on I’m going to be taking the Rabbit R1 with me to get its unique perspective.

Making a Leaky Camera

The PICO on the side of the camera controls the brightness and colour of the led lights

What kind of an idiot puts lights inside a camera? Er, this kind of idiot (and also Fuji Film with their Instax Mini 99). I was converting another Polaroid Land camera to use Instax film (it’s a thing - believe me) and I wondered what would happen if I put some leds inside and exposed the film a bit with them. Well, today I built the first version. I’m using a PICO with a little LCD panel to control a row of Neopixels inside the camera. I’m not sure how well this will work, and what level of exposure is required, but I’m going to enjoy finding out.

Bolex Gear Fun

This is the gears in place

A while back I got a 16mm camera. That’s not a camera that is really small (ho ho) it is one which uses 16mm wide film. This is all part of my “get Rob into the movies” project. The snag is that the camera I got uses “double perf film” which has holes down both sides. Modern film is “single perf” to leave more room on the film for a wider picture. But if you put “single perf” film into my camera the pins on one side have no holes to go into and the film jams up. Above you can see one of the rollers in the camera with pins on both top and bottom. The solution to the problem is quite simple. Just remove the top row of teeth from the roller.

So the first step is to remove the roller from the camera. This turned out not to be easy. A crucial component needs to come out first which was held in by a screw that would just not budge. You can see it on the top left hand side of the picture . The screw has some damage to the slot, the result of numerous failed attempts (some by me) to undo it. However today I had another go, motivated by the thought that if I don’t do this I effectively own a paperweight that looks like a movie camera.

We need to make sure we file off the pins on the top

And I succeeded. Above you can see the two rollers which now need to be “de-pinned”, a process that involves a file and a fervent prayer that the rollers aren’t made of hardened steel.

Rabbit r1 Magic Camera

Just found something that the Rabbit R1 can do which is really rather awesome. You can take a picture with it and shortly afterwards a “Rabbit Magic Camera” version appears in your Rabbit Hole site.

This is what it did to my picture. Perhaps I should grow a moustache

Apparently this is my desk

.. and this is my audio mixer, which I think looks awesome

The Rabbit is not perfect. But I think it is definitely growing on me..

4x5 Film Dryer

I’ve been drying my 4x5 negatives on windowsills. This works OK in winter, but when folks start opening windows and the sun comes out it might not end well. So I’ve printed this which works a treat.

MPP Camera Resources

Hmmm. Could use a bit of a dust..

If you are lucky enough to own a Micro Precision Products (MPP) Micro-Press camera I’ve made a couple of 3D printable resources you might find interesting. The first is a lensboard (the thing which holds the lens in front of the camera). The second is a spacer which makes it easy to use a LomoGraflok back with your MPP camera. You can find them here.

Pentax 17 vs Canon Dial 35 - Fight!

It sure is a very handsome camera

Big news. Pentax have just launched their first film camera for a very long time. It’s called the Pentax 17 and it looks awesome. It takes 17mm (hence the name) high shots on 35mm film (that’s half-frame). You can get 72 shots from a single cassette of film. It has automatic exposure, a nifty wind-on lever and lots of shooting modes. The focus is manual (you choose from a number of different zones) but then it does something very clever to put the lens in a position that will maximise sharpness if that is what you want. It has a built-in flash and really looks the business. But I won’t be getting one I’m afraid.

The price is just too high, at nearly 500 pounds. Now, don’t get me wrong, for a brand new camera with this pedigree this is absolutely good value. It would have been very hard for Pentax to launch this thing at a lower price. They will have had to do lots of work on design and tooling just to get the thing out of the door. If you are the kind of person who wants to have a proper warranty and ongoing support for your film cameras this is for you. If it breaks you’ll be able to make it someone else’s problem.

However, I’m not quite like that. I prefer to get super-cheap old cameras and then see what I can do with them. For the price of a Pentax 17 you could get lots of Chaika, Olympus Pen, and Canon Dial 35 devices. And some of them might even work.

A dial and a dial

At the time of writing ebay are showing a few Canon Dial 35 devices for quite a bit less than a Pentax. I managed to pick up a fully working model and the pictures it takes are just lovely.

The university in fine fettle

The Dial 35 is manual focus and auto exposure - like the Pentax 17. It also has a very neat little clockwork winding motor. And it looks like something from both the past and the future. If you have the cash, absolutely get the Pentax. If you haven’t or want to have a more interesting journey, then I reckon you should lurk around eBay until a cheap Canon Dial 35 comes around.