No longer in the dark ages, which is nice

This week I got the web server and domain for www.toycamerauk.com

Things are moving really quickly and its all getting stressful/exciting hopefully I will link this blog to the site in the coming months

Any products you want to see on the site let me know! ive got some great contacts and literally hundreds Holga, Lomo and all kinds wonderful cameras to chose from

Living In The Dark Ages

I have moved house and don't have the internet or TV for some time, I have Dug out my N64 for some kind of entertainment SO probably wont be on here much for a bit there is a quality guide on how to process and scan film at home for beginners in the works though this includes stuff with exposed sprockets and cross processing slide film AND I think I can tell you how to do it for under £50 to get set up and then less then a pound for each roll to be processed after that Fantastic as Boots is now £7.99 a Roll.

Polaroid Comeback?

Hello! hope you had a lovely Christmas and what not! The picture above was released earlier this moth from Polaroid as a teaser to next weeks CES show. The Tag line says "Grey Revealed" and rumours are flying around that this is some kind of next generation instant camera, the big questions being if it is an instant camera what kind of film will it use? 

Polaroid stopped making their instant film some time ago and all though The impossible project has been a success and the most popular films are once again on the market I personally cant see the two coming together on a product this soon. So I'm thinking the film will involve the Zink technology used in Pogo printers maybe it will even have the 600 type film border? another likely idea is that the camera could use a re-brand of Fuji instant films like the Instax wide (Polaroid has already done this with its Polaroid 300 camera) But then again for all we know at the moment this could be a projector. 

Guess we will just have to wait and see.

that you Jethro?

Today was incredibly foggy, went to test out a new pin hole camera and took my land 320 with me

That duck on the right makes this picture, taken on my Polaroid Land 320 using FP-100B

Toy Camera UK

So my problem with getting the standard jobs young folk often do is essentially I'm useless at them and as soon as you work in a place like that you start to hate the public, I blame social unrest amongst young people in England on the depressing places they are made to work. So I have started this instead

Click the picture above to go to the shop, granted its pretty rubbish at the mo, hopefully get some cool stuff in pretty soon. got to start somewhere!

here's some more, why not

Did two more single sheet manipulations today of Rankin's picture of the queen and that smart looking chap is me.

(see post below if you don't know what I'm on about)

these two are transfers after soaking for about half an hour, I can't seem to get the blue layer off the paper as its just far to fragile if anyone has any luck with that or knows a technique please share!

Polaroid POGO Manipulations

For those of you unfamiliar with it, Polaroid manufacture a range of printers and paper that require no ink, the paper responds to heat a bit like how a receipt printer works in a shop but in colour, the most common printer the POGO prints credit card size pictures and has started a bit of a manipulation revolution. I love how people see the Polaroid logo and feel the need to be creative and experiment and that is exactly what these two decided to do.


Photo Manipulation: Zink-PoGo from Frenky on Vimeo.


I had to give it a go after watching that and these are my attempts at manipulating the paper using lemon juice, nail varnish remover, a lighter, sand paper, bleach, water and a hot piece of wire. please click on the images to enlarge them.

This is picture of me spread over four pieces of "zink" paper the hot wire gave the red lines and a lighter gave the blue border by scratching away at the top it goes yellow to purple to blue as you go through the colour layers.

This is one sheet, they are only small so you have to get right up close to look at all the detail which I love, by rubbing a lemon over the paper it warms up the image and seems to give it a little bit more contrast.

For this one I started with Blue nude by Matisse spread over 11 pieces of Zink paper the pink colour is from the nail varnish remover.

This is the famous scene from American beauty by using a skewer heated in a Bunsen/lighter flame you can start to draw lines and outline features.

this is of course Van Gogh on one piece of paper using pretty much all the techniques from above.

so yeah if you have the little printer which only costs 20 pounds and the paper which is just over a tenner for 100 sheets then give it a go!