nothing against blogger but i have moved

HELLO MOVED TO www.maximgrew.tumblr.com 

SX-70 for sale

I really don't want to sell my SX-70 but my car MOT just cost me £300 that I don't have so i'm selling a few bits to make the money

its on eBay here if your interested

this is probably the sexiest camera ever made so if any rich polaroid enthusiasts out there who will understand the complete grief i am facing by having to sell it want to help towards my MOT and allow me to keep the camera my paypal email is toycamerauk@gmail.com...

returning to planet earth this is of course the original SX-70 model in brushed chrome and is fully working  

amusing myself

TCUK poster designs

Mystery Film

Was at Denham car boot on Saturday (just outside London on the A40) and spotted a Diana Mini, immediately thought this is not the type of camera you see at car boots and the woman selling it must have picked it up by mistake thinking it was an old toy. I all ready have one but it was 50p... very happy with this took it home to realize it had an exposed roll of Lomography X-pro inside so i processed them and found some holiday snaps of these three peoples trip to Barcelona

I feel quite strange posting pictures of three people i know nothing about, but would be amazing if they eventually found there way to this. One thing i do know is they seem to be from london, as pictures on london underground stations are featured in the album.

Dish Washer X-pro

Recently read a "Tipster" on Lomography.com about putting a role of slide film in the dishwasher before exposing it, The results looked pretty cool so gave it a go with a roll of expired boots own brand slide film and then shot it whilst in Amsterdam on my LC-A

I cross processed the film in C-41 at home which is pretty easy and affordable to do these days when boots is charging 7.99 for pro and prints.

Step 1 - get some slide film, put it in the dish washer in the cutlery holder thing. turn on the dishwarsher and let it run a full cycle

Step 2 - either leave the film to dry in a warm place for 2 weeks or so or in a "dark room" pull it out and dry it with a hair dryer 

Step 3 - Expose, slightly over expose as the mask is a bit swollen now I found 

Step 4 - Cross process 

Self Portrait on FP-100b

Yeah, happy with that.

Pin Hole fun

The same guys that do the pogo manipulation video a few posts below also share there beautifully simple design for a pin hole camera on Flickr, its well worth a try

Dippold Pin hole camera

Here is my first go, I used a cereal box for the cardboard to make the thing which seems to be ideal

was going for a dreamy effect and used my diana flash to illuminate parts of me, will try again today with a smaller pinhole to get a sharper image

currently living between two houses so finding it hard to get onto the blog should be settled in a few weeks though and got lots of stuff to share!

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!

PUSH!... what?

The impossible project this week announced the public release of a new colour chemistry set up, in the form of their PX 70 Colour Shade PUSH! film and d'ya know what, it looks good! "PUSH!" is a reference to the fact you have to massively over expose this film to get the best out of it TIP suggests "bathing your subject in light and setting the dial to lightest". from the test shots this is a massive improvement on the original colour shade film that was to be honest a bit poor!

Top - new Px colour shade
Bottom - old Px colour shade


The new film seems to be developed from the new chemistry they used on some special edition 20X24 integral film which was revealed earlier this year (the film uses two 8X10 pods)

Jamie Livingstone, a life in polaroids

Jamie Livingstone from as far as I have read was a photographer, film maker and circus performer who on the last day of march 1979 decided to document the comings and goings of his life with a Polaroid a day. Armed with an SX-70, Jamie takes pictures of himself, friends, strangers and all kinds of scenes that build up a picture of his life.

as you scroll through the nearly 7000 pictures you learn the characters and places in the story and quickly become engrossed as if you are watching a film.

you follow Jamie a lot of the time as if you are looking through his eyes

in 1997 it becomes clear that Jamie has cancer

On the 5th of October 1997 Jamie proposes to his wife signified by a picture of a ring in its box and very soon after they are wed.

18 days later and 19 years after they picture started the come to and end the last picture taken of Jamie laying in his hospital bed.

This is one of the most amazing things I have ever seen on then internet and is well worth taking some time to scroll through the entire collection and enjoy the story.

 you can find it here
http://photooftheday.hughcrawford.com/

This looks flipping quality

The sprocket rocket is the latest camera from Lomography, It does what seems to be the big thing lately in the ever evolving world of toy cameras. The camera exposes the entire height of the 35mm film sprockets n'all (hence the name) it also features a backwards winder which is a very nice touch making panoramic multiple exposures possible

other cameras that you can use to get this effect are the

black bird fly from SuperHEADZ

This is a beautiful camera that can take normal square and sprocket pictures all on 35mm it is also a TLR which is nice

Any HOLGA 120 with a 35mm back will also expose the sprockets.

obviously you don't order prints from any of the film you expose the sprockets on but rather have to scan your negatives onto the computer if you just have a normal scanner lomo sell an over priced holder that will allow you to scan them onto your computer which seems to work nicely

And another one...

- see previous posts