If you are reading this article, you are a keen film photographer and have most likely experienced the joys of film photography across a range of film types, such as monochrome or colour negatives and colour transparencies. But black and white “slides”? Whoever heard of that? Go back 55 years to the time when I […]
Category: Guides & How-Tos
Guides, How-tos and articles describing process, technique, film and gear a created by EMULSIVE and members of the analogue photography community. From shutter speed testers to large format cameras, we’ve got you covered.
Posted inArticles
How-to: Convert an automatic Polaroid pack film camera to use manual shutter speeds
Back in 1960s, automatic exposure was an amazing advance in photography. Polaroid, in its quest to make a really easy-to-use camera, made most of its cameras with only automatic exposure. I mean, who needed anything else? Fast forward to today and it seems automatic exposure has lost its mojo. Complete control over shutter and aperture […]
Posted inGuides & How-Tos
“Faux” Panoramic Camera Mods with the Ansco Pix Panorama
Panoramas: a great format for (in my opinion) most photography. Dramatic landscape? Make it panoramic. Artsy architectural photo? Panoramic. Wanna make that softball game look a little more like Ben-Hur? Panoramic of course. Weddings? Well… never mind. So as a panoramic enthusiast, and someone who enjoys shooting film, I’ve had my eye on several panoramic […]
Posted inGuides & How-Tos
How-to: Shoot Fujifilm Instax on a Polaroid BigShot
Released in 1971, the Polaroid Big Shot was a funky, green plastic camera built for one thing: portraits. The plastic behemoth is simply designed, using a fixed focus 200mm, single-element plastic meniscus lens. The grip has a stereoscopic rangefinder integrated in it, which makes framing and achieving focus easy. The focus point is fixed at […]
Posted inGuides & How-Tos
How-to: Shoot 120 & 35mm film in a Polaroid pack film camera
After using a Polaroid pack film camera to shoot paper negatives, I was wondering how easy it would be to shoot other film types. The closest size native to the Polaroid is 120 film, so it made sense to explore that option. I’ve seen other conversions to 120 using existing commercial 120 backs adapted to […]
Posted inGuides & How-Tos
How-to: Develop paper negatives “out and about” with a field development kit – by Jim Skelton
After I learned a bit about using my Polaroid camera to take pictures on paper negatives, I made up a little kit that included a Polaroid camera, tripod, a dark box with paper negatives loaded into empty film cartridges, and a changing box in which I could swap out the cartridges as I took pictures. […]
Posted inGuides & How-Tos
How-to: Shoot paper negatives with a Polaroid pack film Land Camera
Prices of Polaroid 100 series pack film keep rising as existing expired stock becomes rare. At some point in one’s own economy, it becomes too expensive to shoot. I reached that point when my pack film stash ran out and the going price was around $80/pack (a couple of years ago, now). I thought it […]
Posted inFeatured projects
Build log: Take one Polaroid Model 455 and one Instax 100 camera and what do you get? A serious hack job
After Fujifilm’s FP instant pack film was discontinued back in 2016, the remaining larger-format instant film choices were few: Impossible Project integral film, which took 30 minutes to develop with unpredictable results, or Fuji Instax wide film. Sure, you can still buy expired pack film, or spring for One Instant, but at over $20/photo, it […]
Posted inGuides & How-Tos
Repurposing orphaned instant cameras: Creating the Polaroid “SX-450”
2016 hit me hard. 100-Series pack film for Polaroid cameras would no longer be produced and it was only a matter of time before all of my packfilm cameras would become orphans. By 2019, my film stash was running low and I was toying with the idea of making these cameras work with other film […]
Posted inArticles
Restoring the moldiest, most rusty camera lens I’ve ever seen: How bad (or good) could it be?
I think we’ve all been here, buying a camera and lens rated by a seller as “very good” and not realizing all the photos had the lens caps on. When the Minolta X-370 with this lens arrived, opening the box filled my living room with a smell like broccoli and fish had been dumped in […]
Posted inDarkroom printing
Elevating the humble cyanotype…with a UV-enlarger!
I’ve been shooting black and white film for over 18 years, and since a few years ago, I have had my own darkroom set up in the basement. I love to do some uncomplicated printing on RC paper every now and then. When I built my own XPan-format panoramic camera, I was confronted with a […]
Posted inDarkroom printing
My Quest to make art for the living room wall – Part 1: Iterating contact prints
In this article, I talk about my progress so far on my quest to make art for the living room wall. In this, part 1, I cover making an initial contact print, and through my process of iterating test prints to a “final” outcome. I put “final” in double-quotes because, well, you’ll see! I hope […]
Posted inGuides & How-Tos
Shooting 35mm panoramic photographs with the Pentax 67
I first heard about the 24x65mm panoramic format when I bought my Fujifilm GFX50S a few years back. The digital medium format camera is able to shoot in 24×65 cropped mode whilst keeping the raw file intact and uncropped. I thought it was fun to shoot but I didn’t really commit to the format that […]
Posted inOpinion
Pricing your work: Economies of print, or “assigning worth when value is subjective”
When looking back on my photographs, even as “recently” far as 2019, I feel an abstraction in what my role in these images ought to be. In the moment of pressing the shutter, I feel I am the photographer, I have taken this picture.
Posted inGuides & How-Tos
How-To: Push-metering for simple cameras
This is probably old news to most folks, but I thought I would pop a quick notebook entry up for posterity. I’ve published a review of the lovely Zeiss Ikon Box Tengor on…
Posted inGuides & How-Tos
Start at the Stop: How to respool 35mm film into 127 (and 120) backing paper
127 format film is reasonably rare these days, and fairly expensive. In this article, I outline my process (and examples) of respooling normal 35mm film onto 127 and 120 format backing paper. I am still reusing backing paper from three rolls of Efke 100 I bought back in 2008 (although I have picked up a […]
Posted inGuides & How-Tos
Everything you wanted to know about auto (thyristor) flash photography …but were afraid to ask
I am familiar with flash photography. Much of what I shoot digitally, either in the studio or in the real world, is done with flash. On camera, off-camera, one flash, 6 strobes, no problem. I am, however, no hero. Shooting flash with digital is simple. I am good at simple things. I would even go […]
Posted inGuides & How-Tos
The Remora-01: An alternative Polaroid SX-70 battery
In 2013 I got my first Polaroid camera, and since then I have been journeying into the world of instant film. From the inception of the Impossible Project to its recent merger, I eagerly followed the rediscovery of the formula for instant film, but was always frowning when I had to trash a battery. When […]
Posted inGuides & How-Tos
Brighten up your Rolleiflex (or any TLR camera) with a new Rick Oleson Brightscreen
For a photographer, there is nothing quite like the experience of looking onto the focus screen of a TLR or other medium format, primarily waist-level viewfinder cameras such as Hasselblads, Bronicas or Mamiya RB67s.
Posted inGuides & How-Tos
The AgiPinFold Pinhole Conversion Part 3: A conclusion
I cannot believe that it was 2018 when I wrote the first two parts [1][2] of this series of articles documenting my conversion of a 1940s-era Agfa Agifold 6×6 medium format camera to shoot pinhole photography. The time has flown by. Granted, we have had a year of exceptional circumstances. A global pandemic and a […]
