Thursday, August 06, 2015

Broken Polaroid cable release wire? Play it again Sam,but you are missing a note.....

My awesome Polaroid Land 340 finally after years suffered the old age malaise of the broken release cable that happens when you close the camera. It does not to all but if they see some frequent use they will at some point snap the cable in two when you close them. I searched the Web for a solution and all I found was that you either modify the release to use a modern release or just buy another one to cannibalise for parts or throw it away. Well I was not happy about that at all and I like keeping my cameras in their original design. So a light bulb went on in my head and I recalled piano wire which is highly tensile and very strong. So, I bought my self some Size 7 (0.018") from Hugh Craig Harpsichords(or here) on EBay and it worked like a charm. I had to break off the release button as it was molded around the original cable,but kept the top which I glued back to a small cogwheel that I then epoxied to the famous red button. To prevent further accidents I cut an empty clean ink tube from a rollerball pen and slid it over the area that is affected by the closing mechanism. And voilá, Land 340 back in action on its beautiful vintage charm.




Until next time, Luis




Monday, August 03, 2015

Pentax SLOMO Test



Today I had to run some errands and bored in the public transport I decided to play with my Pentax MX-1 newly discovered Slow Motion video capability and ability to apply filters onto video (in this case Black and White with a Blue filter). So here's some random video captures in slomo on the street. Shot from the hip, of course, street photography style. Added my own track to it as the silent movie era is long gone. Although the camera only captures slomo in VGA mode (640x480) and only 15s at a time, it's still pretty awesome in terms of image quality (which I hope won't be lost on upload here).