#aerochrome — Public Fediverse posts

@janamarie @nblr Welcome to the club! #Infrared is such a fascinating rabbit-hole! Kolari even created a dedicated "IR Chrome" filter that mimics the Aerochrome effect without requiring post-processing. Just set a custom WB when shooting and you get #Aerochrome JPEG out-of-camera!

Left: unmodified camera, OOC JPEG

Right: full-spectrum camera, IRchrome filter, OOC JPEG

A Full Spectrum Conversion That Went Wrong, Or: How I  Killed A Kodak Charmera

Unusually, I’m going to start this post off with a disclaimer and a warning. If you try to follow these guidelines to make a Charmera full-spectrum and kill the camera, like I did, it’s not my fault. This was my experience and it kind of worked, and then it didn’t. Also, and I’ll get this out at the start: always  make sure that the microSD card is removed from the camera. In this post I suggest using sharp blades in several (well two) places, so please, please take care when attempting this. I don’t want to read in any comments about cuts, and missing fingertips, or worse. Take care of yourselves, and if you find a better way of disassembling the Charmera that doesn’t involve blades, please let me know.

A couple of weeks ago, in December of 2025, I picked up a Kodak Charmera, a small ‘keychain’ camera. In fact, I have three Charmeras now; my original ‘rainbows and stars’ design, which is a normal unmodified version, and two others, which have remained in their boxes. This post is about the second Charmera, which I was hoping would be used for a full-spectrum conversion.

As a reminder, the Charmera is a small, no tiny, digital camera with a 1.6MP sensor and a tiny LCD screen. The controls are minimal, an on/off button, which also doubles as a menu selector, the shutter button, and three buttons on the back. One for playback/select items and two toggle buttons that cycle through the different filters. The shutter speed is fixed at around 1/30s, and images are stored on a microSD card. On the bottom of the device, next to the microSD card slot, is a USB-C socket for charging the camera or transferring files.  There are six different designs of the Charmera, with a seventh transparent design as a ‘special’, and they’re sold in ‘blind’ boxes, so you don’t actually know which one you’ve got until you open the box.

One thing I wondered with the original Charmera, as I do with all my cameras, was about it’s infrared sensitivity. With a 720nm infrared filter held over the lens I got a lovely result, and with red, green, and blue filters, made some nice digital aerochromes and trichromes. So I was certainly encouraged going into this experiment. In this case, I’m hoping to open up the Charmera and remove the IR cut filter in front of the sensor to make it truly full-spectrum. In this condition, the sensor will be sensitive to all wavelengths of light, from ultraviolet to infrared, and with 720nm and (a newly acquired) 590nm filters, I hope I might get some interesting results. 

Opening the blind box revealed that I had the ‘Kodak red’ version of the Charmera, which seemed appropriate considering what I wanted to do with it. Looking at the sealed camera, I wondered how I might get into it, but from a previous test with my original Charmera I knew that with a fine blade I could prise the back off the camera. You have to be really careful, and not press too hard with the blade. Once the back starts to come off, you can separate the back from the camera, it’s just held together with clips. One thing: if you’ve previously used the Charmera, make sure that you take out the microSD card. This will stop the main board from being removed from the body, and I think this is where I went wrong later.

Don’t pull the back away from the camera, the LCD screen is connected to the main board with a thin ribbon wire, and you don’t want the break that. I’ve seen videos where the user has opened the tab connecting the ribbon wire to the main board and separated the LCD screen completely, but you don’t have to do that, so long as you are careful. Lift the battery off the main board, this is held on with double sided tape, and gently pull out the speaker. Be very careful with this, the wires are very thin. I found it best to tug gently on the wires until the speaker is partially removed and then pull it completely out with tweezers.

The next stage is to remove the main board. The is fixed to the body with two tiny screws. (Remember to check that you’ve removed the microSD card.) When these are removed keep them safe, don’t lose them. The whole circuit board should fall out leaving two parts, the LCD back, with circuit board, speaker, and battery attached, and the now empty front of the camera. The sensor and lens assembly is connected to the front of the board with another ribbon wire, and this just pops into a mount in the front of the camera.

To get to the IR cut filter you need to pry the lens from the sensor. I was lucky to have a fine-blade medical scalpel, but a small X-acto (box cutter) should do to trick. Again, this seems to be lightly glued together, but once the two parts are partially separated, it’s easy to pull apart. This should reveal the small sensor on one side, and the lens and cut filter on the other. You can’t miss the IR cut filter, it’s the circular glass, and reflects light with a lovely pink hue. I tried to get this out in one piece with my blade, but it’s so thin that it just broke, so I just dug it out as best as I could. Underneath you can see the lens, and all you need to do is squeeze the two parts back together. I think that the foam padding on the back of the sensor holds the lens assembly securely in place when the main board is reattached, so you shouldn’t have to glue it together. As you’ll see shortly, it might be better not to glue the lens to the sensor in case adjustments have to be made.

Reassembling the Charmera is then just a matter of positioning the lens assembly in its socket, reattaching the main board with the two screws, and putting the speaker and battery back in place. Once all this is done, the camera back can be clipped back into place. Now it’s time to power up and test your nice new full-spectrum Charmera.

And this is where everything came slightly unstuck for me. Up close, the view through the LCD screen looked great, with all of the images having a lovely pink tinge. I took the camera to the window, and although the sun had set, the image looked like a full-spectrum image. I took an image of the view, and transferred it to the phone. It was blurred. It’s a known fact that infrared wavelengths have a slightly different point of focus to visible wavelengths, and the IR cut filter has a small refractive index that the manufacturers adjust for when making digital cameras. I was hoping that the cut filter of the Charmera was thin enough that this would not have been important, but it seems like it is.

I reopened the Charmera and started to take it apart, which was going perfectly well until I tried to remove the main board from the body. It just wouldn’t come out. And then I remembered the microSD card, which was still sitting in the camera. When I removed that the board came out easily, but when I tried to power the disassembled camera to check focus, it was dead. The only thing I can think of was that I tried to pull the board out with the microSD card in place, and somewhere along the line I broke something. So now I have a dead red Charmera. It’s a shame, I really liked that design. 

If you are on Mastodon, you can now follow this blog directly. Just go to Mastodon and follow my WordPress account at @keithdevereux.wordpress.com. All new posts will be automatically updated to your timeline on Mastodon.

#Abstract #Aerochrome #Charmera #Digital #Experimental #Filters #Infrared #Kodak #KodakCharmera #LoFi #Retro #ToyCamera #Trichrome #VintageVibes

Lens-Artists Challenge #335: Exploring Colour vs Black & White

This week, Patti of Creative Exploration in Words and Pictures is hosting the Challenge and she’s asking us to look at our use of colour or black & white in our photography. ‘When is it best to use one vs the other?’ She ponders: ‘What’s the benefit of each one?’

Patti sets us a challenge, ‘to explore the difference and the impact of using color [sic] or black & white photography in your selected photos. … Post pairs of the same image in both color and black & white. Limit the number of images to 3 pairs.’ She continues by asking us to: ‘Compare the differences in mood, texture, and light. Share your thoughts on how black & white or color processing impacts each photo. Tell us which one you prefer.’

I tend to use colour a lot in my photography, especially in film photography where I’m a big fan of those colour shifting emulsions like Lomochrome Turquoise or Purple. But in my digital work, I’m a little less … picky. 

Often it will depend on the subject. Most of my intentional camera movement (ICM) work is done in colour, I feel that ICM benefits from colour a lot, but the exception is urban ICM, which I think is much better in black and white. Similarly, if I’m out recording some street art then that always deserves colour — even if, or especially if, it’s starting to decay.

Sometimes, though, I set out to make images in black and white, then create colour images from them. There’s nothing I like more than taking an old digicam from the 2000s (the noughties) and testing out the infrared sensitivity of its lovely, lovely CCD sensor. This is often the first thing I do with every new digital camera I get my hands on, and the results can be … interesting. 

For example, here is a black and white infrared image of the steel footbridge over the Parque de Infante Dom Pedro in Aveiro. Taken with a Samsung Digimax U-CA3 digital camera from 2003, the camera has been set to monochrome mode and the image taken through a Hoya 720nm Infrared filter. It’s a typical looking infrared image, with white vegetation, which reflects the infrared wavelengths falling upon it, and dark skies and the metal of the bridge, which do not.

But when you take more monochrome images, using red and green filters, and edit the images as layers in a photo editor, everything changes. Suddenly the vegetation becomes shades of red, the sky becomes a bright blue or turquoise, and the image just pops. This is what I call a digital aerochrome, after the long defunct colour infrared emulsion made by Kodak and based on the procedure devised by Joshua Bird. He developed his method using infrared film, but the same technique applies to digital photography as well.

You can have a lot of fun with a digital camera and a set of filters. Take this infrared image of a landscape with lovely wispy clouds in the sky. It’s an OK infrared image in black and white, with the clouds popping against a dark sky. But make it into a digital aerochrome and suddenly the clouds become a kaleidoscope of colour. This is down to the clouds moving in the sky between the three exposures. When the images are lined up in the photo editor the colours of the filters don’t match and are presented in the image as individual colours.

Of course, it doesn’t always go as planned. Turns out this Konica Q-M100, a 1,3MP digital camera from 1997, can’t actually be set to monochrome mode, and the digital aerochromes were absolutely awful. That said, the regular colour images were quite stunning, but through an infrared filter, all of a sudden the image became almost monochrome in appearance. It looked as though a sepia filter had been applied, and personally I found this much more appealing than the colour image.

Sometimes we can combine two techniques. I thought that it might be a nice idea to try some infrared ICM. The results were less than stellar, though, I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen a more boring infrared image, or ICM image for that matter.

But when you make a digital aerochrome of the infrared woodland image, by taking further ICM images through red and green filters, all of a sudden the ICM becomes much more interesting. I’ve used this technique two or three times, and I really love how it comes out.

So instead of using these noughties digicams for ‘regular’ colour photography, odds are that during the sunny spring and summer months you’ll find me wandering around the woods behind our house or in Aveiro with a noughties digicam set to monochrome mode and my little collection of filters. So if you ask me, do I prefer to use colour or black and white, I can happy say, BOTH!

Next week, Ann-Christine will host the Challenge, so I hope that you can join us then. Themes for the Lens-Artists Challenge are posted each Saturday at 12:00 noon EST (which is 4pm, GMT) and anyone who wants to take part can post their images during the week. If you want to know more about the Challenge, details can be found here, and entries can be found on the WordPress reader using the tag ‘Lens-Artists’.

If you are on Mastodon, you can now follow this blog directly. Just go to Mastodon and follow the ‘Snapshot’ WordPress account at @keithdevereux.wordpress.com. All new posts will be automatically updated to your timeline.

#Aerochrome #Blackandwhite #Challenge #Colour #Infrared #Landscape #LensArtists #Monochrome #Nature #Tree #Trichrome #TrichromeEverything #VintageDigital #LensArtists

Lens-Artists Challenge #326: This Made Me Smile

This week it was the turn of Ann-Christine (Leya) from To See a World in a Grain of Sand … to host the Lens-Artists Challenge, and she chose as her theme, ‘This Made Me Smile‘. In her post she says, ‘So much in this world is rather tough right now, … don’t we all need a smile? Let’s share something that made us smile, … and make the world smile with us!’ 

Well naturally this was a bit of a head-scratcher for me since my images are rarely funny or cute. We don’t have any pets and the kid is all grown up so most of my ‘fun’ images are strange out of focus abstracts, or blurred ICM landscapes. So I thought I would introduce you to one of my favourite pastimes: taking funtographs. What? You might say, don’t you mean photographs? No, definitely funtographs, with emphasis on the fun.

Back in 1998, Nintendo released the Gameboy camera to accompany its hand held gaming console, the Gameboy. The Gameboy Camera is a monochrome camera that records four shades of grey to produce super low resolution funtographs (as Gameboy photographs are known). In today’s terms the Gameboy camera has a whopping 0.014MP.

The Gameboy camera is actually a full spectrum device — the sensor has no infrared cut filter to stop wavelengths outside the visible spectrum from showing on the image — so in full sunlight trees and vegetation come out a strange white (‘strange’ if you’re not familiar with how infrared images look). Indoors, or at night, you don’t have so many issues and images look normal, but during the day using an infrared cut filter stops these extra infrared wavelengths reaching the sensor and the images look much more natural.

Although getting good results from the Gameboy camera can be quite hit-and-miss, it can produce some lovely monochrome funtographs. But with a little work it can also produce some striking trichromes too, and even digital aerochromes using infrared filters. Making infrared trichromes — digital aerochromes that emulate the look of the defunct film Kodak Aerochrome film — is one of my favourite pastimes, and I attempt this with all new cameras, often with mixed success. 

I’ve been the proud owner of a Gameboy console and the Gameboy Camera since January 2023, and it’s my favourite camera of all time. I managed to get my hands on one for the Shitty Camera Challenge #1990sCameraChallenge, and since I’ve had one it’s been hard to put down. I’m also convinced that the Gameboy was the factor that tipped the scales into my becoming Shitty Camera Challenge Champion for the 1990s Camera Challenge, probably the single most important achievement of my whole life. 😉

I hope these few examples of Gameboy funtographs brought a smile to your face, and the next time you are shopping around for a new digital camera perhaps the Gameboy might fit the bill? Themes for the Lens-Artists Challenge are posted each Saturday at 12:00 noon EST (which is 4pm, GMT) and anyone who wants to take part can post their images during the week. If you want to know more about the Challenge, details can be found here, and entries can be found on the WordPress reader using the tag ‘Lens-Artists’.

If you are on Mastodon, you can now follow this blog directly. Just go to Mastodon and follow the ‘Snapshot’ WordPress account at @keithdevereux.wordpress.com. All new posts will be automatically updated to your timeline.

#2Bit #Aerochrome #Challenge #Digicam #Funtography #Gameboy #Infrared #LensArtists #Nintendo #PixelArt #Smile #Trichrome #LensArtists

Although I think that I have all of the cameras I need to keep me occupied, I sometimes come across a camera that I’ve been seeking for quite a while. One of these ‘nice to haves’ is a glitchy camera. I don’t mean one that’s naturally glitchy because it was made that way, like the Vivitar Vivicam and its shutter lag, or one that has been artificially glitched, like the circuit bent kiddiecam from Freedom Enterprise,  but a camera that over years of use has developed a fault that still allows it to be used but the results are not the natural looking photographs that one might expect.

So I was torn by indecision when I came across a Canon Powershot G12 on the Kamerastore website. Under normal circumstances the Powershot G12 is a solid camera, regularly being awarded 4 or 5 star reviews. Released by Canon in 2010, the G12 is a 10 MP CCD sensor camera described as a premium compact and continuing the prestigious G-series of digital cameras. Over a decade after its launch prices are still quite high for the G12, so when I came across a ‘not passed’ model on the Kamerastore website I was instantly intrigued.

Looking at the description of the camera I could see why it was so cheap. ‘The sensor is failing,’ read the description, and ‘it randomly draws horizontal lines and distorts the colors (sic)’. I paused at this point, do I really want to buy a damaged camera that at any moment could be unusable? But then I reasoned, well, even if it lasts a year I’ll have had a glitchy camera and can cross another project off my photography bucket list. So I pressed tbe’Buy Now’ button and waited.

A few days later the package arrived and I couldn’t wait to open it up and parade my new glitchy camera. So imagine my surprise when I turned the camera on and … there were no horizontal lines, no distorted colours. What was going on? Have I been sold a perfectly good camera? At the moment I can’t tell, it seems to be working properly at the moment.  Perhaps when I’ve had it switched on for a while it’ll start glvitching. Here’s hoping. In the meantime I took it across the road for its test frames with my favourite tree and well. 

I must say, the Powershot G12 is a wonderful digital camera. It’s hefty in the hand, the features are easy to access and it’s a joy to use. Of course, my first test images need to include some infrared images and the camera behaved admirably in infrared.  Indeed, I took a colour infrared image for some colour shifting and it was splendid. Sometimes I get a decidedly blue colour cast with channel mixed images, but in bright sunlight the Powershot G12 performed admirably.

One thing I do fancy playing with is the ‘miniature’ option, where the preset adds blur to the top and bottom of the image for a tilt/shift type of effect. I did have a try with this method and it certainly shows promise. So I shall keep on trying to get some glitches out of the Powershot G12 but in the meantime will just enjoy this lovely camera. 

If you are on Mastodon, you can now follow this blog directly. Just go to Mastodon and follow the ‘Snapshot’ WordPress account at @keithdevereux.wordpress.com. All new posts will be automatically updated to your timeline.

https://keithdevereux.wordpress.com/2024/06/16/filling-the-gaps-a-supposedly-glitchy-canon-powershot-g12/

#Aerochrome #Camera #Canon #ChannelShift #Digicam #Digitalcamera #Landscape #Photography #Powershot #Retro #TrichromeEverything #Vintage

As it was a nice and partially sunny afternoon I decided it was the perfect opportunity to take the the supposedly glitchy Canon Powershot G12 out for a walk in the woods and fields behind our house. Of course the main thing I wanted to do was to make trichromes and digital aerochromes with the Powershot set to black and white and using red, green, blue, and infrared filters. These were of mixed success in often challenging conditions. It was sunny but quite heavily cloudy at the same time, but some of the results were really fabulous.

I also took some colour infrared images for channel swapping. In GuIMP photo editor I swapped the colour data in the red and blue channels. I had discovered on my test the day before that the channel shifted images were really nice, but today, when it was slightly cloudy, the images possessed a strong blue tinge. In some instances, though, especially under the oak tree canopy, this produced some lovely results.

I tried a few things with the Powershot G12, landscapes, close-ups of flowers, the fish-eye lens effect, that sort of thing, and I was really happy with the results. Some of the close-ups were really amazing, though as it was a windy day it was occasionally difficult to get proper focus 

Even though it’s not as glitchy as I had hoped, this camera is really wonderful. It’s comfortable to hold in the hand, the controls are intuitive and easy to use, and it produces some lovely results. Hopefully we’ll be going into Aveiro soon and I’m waiting to see how it handles intentional camera movement (ICM) compared to the Powershot A720. Who knows, this could become my new ‘carry anywhere’ camera.

If you are on Mastodon, you can now follow this blog directly. Just go to Mastodon and follow the ‘Snapshot’ WordPress account at @keithdevereux.wordpress.com. All new posts will be automatically updated to your timeline.

https://keithdevereux.wordpress.com/2024/06/09/a-test-run-with-the-supposedly-glitchy-canon-powershot-g12/

#Aerochrome #Camera #Canon #ChannelShift #Digicam #Digitalcamera #Landscape #Photography #Powershot #Retro #TrichromeEverything #Vintage

After completing the digital Frankencamera I was writing a rough blog post to summarise my experience and went back to look at the first images produced with the Genius 8MP digicam. It wasn’t that long ago but I was blown away by the digital aerochromes and trichromes that the Genius produced. So I thought,  why not see what the digital Frankencamera can do?

I mounted the Genius digicam in its cone to the back of the Frankencamera and wedged it in place so it would not move. I then set the shutter to ‘T’ and rhe aperture to its widest. I also set the Genius to a 10-second time so that I could hold a filter over the lens. I set the digicam to black and white then took photographs with red, green, blue and infrared filters from which I made a trichrome and a digital aerochrome. 

What was immediately apparent is that I really need a decent diffusion gel, so will be looking around for a Leelux 400 diffusion filter. With each image there was a clearly visible hot spot and this drastically affected the exposure of each filtered image, especially the infrared image. But at least I have shown that I can produce a trichrome with the digital Frankencamera. 

If you are on Mastodon, you can now follow this blog directly. Just go to Mastodon and follow the ‘Snapshot’ WordPress account at @keithdevereux.wordpress.com. All new posts will be automatically updated to your timeline on Mastodon.

https://keithdevereux.wordpress.com/2024/05/25/making-trichromes-and-aerochromes-with-the-digital-frankencamera/

#1920s #Aerochrome #Digital #Experimental #FoldingCamera #Retro #Trichrome #Vintage #VintageCamera

This afternoon my little blue circuit bent camera arrived from Freedom Enterprise. I quickly discovered that it can work in black and white and is infrared sensitive. So of course I had to make a digital aerochrome (of sorts). #CircuitBending #FreedomEnterprise #Digicam #Glitch #GlitchArt #Vintage #Retro #Experimental #Trichrome #Aerochrome  #Psychedelic #ToyCamera

Last year, Stephen Dowling of Kosmo Photo asked a group of camera bloggers to write about three cameras they discovered in 2022 and what each one meant to them. Well, I gatecrashed this party and came up with the three cameras that I had most enjoyed using during the year: The dainty little Ikkosha Start 35k with its homemade 35mm Bolta spools, the self-converted full-spectrum Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ8, and the Kodak ‘Handle’, which I successfully adapted to work with Instax Square film.

This year I found myself experimenting with lots of different cameras and techniques, both film and digital, and there were some real favourites among them. For the first time I also took part in some annual ‘challenges’ besides my favourite, the Shitty Camera Challenge. So without further ado, let’s get going.

The Agfa Clack

My first favourite camera this year is the Agfa Clack, possibly the nicest ‘box’ camera I have ever used. At the end of 2022 I decided that I would participate in the Frugal Film Project. This is a one-film/one-camera challenge devised and established by Sherry Christensen a few years ago. The idea is to use the cheapest film you can find and a camera that costs less than 75€ and shoot one roll of film each month for the calendar year. It can be any subject or any theme and each month the images are posted to social media.

I chose a camera that I had wanted for a long time, the Agfa Clack, which cost 29€ from the Kamerastore website. The Clack is as simple as a camera can be. Made between 1954—1965 it features a single shutter speed of about 1/30s and two apertures of f/11 and f/14. It takes 120 film and produces eight 6×9 cm images on a curved film plane. My film of choice was Fomapan Retro 100, a black and white negative film made in the Czech Republic. With a box speed of 100 ISO but a purported latitude of between 50—400 ISO, I thought this would be ideal for the Agfa Clack. With its 1/30s shutter speed I could set it at f/11 and use filters and still get decently exposed images.

It was great fun, travelling around and taking photos with the Agfa Clack, but throughout the year I was plagued with ‘fat’ rolls, when the film roll and paper backing doesn’t wrap tightly around the take-up spool. I thought that this might be the fault of the film stock, so I tried a different film stock … and got a fat roll. I had one further idea, that the mechanism wasn’t holding the film tightly, and invested 10€ in another Agfa Clack with a broken wind-on knob. Unfortunately the spring in the new camera wasn’t compatible and that idea was unsuccessful.

I also found out that the Agfa Clack is great for lens flipping. It has a single meniscus lens that can be dismounted, turned over and replaced to give a stunning blur effect around the outside of the image, the Deakiniser effect named after the film cinematographer Roger Deakin, who developed the technique. Even though I was still getting fat rolls, I was reluctant to use my original Clack so I found a third camera online, also for 10€ but with a fungus-ridden lens, took it apart, cleaned it and flipped the lens.

This was excellent, the ‘Deakinized’ images were coming out lovely, but I was still suffering with ‘fat’ rolls with this ‘new’ Clack so perhaps it’s something to do with modern 120 film stock. Who knows? Eventually, I found a piece of firm sponge in the local supermarket and glued this underneath the take-up spool. So far this simple hack seems to have cured the fat roll issue.

I tried several techniques with the Agfa Clack and the Frugal Film Project throughout the year; regular black and white photography, trichromes, and even the Vortoscope, a triangle of mirrors clamped together, and it was a wonderful experience. Next year I hope to take part in the Frugal Film Project 2024, and who know, perhaps that camera will appear in this list next year.

The Samsung Digimax U-CA3

As anyone who I follow or who follows me on social media will know, I am a sucker for early noughties digicams. Like most journeys with my resurgent interest in all things photography it started with a Kamerastore Outlet Box, when I picked up a range of digicams for just a few Euros, including my full-spectrum Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ8 that featured in this list last year.

I also discovered the existence of ‘generic’ cameras that crop up on the CEX website quite regularly. Normally these are low resolution (nowadays) cameras from reputable brands like Nikon, Olympus and Canon (one of my favourite generic cameras was a beautiful condition Canon Powershot G5 for 2-3€) but you don’t actually know what you will receive until the package drops through the letterbox.

So I was a little underwhelmed when I opened one package to find a Samsung Digimax U-CA3. It was the middle of a Shitty Camera Challenge when I spotted a ‘generic’ 3MP camera which I thought would be ideal to convert to full-spectrum, and for 1€ (plus 2,50€ for delivery) it was cheap enough that if I screwed up I could just bin it without feeling too bad. I pressed ‘comprar’ (buy) and added it to my basket. A few days later a well packed jiffy bag arrived in the post containing a Samsung Digimax U-CA3, the charger and some cables.

Upon charging the camera I realised that it used a Memory Stick Pro Duo (the shorter version of the Sony memory stick) for storing image files. This wasn’t really an issue as it worked quite happily with the Memory stick from the PlayStation Portable, but I wanted a dedicated card for the Samsung. A few days later I had a fully working Samsung Digimax.

Of course, the first thing I wanted to do was to check out its infrared sensitivity. So I attached it to a mini tripod, grabbed my little wallet of filters and went across the road to photograph my favourite tree (actually two trees) and abandoned well on a patch of scrubland. After taking several photographs, with and without filters, the digital aerochromes were spectacular with beautiful pastel red vegetation and natural looking buildings and skies. I was amazed, and although my intention was to make this camera full-spectrum, after such amazing results I decided to leave it as it was.

I’ve been out with the Samsung Digimax U-CA3 several times, and each time it’s produced some wonderful digital aerochromes, like this one of the Ponte Pedonal de Ligação Baixa de Santo António in Aveiro, which is a wonderful metal structure surrounded by trees that I knew would look spectacular as a digital aerochrome.

The Nintendo Gameboy

I don’t think anything needs to be said about the Gameboy … but I’m going to anyway. I’ve been the proud owner of a Gameboy console and the Gameboy Camera since January 2023, and it’s my favourite camera of all time. I managed to get my hands on one for the Shitty Camera Challenge, and since I’ve had one it’s been hard to put down. I’m also convinced that the Gameboy was the factor that tipped the scales into my becoming Shitty Camera Challenge Champion for the #1990sCameraChallenge, probably the single most important achievement of my whole life. 😉

The Gameboy Camera is a 0.0.014MP monochrome camera that records four shades of grey to produce super low resolution funtographs (as Gameboy photographs are known). Using the Gameboy camera looks simple enough, but in truth one needs to master a few steps to produce really nice images. The Gameboy camera is actually a full spectrum device — the sensor has no infrared cut filter to stop wavelengths outside the visible spectrum from showing on the image — so in full sunlight using an infrared cut filter will make trees and the sky look natural.

Although getting good results can be still quite hit-and-miss, the Gameboy can produce some lovely monochrome funtographs. But with a little work it can also produce some striking trichromes too, and even digital aerochromes in infrared. Making infrared trichromes, digital aerochromes, emulating the look of the defunct film Kodak Aerochrome, is one of my favourite pastimes, and I attempt this with all new cameras, often with mixed success. The first Gameboy trichromes/aerochromes were really awful, but with a little practise they’ve started to come out quite nicely.

If I could I would use the Gameboy all of the time, but I’m trying loads of other things so I forcibly cut myself off from it for a while — I went cold turkey. One of the things I’m working on at the moment is to get a c.1925 Kodak 1A Autographic Jr back up and running, which is certainly a work in progress, and I’ve also just invested in a similar period 9×12 large format camera that I hope I can use with Instax Wide film. That might even become my camera of choice for the 2024 Frugal Film Project. So there’s certainly a lot going on and I hope the 2024 entry of this series will be quite different (though with more Gameboy funtographs).

If you are reading this and fancy entering your own three cameras, please go ahead, and if you could add a link to this post, that would be awesome. If you fancy reading more top three cameras from this year then they can be found at the links below:

Jim Graves, My Journey onto Photography: My Top Three Cameras of 2023

Shawn Granton, The Urban Adventure League: My top three film cameras for 2023: Recency bias, the Honeymoon period, and plateauing

Have a good year and see you in 2025.

https://keithdevereux.wordpress.com/2023/12/27/three-cameras-from-2023-my-favourite-experiences-this-year/

#1990sCameraChallenge #2Bit #Aerochrome #AgfaClack #Digicam #FrugalFilmProject #Funtography #Gameboy #Infrared #Nintendo #PixelArt #Retro #Shittycamerachallenge #Trichrome #Vintage

“View from Bishopstone over to South Downs.”

Image Processed with #RNIAero — Kodak Aerochrome: Infared Film.

→ Free Photo to Download, by unsplash.com/@smithographic & smitho.graphics

Licensed under CC BY-NC-SA

#photo #photography #field #kodak #aerochrome #iphone #farm #crops #sky #clouds #seaford #freephotos #freephotographs #rniaero

Took the Gameboy out this morning to make some trichromes, but I took out the Vortoscope as well. The first image is a regular trichrome of a tree. The second is the same tree, but with an infrared image. Yes, it's an aerochrome vortograph. 😉
#GameboyCamera, #Gameboy, #Nintendo, #GameboyPocket, #Trichrome, #Aerochrome, #Funtography, #Vortograph,