Tag Archives: matchbox

The Week in Links, belated April 30th 2010 edition

Pinhole photography is something I think I’ve mentioned before, but here’s another cool DIY pinhole setup presented at Damn Cool Pics: how to make a pinhole camera from a matchbox. It uses 35mm film with a 24x24mm frame size. The film transport is especially clever, I think, using a piece of plastic to make a noise every time a sprocket hole passes – wind the film and count sprocket clicks to get to the next frame with some accuracy.

One of the great things about film is its archival qualities, especially traditional silver-based black and white film. How does developing some film exposed 31 years earlier and getting great results sound? Can you be sure that if, in 2041, you were to find an old SD card with a bunch of proprietary RAW files on it, you’d be able to even find something the card would fit into, let alone read the contents? It’s not like you can hold it up in front of a light source and just look at the photos, after all. Would the data even be intact after 31 years? For the record here, I’m an IT guy, I’ve been around computers since 1984 and have done the data obsolescence dance far too many times to ever use the words “archival” and “digital” together without the word “NOT” involved somewhere.

Cearta.ie has a good article debunking Ten Copyright Myths. They should make everyone read and understand this before they’re allowed to use the “Save Image As…” menu option in their web browser.