I have a few different cameras. The one I most use is my Nikon D90. I can take thousands of pictures and all it costs me is a little electricity and the time it takes to process them. Since the dawn of the new digital revolution with digital cameras popping out of people’s chests across the world at a rapid rate, the price of medium format cameras have gone down! Which makes it a great opportunity to get into it.

Although there are exceptions to this rule, a lot of the medium format cameras are now significantly more obtainable.

The camera above is a Zeiss Ikon which cost me around £8. Another camera I laid my hands for a cheap price is the Coronet Captain which cost less than the Ikon at about £5. Shown below, it’s a pretty basic box camera, which was made 20 or 30 years ago by Coronet, who are a Birmingham camera manufacturer no longer in operation. It’s dead simple to operate and the photographs which come out are larger than the standard 12 pictures you get on a roll of medium format, and you only get 8. There are two focus settings, the ability to set a timer, or add a green filter – but the best bit are the two view finders which are both waste level. One is for landscape shots and the other is for portrait. Genius!

The cameras which have waist level viewfinders create a completely different photograph to cameras which you hold up to your eyes and point and shoot. Images of people are in the middle of their body, and so produce a completely different sense of that person. The quality of the photographs which it produces is very interesting and completely unique, and unique per camera too. Each one will have it’s own little discrepencies in the manufacturing process and could have slight issues with the light seal, which all makes it very interesting.

So, if you’re after a new and interesting camera which is simple to get to grips with, cheap to buy and you can throw around as much as you like, here are some to look out for: Coronet Captain, Hasselblad 500c/m, Mamiya C330, Yashica Mat 124G, Lubitel 2.

Photos by me: Zeiss Ikon and Coronet Captain

I went to see Objectified the movie on Saturday at The Barbican. The film is directed by Gary Hustwit and about the relationship we have with all of the objects around us, all of which have been designed. The film takes a look at the world’s objects through various interviews with Designers, the people who originally conceive the idea and turn it into reality.

The film was at The Barbican and as I hadn’t been there before I made the mistake of presuming it would be similar to a normal cinema. I am usually careful to pick a seat about 3/4 the way from the screen and near the middle. This is so I can see the large screen and hear the sound in the best possible way. Of course, having a cinema within the Barbican Estate would of course pose limitations on height etc. The cinema is actually long and shallow (with a large possibility of someones head being in your way) so for future reference, Cimena 2 on Level 4 has an optimum seat position of only a few rows from the front.

The documentary is very interesting and offers designers and design fans a chance to see interviews with a few of the big names of the industrial world. Jonathan Ive, who rarely makes a public appearance in the UK, can be seen to explain many of the design features of the aluminium shell of the Macbook Air, iMac and Apple Keyboard and get rather lost in the process of explaining the rationale behind it. For designers it’s a chance to see the people who they have read and heard so much about actually talking about what they have made. For non-designers it’s a chance to see into a world constantly asking questions.

The film covers many different topics, but conveys the obsession that Designers have with their products very well. The film is a pleasure to watch, learning and understanding a little bit more about the designers and their products who are so well known through modern culture. Unfortunately I missed getting tickets for the London Premiere event with after show Q&A, which would have been a good chance to ask some interesting questions.

For now, we’ll just have to continue asking why.

It was nice to see the LC-A (Lomo Kompakt Automat) on the poster too!