Thread by @RachelRayns, I've finally got around to saving from of my Flickr content before [...]

I've finally got around to saving from of my Flickr content before it disappears.

The content feels like a different life, before working in Making/electronics and in some ways before Design...

2010-2013: Celluloid film / 8mm filmmaking years.
(before @TheSoupLab)

A

Let's kick this off with awkward selfies

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To say I was obsessed with DIY film processing would be an understatement: I was hardcore geeking out, constantly taking over our bathroom in our student house. E6 (positive - slides) was my favourite, but I regularly processed C41 (negatives) at home too.

Not just limited to still film, I had a 8mm and 16mm moving image set up too.

I made all kinds of 8mm films. I remember this one fondly... we gaffer taped the super8 camera to the ceiling and shot a stop-motion film on the floor. Made all the backgrounds, etc. Very art school. This film was for @straight8, so all editing happened in-camera

More + me with wine

A short tangent - my first 'business' was making corsetry. When I was in sixth form college I thought I would be a costume maker. I'll have to see if I can dig out photos of other pieces I made (far too early for flickr)- but this one I made for the above film, I think.

also the time to intro my best friend Jess White, who I met in uni and was my total muse during this time. She's still amazing and designs and deliveries outreach programmes in cultural orgs now.

ok, back on track I found more awkward photos of me. These make me cringe so bad, but hey - it was art school.

Time to address all the massive cameras I'm blocking my face with in all these photos.

I think it was about 2013, I kinda accidentally became one of the biggest sellers of pre-digital photographica on ebay uk.

I hated art school, so spent my student loan ....

going round the country, in my van, to house clearance auctions. Initially I bought bargain boxes of junk... I'd clean it up and sell it to LOMO/low-fi camera people who wanted something 'retro' looking. ...

Once I had some capital I focused on mahogany plate cameras.

I'd buy these for ~£100-500 lightly clean these up. Take great photos of them and consistently sell them to chinese businessmen for many thousands of pounds.

To backtrack a little - I said low-fi crowd, but all of these were fantastic cameras and not at all low-fi.

These would be sold to the low-fi crowd who were hooked on film and wanted to start taking subjectively "good" photos. https://twitter.com/RachelRayns/status/1334884983123546113?s=20

https://twitter.com/RachelRayns/status/1334884983123546113?s=20

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more.

Look at these aperture inserts. Beautiful.

Making this money allowed me to buy the toys I wanted. Here are some of my favourites:

SL66 Rolleiflex

You would probably recognise a TLR (twin lense reflex - more of them later), but this was a Rollei SLR (single).

It had bellows and shift tilt and it was an absolute dream.

oh I found a better photo of her, but it's low res - I was too late to save the higher res from Flickr

So... speaking of Rolleis. I was lucky enough to have a family of them. From the humble Rolleicord to the eyewaterings rare and expensive Tele and Wide versions

I just stumbled across my Olympus XA collection - I think one of my first completed families. I remember I sold this with the listing finishing on christmas eve - it went for about 4 times what I had expected. Most bids in the last few minutes, presumably aided by christmas booze

So, before I talk about my workhorses, a shout out to my large format babies. These took mostly 5x4 (inch) sheets of film. Although I did briefly have an 8x10 too

I just found another nice set of the plate cameras - I don't remember selling this, but by the photos I would expect this was a big earner. Everyone loves an original case

Jumping back one tweet - more from the 8x10

and I finally found the good photos of my SL66 Rollei baby.

This really was my big camera love, but it was expensive and rare-ish so I was always scared to take it out. It also weighed a ton, even by medium format camera standards.

Ok, before my main loves.. a little on medium format camera sizes.

The camera names often directly reference the size of the area exposed on the film real during each photo. Nice graphic from http://shootitwithfilm.com below

Rolleis shot 6x6 (retro square image you'll know)

"briefly owned" will appear again and again here - I didn't often own all of these at once.

So big loves: Mamiyas, a japanese brand that build medium format cameras you could bash someones skull in with. I dropped more an one out of moving cars and they are great.

I owned some 645, 6(x6), 67 and even an autofocus 645 for a bit

The obnoxious filmgeek I was: I didn't like the 645AF much - it's lenses are too sharp, and the camera far too easy to use - It didn't have any soul

Pentax 67 deserves it's own thread, it is a wonderful beast. @tobiasfeltus made me a beautiful wooden handle. Most of my photos taken around this time were with a Pentax 67 and it's the only one I'd think of buying again now.

The lenses are super creamy and delicious.

Here's some P67 shots. I was in Wales, shooting a student film group making a horror/thriller (I think?)

I'm getting bored, so I'll speed this up:

Swinglens cameras! The lens actually lives in a barrel that rotates when you take a shot. Same way your phone camera does pano now.

I've had some 35mm (russian horizont and a widelux) and my big Widepan.

More from that wales film shoot

me

Widepan shutter speeds:

2 fun facts on Widelux

Jeff Bridges has used one to shoot on film sets for many years and has books of his photographs and they are fantastic. ( https://jeffbridges.com/photography )

I bought mine from John Hedgecoe's estate - who took the photo of the queen for stamps. I also bought...

his Hasselblad. Unfortunately only the back-up. I was outbid by the auction house for the one that took the actual queen photo.

I've had a lot of Hasselblad. They are lovely, but everyone knows they are - so they are expensive and a bit boring. Same goes for Leica.

Some moving image cameras. 16mm, super 8 and 8mm here.

I don't know how to end this thread.. but basically:

During this time I was also collecting *a lot* of industrial darkroom equipment. I graduated art school, moved back to Norwich and opened a experimental art/film venue called @TheSoupLab

I set up a gallery space, hot desking and full colour darkroom and 8mm film processing lab. And we did workshops offsite at places like tate modern and brighton festival

It was around for ~2 years, but I was getting into electronics and started making my Zoe machine.

I took her to @EbenUpton at @Raspberry_Pi & asked if they fancied having me around as an Artist-in-Residence. They said yes and I closed down Soup Lab and moved into computer sci

Fast forward ~7 years and now I currently work with @DigiCatapult - the UK's leading innovation centre for fun things like machine learning, immersive tech, blockchain, etc

And that was my ted talk. Now here's a bunch of photos from my Flickr that I like but didn't fit in the

dreamy photos from the SL66