A History of the Canon EOS-1 - PetaPixel [April 19th, 2021]
Announced at a press conference in June 1989 in Bar Harbor, Maine, the Canon EOS-1 was a 35mm SLR meant to be a turning point in professional cameras.
Canon did away with traditional controls in favor of a push-button system, utilized ultrasonic motored lenses, and added an LCD display to a fiber-reinforced polycarbonate body. Meant to be a replacement of Canon’s long-time champion, the F1, The EOS-1 was the new flagship, and it took a lot of risks.
The EOS-1 would be among the top picks in photography magazines for 1990, 1991, 1992, and 1993. More...
A Seedy History of the Nishika N8000 [March 14th, 2021]
The Nishika N8000 is a 35mm, quad-lens 3D camera, that originally sold in 1989 for $200 US dollars. If you wanted to buy one of these, you wouldn’t be able to find it at the shop. No, one of the only ways to get one was to hear a knock at your door, or by calling a number in an ad that you found in your photography magazine. The company that produced this camera did everything it could to make the N8000 seem like the next stage of photographic evolution. Even though it’s a fairly unique concept, it was far from a refined product.
The first time I came across an N800 a number of years ago, it turned out to be broken, and I wasn’t too surprised, as it was all plastic. Fast forward a couple of years and I find out these cameras are trending and going for an ungodly amount of money, broken or not. Continue...
How to Shoot a Film Shooting Marathon - Emulsive [September 23rd, 2020]
What’s it like shooting a roll of film every single day for thirty days? Probably not as hard as filming it simultaneously. I’m gearing up to do it again, but let me tell you about the first time…
When my YouTube channel was in its infant stage four years ago, the daily vlog was king. Casey Neistat was the name on everyone’s lips and how he was on his five-hundredth day, or something to that effect, and people were just in awe, and me too for a while. I was hooked just like everyone else, binge-watching him and drooling over drone shots and wondering how the heck he wasn’t creamed by a New York cabbie on that boosted board. Read On...
A Look at the First Issue of Popular Photography, May 1937 [June 20th, 2020]
I love looking at old magazines. They feel like little time capsules, as they are a mix of pop culture and bite-sized info that publications thought the general public wanted at any given time. I also find it fascinating what used to be considered acceptable and seeing the wax and wane of liberated and conservative expression over the decades.
They were also the main way people consumed what we call “life pro tips” in modern times. It’s also what we looked at in the bathroom instead of Reddit.
As photographers, those old photo mags serve as a manual of how those before us captured an image. Sometimes they are the only sources we have left of the old ways. At the forefront of this casual consumption of photo knowledge in the 20th century was Popular Photography: The Google of photo information in the western world. Read On....
Celebs Selling Polaroids - Emulsive [June 7th, 2020]
I haven’t had cable TV in a very long time. I cut the cord almost 12 years ago and all of the ads I get now are less than 15 seconds long, skip-able and usually specific to my tastes.
The only way to avoid skipping an ad when I was growing up was to mute the television, or the reliable ‘recall’ button on the remote which would switch to the last channel you were watching. The key is to find something else on that you care less about, and flipping to that when a commercial comes on during your main show. This was the 20th century version of browsing Reddit while binge watching on Netflix.
Advertisers knew all this and one of the tactics to keep your attention was — and still is — to get a celebrity to tell you to buy their product. Continue...