When I was at Jeff and Amy's mom's house in Aiken for Thanksgiving, I came across an old Super 8 silent film camera in the room where I was staying. I asked their mom about it, and she said she couldn't imagine why she'd ever need it again, and that I could have it. That was an unexpected turn — I've been wanting to buy an old film camera on eBay for a while now, but could never bring myself to spend the money on it.

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Inspired by some conversations on the photo.net forums, I decided to try to hack together a handheld 4x5 large format camera using parts from various old Polaroid Land cameras from the 1960s. Polaroid long ago discontinued the film for these cameras, so they're available really cheap on eBay. To most people, they're pretty much worthless except as a collectors' item, but with a little fearless application of a Dremel tool, they should quickly find themselves back in useful service. The resulting camera will not be a beauty queen — the main ingredient will be glue — but it should result in something only slightly less portable than the Holga, but with much higher quality results, and for roughly the same total investment (about $20).

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When I went to Charleston a few weeks ago to visit Jessie, I met a friend of hers who offered to send me a copy of his band's CD. I said sure and, true to my heritage, promptly forgot all about it.

I was quite surprised, then, to receive a semi-anonymous packag in the mail yesterday.

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Recently I learned about a whole aspect of photography I'd never even heard of before: movements. I'd seen the various Canon TS-E tilt/shift lenses (such as the TS-E 45mm f/2.8) but never understood what the hell the tilt/shift meant. I finally found a page that explains it very well: Understanding Camera Movements at Luminous Landscape.

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