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Today’s photography site of the day is Tom Johnston Photography. Tom is an art photographer working in black and white and E6 color.

I’ve featured Tom’s videos here before. I also ended up trading a lot of emails with him after I used some of his videos. Heck of a nice guy. He really knows his stuff too.

Tom has some beautiful work on his site. He mentioned in an email to me that he has a lot more art photography that hasn’t made it’s way up there yet. I’m really looking forward to seeing it.

Besides photography, he’s also an exceptionally good woodworker. Along with his own designs, he makes museum quality reproductions with hand tools.

I realized I have a lot of work to do to get to his levels in either hobby.

Anyway, check out his work at Tom Johnston Photography

Here is a video showing how to load and unload film in a Pentax 67, 6×7 medium format camera.

To purchase a Pentax 67 or accessories, visit the Pentax 67 resource page

I’ve written before about Quinn Jacobson and Wet Plate Collodion photography, an all but forgotten technique of sensitizing sheets of glass and making exposures on that glass instead of our more modern plastic films. Jacobson practices and teaches this process.

Beginning as a reflection of his early life, the video transitioned to a good introduction of the techniques of wet plate photography. The video then transitioned again into an interview of his portraiture subjects.

These weren’t your ordinary subjects, the pretty people of life. Here his subjects are the people of his home town – people who generally would be considered the underbelly of society – criminals, mentally challenged, the physically and mentally handicapped. The type of people that a photographer generally leaves as soon as the photograph is taken. Here, however, the photographs were followed by interviews. These people were given a chance to tell a bit of their stories, a moving caption for the photographs. There was a sense of the dignity of the subject regardless of the trouble that person has had in life.

If you have a curiosity about old photographic techniques such as wet plate photography or if you’ve ever had the desire to see a subject as more than just the momentary focus of a camera, you might be interested in this two part video. I enjoyed it. I would have loved to have seen more.

I’ve never seen the process of making a bromoil print before. This is just fascinating stuff to me. It’s a very manual, labor intensive process and it’s beautiful.

In a previous post, I mentioned my Ansco Speedex Special “R”. I mentioned how I needed to do the restoration. That I was going to make time. Such lies, I tell on this blog.

Yes, lies.

I never got to it. Tsk tsk.

I did, however, find a site that sells a bellows for it, www.workmansphotography.com. I also found videos by Dennis, the owner of the site, showing how to replace the bellows on a Speedex or an Isolette.

Now, I just need some time.

This camera has a layer of smoke on it from a fire it was in. No real damage to the camera, but the glass elements are covered with the stuff, as is the body. If I can get that cleaned up, I’ll do the bellows. I was planning on making one as a practice run before doing a large format one. But there is a convenience factor of just buying it.

Enough rambling about me, you came here to see how to replace a bellows on this folding camera.

Here is how he collimates the lens when he is finished.

Click here to buy an Agfa Isolette or an Ansco Speedex on ebay.

One thing that is funny to me is that people tend to dismiss these folding cameras. These early “point and shoot” cameras were awesome machines. With medium format film, they’re pretty darn impressive. Maybe the best bang for the buck you can get.

Here are some great characteristics:
They can take really good pictures.
They’ll fit in your front pants pocket unnoticed.
Thieves don’t want them.
They’re still heavy enough to use as a weapon if mugged.

OK. This project moved up my TODO list.

I found this video of a 4×5 camera that someone built. Looks nice. Though not nearly as rigid as my super graphic.

The only thing that makes this more challenging is that the 4×5 camera construction manual is in Italian. Hold it. Don’t go. It can be translated with google’s translation tool.

Today’s entry is a jazz photography video. These pictures were taken by jazz photographer Ray Avery. I like Jazz. I like photography. Seems like a perfect match to me.

Anyway, check out the lighting on these. Many are very nice. That’s what caught my eye.

Yes, another video brought to my attention by Victor Khong.

This one is a good race video from two Canon 5DMarkII cameras that were hand held with a 50 mm 1.2 for night shots, a 24-105 for in the pits and a 300 for driving shots.

24 HOURS IN 19500 FRAMES from tim hahne on Vimeo.

Thanks to fine art photographer Tom Johnston for pointing out this set of videos about Alfred Stieglitz. Nice little biography of the Father of Modern Photography. There are some clips in this of Georgia O’Keeffe talking about Stieglitz.

Here are some Alfred Stieglitz on Amazon

I would be remiss if I didn’t also provide a link to Georgia O’Keeffe on Amazon

Webisode #3 is up at Zacuto’s Great DSLR Shootout. This is very cool stuff. If you have any interest at all in video, the hour and a half or so to watch these to see what the big guns think is worth your time. If nothing else, look at the video shown in the last 5 minutes of the 3rd episode to see what a Canon 7D can do. It’s jaw dropping good.

This year’s lineup: Canon 7D, Canon 5D Mk II, Canon T2i, Canon 1D Mk IV, Nikon D3s, and Panasonic GH1.

To see products made by Zacuto, click here
Some examples are the Zacuto Z-Grip and the Zacuto Z-Finder