vintage

How to Clean Up Your Old Cameras

Treasures are often buried under dirt. Well, that's usually the case, anyway. Treasures for photographers may mean finding a working copy of their dream camera at a flea market or on the second-hand camera market. However, more often than not, the camera may not be looking great.

Wanted: Recreating Mug Shots Taken in the 1920s and 30s

Back in 2009, award-winning editorial art director and artist Mark Michaelson released his book Least Wanted: A Century of American Mugshots. In it he had compiled more than 10,000 mug shot portraits taken between the 1870s and 1970s. Portraits of the "punks, sneaks, mooks and miscreants" he referred to as the "Least Wanted."

For his portrait series Wanted, London-based photographer Nick Dolding decided to recreate some of the most striking of the mug shots found within Michaelson's book.

One-of-a-Kind Lens Bracelets Made from Vintage Aperture and Focus Rings

Stefaan duPont and his girlfriend set out to travel the world for a year in March 2012, taking their cameras with them and leaving their careers as designers behind. That year served only to intensify duPont's love of photography, and when he returned, he mixed that love with another of his passions: taking stuff apart.

What resulted was a series of one-of-a-kind vintage camera lens bracelets created using old aperture and focus rings -- first made as gifts for family and friends, and now available to purchase.

Tintype App Brings the Magic and History of Tintype Photography to iOS

A few days ago, we told you about an app called Koloid that allowed iOS users to capture some of the look and feel of wet collodion photography using their iPhone. The $1 app let you not only take photos, but 'develop' them as well by tilting your phone to run chemicals over them.

The new app Tintype doesn't go quite that far, but when it comes to authenticity, creator Michael Newton has made sure that his app brought the most accurate looking tintype processing possible to the iOS world.

Leica That Shot ‘V-J Day in Times Square’ Photo Fetches $150K at Auction

Next time a significant other bugs you about how much you spend on photo gear, remind them how much worse it could be if you were into vintage kit.

Such as the 1931 Leica IIIa shown above, owned by the great Alfred Eisenstaedt and used to shoot everything from his iconic V-J Day image of a sailor kissing a girl in Times Square to a portrait session with President Bill Clinton. The camera sold at Vienna auction house last weekend for 114,000 Euros, equivalent to $147,117.

Using a Radioactive WWII Bomber Lens on a DSLR with a 3D-Printed Adapter

Originally produced for the US military in WW2, the Kodak Aero Ektar 178mm f/2.5 is a large-format monster of a lens. Mounted in bombers, facing down at Europe, this lens was sold to the US government for the price of a family car. It found its way into military surplus after the war, and was widely used in journalism and by professional photographers.

Photographer Hunts for Vintage Cameras That Contain Undeveloped Film

Two years ago, photographer Chris A. Hughes purchased a 1914 French Richard Verascope camera (shown above) from an elderly man who was clearing out his camera collection in preparation for retirement. When he got into his car after the purchase, Hughes was surprised to find two packages of slides in the camera's leather case.

Upon closer examination, he discovered that the photographs on the slides were captured by a French soldier during World War I.

Modding a Vintage Camera for Digital Use

My name is David Lo, and I am a street photographer who enjoys taking vintage cameras, digitizing them, and then using them for street photography. This is a walkthrough on my process of modifying a camera.

Twitter Officially Launches Retro Photo Filters for Its Mobile App

Well that was fast... Just hours after Instagram launched a major update to its popular photo sharing app, Twitter dropped a bomb on the industry by finally unveiling its own long-awaited and recently-leaked retro filters. The move brings it into direct competition with what Instagram offers -- the two services virtually offer the same product now, except Instagram is solely focused on images while Twitter lets you Tweet text as well.

The Invention of the Pigeon Camera for Aerial Photography

We've featured a couple of projects involving cameras strapped to birds recently (see here and here), but photographing with birds is anything but a new idea. It was actually invented a little over a century ago, in 1907, by a German photography pioneer named Julius Neubronner.

Hands-on with the Fujifilm XF1: A Retro and Flexible Compact Camera

Fujifilm is a camera company that's going all-in on the idea of "retro design". We're not complaining. Its new XF1 compact camera brings the sleek design of X-Series' cameras to the world of "point-and-shoots", featuring a minimalist aluminum body that's covered with faux-leather. The camera feels very nice and solid in the hand. It's not as compact as other point-and-shoots (the Canon S110 is around 30% smaller and 20% lighter), so I'd say it's purse-sized rather than pocket-sized. What it lacks in portability, however, it makes up for in beauty and brawn.

Want Cheap Glass? Buy a Vintage Lens and an Adapter

If you want a 50mm f/1.4 lens for your DSLR, you'll need to shell out at least a couple hundred bucks, even if you buy one made by a third-party manufacturer. For those of you who don't mind losing autofocus, you can get the same focal lengths and apertures for much cheaper by buying some old glass and an adapter. By much cheaper, we mean as low as $10-$20! India-based photographer Brock Whittaker recently did this after seeing an auction on eBay for an old Mamiya camera kit.

Vintage Photographs with Glowing Points of Light

Daré alla Lucé is a project by photographer Amy Friend that features old photos that resemble constellations in the night sky. Friend creates the images by finding vintage photographs (online or in shops) and then poking tiny holes into them. My Modern Met writes,

The series began through her desire to see the photograph as an object. Friend wanted to find out what it meant for them to change, "to become something different than what they were originally intended to be" yet still remain the same. To her, the images represented "a life, a face, a moment, but only through a momentary glance." By altering them she hopes to playfully bring to light stories beneath the surface or what she refers to as "the unknown."

"It is the unknown that shines through the photographs. It is the unknown that releases the photographs and allows them to become something new."

Celebrity Booking Photos Photoshopped Into Vintage 1920s Mugshots

Earlier this year, a set of mugshots from the 1920s showing Australian criminals made the rounds on the Internet. When art director Michael Jason Enriquez came across this portraits, he was struck by the artsy-ness of the photos. He writes,

There’s a strange connection that draws us into vintage photographs. Seeing doppelgängers (look-a-likes) in old pictures is our brain’s way of linking us to the past. We see what isn’t there - someone recognizable, a family member, maybe a friend, and then there are the ones that bear an uncanny resemblance to modern day celebrities. We’re so used to seeing celebrity faces on our tv, on blogs, and we even know what their mugshots look like. The tacky looking mugshots we have today are in stark contrast to the mugshots taken in the 1920’s. Vintage mugshots have an eerie beauty to them that’s lost in current mugshot photography. What would celebrity mugshots, the ones we’ve become accustomed to seeing on TMZ, look like if instead they were taken in the 1920’s?

Enriquez decided to find out, and created Mugshot Doppleganger, a website to which he posts Photoshopped images of celebrity booking portraits fused with 1920s mugshots.

Paparazzo Light is an Old School Press Camera “Flash” for the iPhone

How's this for a strange camera accessory: the Paparazzo Light is a lighting attachment for iPhones that mimics the look of vintage press camera flashes (yes, the kind the original Lightsaber was made from). The light comes from a 300 Lumen LED that's powered by two dedicated CR 123 batteries, and three modes offer different brightness settings for photos and videos.

Dirkon: The Vintage DIY Pinhole Camera Made of Paper

The Dirkon pinhole 35mm camera is made entirely from paper cut from a template by designers Martin Pilný, Mirek Kolář and Richard Vyškovský. The three published the template in a 1979 issue of Czechoslovakian magazine ABC mladých techniků a přírodovědců (translated as An ABC of Young Technicians and Natural Scientists). While original prints of the magazine are rare, the Dirkon gained cult popularity in Chzechoslovakia.

Trick Out Your Compact Camera, Retro Style

Tired of your boring Nikon point and shoot? Does the sleek modern silver clash with your vintage threads? Breathe easy: German company PimpmyDigicam offers these sticker "leather kits" for Nikon J1 cameras for a retro look that will pair impeccably with your vintage Oxfords.

Vintage Photos Turned Into Superhero Ancestor Portraits

Foto Marvellini, an art workshop based in Milan, came up with the interesting idea of collecting vintage portraits and transforming them into photos showing the ancestors of Marvel superheroes. Eventually the project, began including characters from DC Comics and Japanese anime as well.

Distress Your Film by Putting It Through a Dishwasher Cycle

There's a subgroup of film photographers who are dedicated to coming up with inventive new ways to distress film in order to achieve unexpected -- and occasionally beautiful -- results. Last year we shared that soaking film in rubbing alcohol does strange things to your images. Here's another crazy idea: put a roll of film through the dishwasher. Photographer Tom Welland did just that and ended up with some vintage-looking photos.

Stereogranimator: Create Your Own 3D Photos Using Vintage Stereographs

The New York Public Library has a massive collection of over 40,000 vintage stereographs (two photos taken from slightly different points of view). To properly share them with the world in 3D, the library has launched a new tool called the Stereogranimator. It lets you convert an old stereograph into either an animated 3D GIF (which uses "wiggle stereoscopy") or an anaglyph (the kind that requires special glasses).

Eerie Hidden Mothers in Vintage Photos

Did you know that in vintage tintype photographs of infants mothers were often present in the photo but hidden by a veil? Subjects needed to remain still due to the longer exposure times required back then, so mothers were often asked to hold their children tightly while the portraits were being exposed. It was common practice back then, but the resulting photos are pretty eerie when you look at them now.