Jujube/making-a-camera

Making a Camera

Deconstruct to define "the optical device"

What is seeing?

- internalizing - intuition - feeling

What is representing?

Discussions on the Camera

Terms:

- film - cinema - moving image - motion picture - video

Questions:

How does the camera shape what you make?

"Digital makes me want to shoot very sharp." (Sonia)

"When I make pictures I don't care if they are sharp or not." (Marieke)

shape of the camera

position of the viewfinder

- Is the viewfinder a division between you and the world?

- Sometimes the world is full of people. Sometimes, trees.

- How has it been to be without a viewfinder?

sound of the camera

weight of the camera

- "Carrying that at 6am in London in February. No more of that!" (Susanna)

"Where does the camera begin and where does it end?"

Discussions on the (Moving) Image

"When you reduce the amount of information, does it become more poetic?"

If we define information as FPS...

Experiments

Devise an experiment to test an assumption you had about the camera. (suggested by Barend)

Think about what you want to explore in making a camera. (suggested by Mathijs)

Today I jotted down this phrase, analog as meditation. Consider the actions associated with using an analog camera:

1. I load the film and wind it in place.
2. With a viewfinder, I set' the aperture, shutter speed, iso (more or less).
3. Ipress the shutter button.
4. I notice how much film is left.
5. When I am at the end of the film, I rewind and unload it.
6. If I have access to a dark room, I develop the film. (This is a process I don't know anything about, so I am not breaking down the actions yet.)

Now consider the actions of a digital camera:

1. I turn on the machine (or maybe I check the batteries and memory cards beforehand).
2. If I are on auto focus, I half-press the shutter button.
3. I probably perceive a focus through the viewfinder/on the camera screen as I hear a beep indicating the focus is done.
4. I press the shutter button.
5. I take the memory card out at the end of a trip, or until it fills up...
6. I transfer the files.

My relationships with the image that I "produce" are very different in the two processes. The first requires more intention and, because I am in touch with my medium, I treat it more like a canvas on which I paint. The second is more hands-off (quite literally) and I, perhaps unthinkingly, outsource some important decisions in terms of making the image. It's close to "getting" an image rather than "making" one.

But I would be unfair to only compare these two. After all, I can buy a disposable point-and-shoot analog camera whose process resembles the second scenario, and I can shoot manual on a digital camera to produce in a similar manner to that in the first.

The differentiation lies more in the mentality of treating the image: are we translating what we see, or are we pursuing a representation (that has probably been shaped by unknown processes)?

TBC...

Active making ps. passive creating. The latter can be useful for many reasons.

Read more about focus[1] and autofocus[2].