String powered photography at the Hardware Meetup

I had all these plans for the Hardware Meetup today. I was hoping to persuade folks that the camera I was using to take portraits was so old that it only took black and white pictures. What a wizard April Fools joke that would have been. But then I found that the Instax back I was using to “process” the pictures was full of colour film. So that ended that.

But we did manage to get some good pictures though, along with some glorious failures. I was very concerned about focus. So I adjusted the bellows on the camera until I had a subject in focus at a particular distance. Then I cut a piece of string to that length. Now, to get a sharp picture I just had to put the bellows at my known position and then use the length of the string to set the distance of the subject from the camera. Worked for me, and the subjects. I did manage to lose a few shots. A couple were under exposed and two more went through the processor the wrong way. But I was able to hand out a few nicely sharp and well rendered prints, which was nice.

The next hardware meetup will be in three weeks on 22nd of April. I’m going to be further improving my portrait action then.