Nutty idea- continuous portrait?

keithwms · 03-09-2008, 04:14 PM

Sometimes I get nutty ideas, bear with me.

Recently I saw something quite clever, a person had run exposures together on a holga, by partially winding or taking out the winder or such. I am drawing a blank on the name of the young lady who did this, maybe Scott can remember her name, she was at Art-o-matic last year. Adrienne or something like that.

Anyway, it seems a fairly simple technique. And the result was quite special.

Hence my proposal: we get as many of us onto one roll as possible, continuously, without breaking the frame. A holga with winder ripped off or whatever is passed until the film ends. The roll of film captures a seamless group portrait, which will then be contact printed.

Now, I don't know if this is too hard. Might anybody have a holga and be able to comment on the likelihood of success? I mean, we'd have to roughly agree on exposure and such, but I think as long as the exposures overlap slightly, I guess the result will be of interest.

mabman · 03-11-2008, 07:42 PM

Actually, that sounds doable - the Holga film advance "clicks" when you turn it, so if you figure out the baseline number of clicks necessary to advance the frame but ensure the next frame is right up against it, everyone could simply use the same number of clicks.

k_jupiter · 03-12-2008, 05:28 AM

Interesting idear. Now one way to accomplish this would be to use a 6x9 camera that also has advance windows for 6x4.5. Using the camera without the 645 mask, but only advancing the film for 645. Everyone would shoot at double the film speed (i.e. shoot at 400 for an ISO 200 B&W film).

Not a round 6 project but lets keep it on the table for a special LAS1C round.

Anybody got one of those old Bessas without the 645 mask?

tim in san jose

SuzanneR · 03-12-2008, 07:38 AM

I've overlapped frames in my holga by having set at 16, when I meant to have it set at 12 without the frame thingy inside there. I think...

Interesting idea!!

TheFlyingCamera · 03-12-2008, 10:06 AM

I have a Seagull 6x6 rangefinder that has 645 and 6x6 options (the mask is a pair of little barn-doors that fold away into the film wells when not in use). It's a cheap little camera and pretty simple. The downside is that the lens works a little like a soft-focus lens, but not predictably, which is why I quit shooting with it. 1980s Chinese quality control, whatcha gonna do?

Keith- the woman at artomatic's name was Erin. I forget her last name. She had the wall opposite mine. Thinking of Artomatic, while they haven't yet announced the location or started signup for it, there WILL be an Artomatic 2008.