Taking EBS to the next level: Introducing the 'Buckshot EBS Revolver'
41 66Introducing the Buckshot EBS Revolver
As I said in the teaser launch blog for this ‘mystery product’, every big idea since the dawn of mankind started out with the simple question, “What if…?”.
Well, the simple question I asked myself — while sitting on a commuter train to work one morning in early May this year, contemplating my next symmetrical EBS project, and trying to think up a way to take some of the pain and technical difficulty out of shooting with this technique — was this: “What if you could simply turn the film around inside the camera…?”.
After having this ‘revolutionary’ idea, I spent many more train journeys thinking through how it might be possible to build such a camera, or to adapt an existing one that would do the trick. The questions were many — What camera to start with? Which parts to cut away? How to achieve the rotation? How to wind the film? How to ensure perfect alignment? How to make it light-proof? How to not obscure the viewfinder? What materials to use? What tools to use? — and they all posed challenges of their own.
However, I like challenges like this, and I like building ‘stuff’ generally, so once I’d got a basic approach sorted out in my mind, I started building a prototype. I’ll spare you all the messy details; suffice it to say that, five months of weekend labouring later, I now have a working prototype of what is, as far as I’m aware, the first camera in the history of photography that allows you to flip the film around while it’s inside the camera.
Let’s have a closer look at this beast!
And here are some shots from my first test rolls
Yes, it shoots vertical EBS on 35mm film too…!
You can see more of these test shots in my album Talkin' 'bout a revolution.
With a few minor modifications, and with a few things I’ve learned from shooting these test rolls, I hope to be able to get better shots out of this baby soon…
In the meantime, thank you for reading/watching, and thank you for your interest!
Love & bullets,
buckshot.
written by buckshot on 2014-10-13
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