DESIGNOJEK» vintage

The Midland Railway

Dave — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 16:08:08 +0000

I took a trip out to Baldwin, KS last weekend and took a few photos on the historic Midland Railway. It was a really fun experience and this time of year is beautiful in Kansas. The leaves are just changing and the fields are being plowed, so a ride in an open-air train car is very relaxing. They have several vintage cars from the 1930s-1960s and they are really fun to walk through. I’ll have to try and make it back there and shoot some more photos sometime soon.

Car #8255 is a Diesel-Electric from 1951.

Car #999060 is the red caboose there and it’s from 1967.

In Time for St. Patrick’s Day

Dave — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 12:02:23 +0000

Photo from Flickr

In a very loose connection to St. Patrick’s Day, I wanted to point out an interesting marketing effort by General Mills in which they are bringing back the old school cereal boxes of days past. The Kix box is something else!

Happy St. Patrick’s day everyone and have a wonderful time!

Yashica Electro 35

Dave — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 03:09:06 +0000

Things have been busy around the ol’ studio lately. I’ll have some neat design work to post soon, but it’s not quite ready yet . . .

So, in the mean time, I was cleaning up my office a bit and I came across a camera that I’ve been using off and on for a while. There was half a roll of film in it (your guess is as good as mine as to what’s on the first half!) so I took it out to do some shooting this weekend. I’ll try and have some photos developed to post soon.

The camera is a Yashica Electro 35 rangefinder which is from the early 1970′s and is considered by some to be a “poor man’s Leica“. It has a beautiful lens which stops down to 1.7 so it’s a great camera for low light and for street photography. Since it’s a rangefinder, there is no mirror that flops up when you press the button, so there’s a barely audible click when the shutter opens which makes it nice for candid photos.

The camera came from my parents who got it as a gift from some friends who bought it new in Japan on a trip. They used it for a while, but soon retired it to the closet where it sat for a decade or two until I pulled it out and looked into getting it up and running again. The biggest problem was that the battery had been discontinued for several years, but upon some internet searching, I stumbled upon the Yashica Guy who sells a homemade adapter that will allow you to use a modern battery in it. A few days and $16 later, I was all set to go and I’ve had a lot of fun with it ever since. A lot of older cameras still have life left in them and they’re a blast to use so a quick internet search is well worth it before you toss your old equipment!

New Addition to the Arsenal

Dave — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 00:02:47 +0000

I’m really excited about the newest old camera that I’ve recently acquired! It’s a Polaroid SX-70 Land Camera and it’s in amazing shape! I have another instant camera, but what I’m excited about with this one is the ability to control the manual focusing and, to a certain extent, the exposures. There are a few tweaks I need to do including buying a neutral density filter, but it shouldn’t be too bad. Hopefully, I’ll get some good shooting in before Polaroid completely discontinues it’s instant film in 2009!

*sniff*

There is some pretty amazing work that has been done with Polaroids and a quick Flickr search will bring up a TON of great examples. Two artists I’ve been looking at lately are: Heather Powazek Champ and Mike Brodie (aka The Polaroid Kid). Of course, there are tons other great artists that I’ll link to in the future and I hope to post some great new Polaroids of my own here soon!

And, of course, a special thanks to Mona since she was the source of the camera. I promise it’ll be put to good use!