I’ve had these images laying around for ages and stumbled across them again tonight. This is a prototype digital camera Kodak produced way back in 1975. The “toaster-sized” system relied on a cassette tape for recording data. The digitized images took 23 seconds to record to tape which then had to be played back using a specialized system (shown in the second photo — note the name of the Motorola computer, “EXORciser”). This is one of those times where I’m tempted to say “look how far we’ve come in such a short time!”. But damn, 1975? I wasn’t even born. I never would have guessed they had this sort of tech back then.
I’m really not sure I’d be doing the things I do now if I was coming up back in those days. Either computers have made me lazy, or I’m just inherently lazy, but I honestly can’t imagine dealing with 23-second-per-image write times and cassette tapes.
Check out this piece about the process of creating the prototype by one of the original team members, Steve Sasson: “Plugged In – We Had No Idea“
You may remember Impossible Project as the company that’s been promising to revive the recently-defunct Polaroid instant film brand. They delivered partially in March with the sepia PX 600 but now they’re finally offering full color film with their PX 70 product. The results (you can see some in this gallery – towards bottom of page) are a bit washed out for my tastes, I still would prefer the expired Spectra they offer. But it’s a step in the right direction for now.
Pelican Parts has a fairly sizable collection of Porsche Racing posters and have kindly posted high-res scans on their site. There are several eras represented, each with their own distinct style. Really shows off how classic the Porsche logo is, it seems to work pretty much anywhere you put it. Note the various 917’s in there.
I remember seeing some similar posters up on Grain Edit a while back with a link to VP Racing where you could buy some. I always meant to pick one up, but I just checked back and pretty much all the ones I wanted are gone. Someone really needs to reprint these.
There’s an article over at the Porsche site about Eric Strenger, who designed a lot of the Porsche racing posters during these periods. Looking through his work it’s amazing how much range he had as an artist. I would never have guessed some of these were by the same person.
Clutch’d has a gallery of beautiful Porsche 917 photos up. The legendary racer celebrated it’s 40th anniversary last year. Such an amazing design, and always love the vintage racing graphics.
As part of FITC SF (which I’ll also be speaking at) I’ll be playing a live Tycho set with the new band. It’s a private party for the conference but FITC has given me a handful of guest list spots to give out (all FITC attendees already get it, so don’t enter if you already have a pass for the conference). The show will be the night of August 18th, here in San Francisco. If you’d like to go, email fitc@iso50.com with “FITC Party” in the subject. We’ll pick some addresses and let you know if you won. Good luck!
You may remember Paul Tebbott from this post a while back. I recently checked back in on his portfolio and was glad to see some beautiful new work up. He seems to have refined his style a bit, these compositions seem a little more restrained than the earlier stuff, if only a little. I really like what I’m seeing, his use of color is excellent. But I must admit, I kind miss type treatments like this. I’d like to see the bottom three mocked up with some type included.
Project Thirty-Three has a great collection of vintage record sleeves up. This kind of minimalist approach to record jacket design is about as close as it gets to perfection for me. I’ve always loved the Blue Note style stuff but this is just a little more what I’m looking for. The simplicity is what really gets me, so much with so little. Wish I had prints of all these, but as a consolation, they make great iPhone backgrounds after a little editing.
Photographer Justin Quinnell created these eerily beautiful photos with a pinhole camera fashioned from a soda can. Each image represents a six month exposure. Incredible. For the top one, Justin affixed the camera to a telephone pole where it sat quietly soaking in the view for half a year. The arc created by the sun is amazing, the time lapse gives us such a clear perspective on nature’s orderly design. Check out some more pinhole shots here.
On a side note, these images instantly reminded me of the Niépce Photograph (first ever photograph) which in turn got me thinking about the first photograph of a person (lower left, getting a shoe shine) and the Gorskii stuff (very early color photographer). It’s all so intriguing, like you’re seeing something you’re not supposed to.
