On my bookshelf "Plastic Cameras"

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• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Focal Press; 2 edition (4 Oct 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0240814215
• ISBN-13: 978-0240814216

"Plastic Cameras: Toying with Creativity"

This book focuses on the low end tech of world of photography, this being the world of the plastic camera. This book is a great book that would suit a wide range of photographers, from those who just like to have a bit of fun all the way up to the professional that wants to and something different to their images and ways of thinking.

You may be wondering what makes a Toy camera. Well it’s not the camera that you may find in the wardrobe or bottom draw at your grandparent’s house. A toy camera is usually a plastic bodied, plastic lens camera the often as light leaks, the focus may be slightly out and can often distort an image. This may sound exactly what you do NOT want from a camera but with the help of this book you have that way of thinking totally transformed. The photographs taken often have a dreamlike appearance to them. 

 Some of the cameras that are featured in the book are cameras such as The Diana, The Holga family of cameras.

This book happens to be the second edition and as such has extra cameras added to it such as the Pinhole wide Holga, Holga Stereo and the Blackbird Fly. As well as this there are now even more fantastic artists added such as Christopher James and Michael Kenna.

This beautifully laid out book will help the novice in photographer or the new to analogue, to prepare their camera and the book also goes in to detail about the pros and cons that each plastic camera has, along with their quirks. I really like the way the book goes into detail about making good images taking advantage of the vignetting and often light leaks. There is help and guidance for using colour flashes and mutli=exposures as well a whole array of other creative ideas and solutions.

This book can be roughly broken down into 3rds.

 The 1^st is more of an introduction into the world of the plastic camera.

The 2^nd  part to the book (about 30% of the book) is dedicated to photographers portfolios, of which I wish there was more of this but the contents of the rest of the book definitely makes up for this. This portfolio part to the book just shows the cameras may have the name “toy Camera” but they can be used for far more than just playing about with.  This section features photographers such as Michael Ackerman, Betsy Bell, Harvey Stein, Kurt Smith, and Richard Ross, to name only a few.

The 3^rd and last part of the book is where you will find all the various hints and tips and cool adaptations that can be used to modify the cameras to get even more out of your chosen Toy camera.

One of the many things that I like about this book is the way that Michelle Bates  takes her readers from the negative all the way through to either prints or pixels enabling the readers to get the most out of their photographs.

This is the first comprehensive book on the subject of Toy cameras that I have come across. This book is such a great source for inspiration. The book brings together the history of the cameras and an exhaustive collection of instructions for modifications that can be made to further the creative process when using these wonderful cameras. My only criticism would we that the book does seem to be more biased towards the Holga and Diana range of cameras, but this is only a small issue and most of the tips and tricks could, with a bit of imagination, be adapted to suit other plastic cameras.

Thanks for reading , please feel free to leave an comments or personal views on the Analogue vs Digital topic.

You may also like to read;
On my bookshelf "Holga, The world through a plastic lens"

or

On my bookshelf "The Polaroid Book"

Written by Paul Casey Hemming 

@ Big World Picture Dot Com

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