Space, 1999

[imomus]

Ten years is a long time in digital camera design, so when Hisae decided to refurbish her old Nikon Coolpix 950 it felt more like time-traveling back to 1969 than 1999 -- especially with the optional fisheye lens adaptor screwed into place.

A camera that, ten years ago, seemed light and expensive now seems heavy and cheap, and its 2 megapixel sensor doesn't seem anything like as spacious now as it did back then. But there's no denying the quality and quirk of the images you can get with this Nikon, once you've slipped in four AA batteries (they'll last about 30 minutes before they need replacing), screwed the lens adaptor into its mount, and twisted the rugged swivel-body into action.

Here's a fisheye documentation of our living space via the kind of lens usually reserved for Apollo capsules and Stanley Kubrick (or, for a more 1999-era reference, Chris Doyle) films.

Comments

Re: Masataka Nakano

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Our window is whatever the projector throws onto the wall.

Re: Masataka Nakano

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

I found Tokyo Windows in a friend's flat, and immediately liked it. He told me about a former collection from Masataka Nakano called Tokyo Nobody. I've just re-read the explanation on the site, which is a bit unclear:

It is his first book, which is a collection of the moments “nobody” in Tokyo.
He took over 10 years for persuading to get the varied scenes with 8x10 camera.

The idea, as it was explained to me, was that he would take photographs of parts of crowded central Tokyo at times when no one was visible - not by any prearrangement, but simply by accident. That's why it took 10 years. Apparently he was very strict with himself, and blew up prints to examine the windows in the skyscrapers and so on to see if faces were visible at them.

Anyway, for some reason some of your flat photos reminded me of one or two of the Tokyo Windows ones.