We love camera hacking here at Hackaday, and it’s always fascinating to see new things being done in photography. Something rather special has come our way from [Camerdactyl], who hasn’t merely made a camera, instead he’s created an entirely new analogue film format. Move over 35mm and 120, here’s the RA-4 cartridge!
RA-4 is the colour print chemistry many of you will be familiar with from your holiday snaps back in the day. Normally a negative image is projected onto it from the negative your camera took, and the positive image is developed on the paper as the reverse of that. It can also be developed as a reversal process similar to slide film, in which the negative image is developed and bleached away leaving an unexposed positive image, which can then be exposed to light and developed to reveal a picture. This means that with carefully chosen colour correction filters it can be shot in a camera to make normal colour prints with this reversal process.
The new film format is a 3D printed cartridge system holding a long roll of RA-4 paper, which slots into a back for standard 5 by 4 inch cameras. He’s also made a modular developing machine for the process, and can get over 100 shots on a roll. A portion of the video below deals with how he wants to release it; since it has taken a huge amount of development resources he intends to release the files to the public in stages as he reaches sales milestones with his work. It’s an unusual strategy that we hope works for him, though we suspect that many camera hackers would be prepared to pay him directly for the files.
Either way, it’s a reminder that there’s still plenty of fun to be had with analogue film, and also that reversal development of RA-4 is possible. Some of us here at Hackaday have been known to hack a few cameras, we guess it’s another one to add to the “one day” list.
Thanks [Chuck] for the tip!
Darn, I sure wish I knew that RA-4 reversal trick back in the day. Here I was trying to make direct large-format prints with Cibachrome, which was a fundamentally unsatisfying (and expensive) process — way too little control over the print production for very little gain in image quality. The RA-4 positive process helps a bit with both issues.
Actually you can crossprocess a color negative film intended for the C41 into a slide with the E6 process. Reversing the RA-4 process paper should be possible, but I am not sure if it would be feasible. Personally I disagree with your opinion on the Ciba, it produced outstanding results, the rivalling R-3 process came no where close in most cases. Internegative on Kodak 6011 in C41 printed on any RA-4 was not even remotely comparable, the results sucked.
I agree: Used as intended, Cibachrome was outstanding. I still have several large prints I made 40+ years ago, still worth taking up wall space.
It was trying to press it into service as a direct print in a large format camera that didn’t turn out as well as it might.
I know nothing about film cameras but its wild to see they’re still being used and people are developing gear for them. The cameras in the video look like they popped straight out of early 1900s
Love it!
My wife is a professional photographer who made the transition from film to digital.
While digital is great to use and work with, there are some analog qualities are lost, and don’t seem to be replicated in digital.
CDs may be going by the way side streaming the king but vinyls are coming back.
The way that saturation of colors varies with brightness on film is often replicated in movies filmed digitally because people are used to that. Or sometimes, it’s possible to replicate the qualities you’re looking for but it’s just rarely done. So it may take more effort to figure out how to do it, but it can be done. If you name some of the things you’re looking for, I bet it’ll be possible to replicate at least some of them.
I really hope this strategy works for him. It seems like a great alternative to keeping it closed source, releasing it immediately but getting no compensation for the work he’s done, or infecting it with a viral licence (which won’t stop the usual sources reproducing it anyway…). The other obvious option would be a kickstarter type thing with releases of the files as “stretch goals”.
I so want this guy to succeed, and wish I had the money to buy his prints. Second fascinating and feelgood Hackaday post I’ve read today. Keep it up.