Fun with a dental camera

It was only a few weeks ago that I vowed never to try using a vintage camera again. But then I bought this new one and I couldn’t resist it. It’s called a Yashica Dental-Eye camera, and here’s a picture of it.

The Dental-Eye is actually a Yashica FX-3, which was sold for dentists and opticians to photograph teeth and eyes in 1:1 close-up. The camera has a fixed 55mm f/4 lens, surrounded by a ringflash, which incorporates a small modelling lamp in the shape of a torch bulb. The batteries to run it all are in a compartment on the bottom of the body, which looks like a motor drive, but isn’t. The only control is a dial where you would normally expect the shutter speed dial to be. On this you set the film speed. Then you turn on the flash with a switch on the back of the camera and the modelling light with a switch on the front, and you’re ready to shoot.

What appears to be the focusing ring around the lens is actually a control to vary the magnification from 1:1 to 1:10. You focus by simply moving the camera back and forth in front of the subject, and because the light is supplied by flash, there’s no worry about camera shake at such close distances. I haven't shot any teeth or eyeballs, but had great fun wandering around the garden with it.

Below are a couple of pictures I took with this weird camera. Incidentally, having been dedicated to digital photography for a few years now, I was horrified to find I had to pay over a fiver for the film and the same again to have it processed, and I didn’t even have any prints made from it! I just scanned the negatives so that I could get digital images you see here. 

Busy, busy, busy...

Well, it’s been a time since I added anything new to this blog, and the reason is that I’ve been a bit busy. Never a bad thing when you’re a freelance writer of course. So what have I been up to?

First off I landed a new job with a software company who want me to do all their media and publicity writing for a nice little retainer every month. It’s not the sort of thing many freelance writers aspire to, but there’s a nice little retainer attached and we can’t all be the next Stephen King – and I’ve tried to be, believe me, I’ve tried. And failed.

So I’m jogging along nicely, filling my days with writing about software and trying my best to be creative about it when an email arrives from the new Editor of Photography Monthly magazine, a chap I was in contact with a few years back when he worked at Amateur Photographer. It seems they are running a special issue on retro cameras in December and he invited me to write something on a 1950s camera called the Wrayflex, a subject dear to my heart because I have already written a book on the subject as well as several previous features for magazines ranging from Kent Life here in the UK (the Wray factory was in Kent) to Shutterbug in the States. What’s more, the Editor suggested tying in a special offer for readers on the book, which incidentally is called TheWrayflex Story. Here’s a pic of the cover if you’re interested.

Problem was he gave me a very tight deadline, but never mind because, having written so much about this subject in the past I can do it in my sleep. So it was just a matter of combining the best of the Kent Life and Shutterbug features, to meet a rather tough the deadline. Don’t you just love word processors?

I was in fact half-way through doing just this and dozing nicely (while still trying to write creatively about software for my new client) when the phone rang. It was the Editor of Writing Magazine to say could I write a couple of features for the December issue on self-publishing. Well, about a year ago, I tried to get a book off the ground on this very subject, based on my experiences of publishing The Wrayflex Story. I couldn’t find a publisher for it then. I did, however, have much of the preliminary work done for the project, so what never saw the light of day as a book was easily adaptable and is now staring over quite a few pages in the December issue of Writing Magazine. And guess what? Since The Wrayflex Story was self-published, it gave me a great excuse to plug the book all over again.

Looks like it might be a good Christmas after all.

By the way, if you’re interested, you can find all the details you need on The Wrayflex Story and another self-published book called Clockwork Cameras on my website. Click here for a link.

Oh, and another thought has just occured to me. Having taken on this job for the software company, maybe there's a feature to be written on corporate writing that Writing Magazine might be interested in. Funny how different projects tie themselves together sometimes.