Long time readers may remember my grids, photos taken mostly in London from March to November 2002 using a teeny little L’espion camera. The L’espion was quite popular amongst bloggers for a while as it was really cheap, the first low budget digital camera on the market (this was before mobile phones cornered the market for shite photography) and had a funny name that sounded a bit like “lesbian”. The resolution was awful and it had no viewfinder but it came with a little belt pouch making it instantly available for taking pictures. And it was so small you could take photos of people without them knowing. Over that summer I took hundreds of photos and every time I had seventeen decent-ish ones stuck them online in a rather neat clickable grid which I’d copied from Matt Buddulph. 18 grids were produced before I got my current camera and became more interested in taking photos the looked kinda nice. But I’ve always had a soft spot for the lo-fi L’espion photos and occasionally think of buying another shit camera.
Anyway, I’ve stuck 313 of the L’espion photos on Flickr in their own set. The aesthetic is nice and it’s a good record of my life during that period as I really did take this camera everywhere (well, everywhere I took my trousers). It’s probably best viewed as a slideshow speeded up to one every couple of seconds. The photos are in the original groups but unfortunately not in date order. I may fix that and when I do I’ll add captions as I can pretty much remember what they’re all about. Rather surprising consider how drunk I was most of the time…
Do you still have your L`espion? If not, I have one of their Digital Dream cameras that sits here mostly unused. Should you suddenly crave a photo excursion with said camera, let me know.
moseleyblogger: I have a use for it, you can send it to me.
Pete: a friend has a rather good one-a-day l’Espion blog which seems only to get comments from me at present. I love the grainy effects, and the lomo-esque dark halo. Yours look more naturalistic, somehow. Also, have you a link to the actual gridmaker, or did you code it yourself?
moseleyblogger: I have a use for it, you can send it to me.
Pete: a friend has a rather good one-a-day l’Espion blog which seems only to get comments from me at present. I love the grainy effects, and the lomo-esque dark halo. Yours look more naturalistic, somehow. Also, have you a link to the actual gridmaker, or did you code it yourself?
Pete, I also have a site digital camera you can have :) I can freecycle it your way if you want.
I’ve uploaded some sample shots at flickr.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/moseleyblog/sets/990614/
Looks like everything is in working order. Let’s see what Pete says (i.e., right of first refusal), but it could soon be winging its way to Brenda. Will need Mac drivers, but those can be located at http://www.digitaldreamco.com/en/index.shtml
Moseleyblogger – Brenda can have it. I still have mine somewhere but it didn’t want to play with OSX. Maybe they’ve updated the drivers finally. Shall investigate.
Dave – I assume you mean “shite”. ;) Hang on to it – I’ll have a look next time I’m down your way.
Right. On its way. As soon as I get the correct house number and last 3 bits of the post code. I’m guessing the post code is 7LP.
Nice photos!
I love my l’Espion camera… I should dig it out again + shoot more horribly tiny photos, haven’t used it for a while…
Now they’re kind of old I’ll buy/aquire some more and have a go at circuitbending/hacking them. Or maybe built a Timeslice setup if I can get hold of enough!
Here’s a possible tip: I found the tiny lens would get filled up with fluff/dust quite easily and was fiddly to clean, so I just stuck a piece of cine splicing tape over it! Didn;t seem to aversly effect the image, and made life easier. :)