#24 Sam Hiser – The Real Negative Positives

2020-03-06

Today we chat to Sam West who, along with Bob Crowley was behind the successful 2014 Kickstarter campaign to bring back a 4x5 Positive Negative instant film. Despite numerous setbacks New55 PN film is still being made and sold by Sam and his small team of elves in New England. Sam talks to us about that journey, his love of all things large format and where next…… Sam’s links

Today we chat to Sam West who, along with Bob Crowley was behind the successful 2014 Kickstarter campaign to bring back a 4x5 Positive Negative instant film.

Despite numerous setbacks New55 PN film is still being made and sold by Sam and his small team of elves in New England. Sam talks to us about that journey, his love of all things large format and where next……

Sam’s links

https://www.facebook.com/swhiser

https://www.instagram.com/swhiser/?hl=en

https://famousformat.com/

Things we chatted about on the show:

Sam talked about his engagement with the Featherstone Centre for the Arts. https://www.featherstoneart.org/

Sam touched on the different “families” of lens design, Simon got quite excited at this point and referenced his other podcast and the recent episode where Jason Lane gets into his lens design stride, catch it here.

https://www.classiclensespodcast.com/e/100-jason-lane-returns/

Tobias Feltus was a big supporter of the Kickstarter campaign and made some wonderful images to support the project using New55 PN material. See some of his images here and links to others

https://gallery.new55.net/tobias-feltus/#1

We got chatting about shutter repairs and camera repairs and Sam mentioned Bob Odess the go to Hassy man in the USA / World maybe.

http://david-odess.com/sales.html

Andrew then mentioned Lyndon from Londinium Camera Repairs who offers a great service and his communication is excellent.

https://londiniumcameras.com

Previous guest on the show (number 20) Kate Miller-Wilson published an article in PetaPixel showcasing the superb LF work she has been doing, using static electricity to create some otherworldly self portraits. Read the article here.

https://petapixel.com/2020/03/03/unique-self-portraits-made-by-zapping-4x5-film-with-static-electricity/?fbclid=IwAR0mhI7xYmK4kIt1AYt8Mg86lZ1OAPz0RF5OcHLkuPFJnqemTr6xJmyamrw

Another previous guest who has gone on to stardom thanks to Simon and Andrew is the lovely Sandeha Lynch, Sandeha was a guest on the most recent episode of the Homemade Camera Podcast and here is a link to that episode.

http://homemadecamera.com/e44-sandeha-lynch/

Why not come and join us the “LFPP 2020 Gathering in the Forest” over the weekend of 29th and 30th May.

Bracelands Camp site, Forest of Dean (that’s in the UK for those in the colonies) –

www.campingintheforest.co.uk

Andrew will be arriving on the Friday and Simon on the Saturday. The main “gathering” will be Saturday evening when we hope to share witty tales of large format japes, drink adult beverages and eat burnt food…..what’s not to love.

Thanks to all those who donated using the Ko-Fi site and to our email contributors, we finally managed to answer some (well two) before running out of time.

And……

If you live anywhere near Stoke On Trent then why not get in touch with Simon and coma along to the 6 Towns Darkroom on a Tuesday evening