Nat @ CRAFT writes –
Audrey Penven is sewing with night vision goggles to experiement on a technique for sewing unexposed negatives together. Here’s she’s doing a practice round with the goggles before sewing on live film in the darkroom. This project is in collaboration with Mike Estee and Jake Appelbaum.
Sewing with night vision goggles – Link.
20 thoughts on “Sewing with night vision goggles”
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It is my understanding that night vision goggles use ambient light, and therefore wouldnt work in a black room.
I think we should pitch in and get her a copy of Photoshop :-)
NVGs amplify near-IR light at wavelengths that wont affect normal film.
WTF?
Why would you need to sew them together…you can just tape or glue them…or sonic weld.
I’m confused.
//and I’m waiting for the picture of her with her hand sewn to the negatives, because her depth perception got screwed up using a monocle.
Why is she doing this? It’s not to increase resolution, because then she’d just use another format, but it’s obviously going to be put through a camera or she wouldn’t need to do this in a darkroom.
Weird…
My feeling is that someone who really knows their way around a darkroom can do all the processing in total darkness. Course, anyone who’s tried to load Nikkor film reels would probably appreciate some NVGs the first two or three or twenty times….
2 things:
Can’t you just use that little red darkroom light? or is that only for developing already exposed negatives
As for possible uses, at first I was thinking this was going to be some part of an incredibly large format pinhole camera (think that box van pinhole camera that was on this site a while back) but further thinking leads me to believe they are setting up some kind of camera to shoot many many frames on one roll. Maybe for some sort of prolonged un-attended use such as on an aerial photography balloon or motion activated wildlife camera. I would have just used a DSLR :P
I believe the red darkroom light is only safe for black and white printing paper. Anything else: pitch black. Especially unexposed film.
Now for the “art” project, I’m sure there is a “reason” for sewing. I just would not want to sew stuff in the dark, especially 35 mm film. Glue sounds better.
It doesn’t matter if they use near-IR, in a black room you would need to add a light source for them… and that light source is gonna be outside the spec a little and fog your film. You need pitch black for B&W negatives, anything else it it will fog it. Unless of course there is a very wavelength specific light source and the film is tested to specifically not be sensitive to that wavelength. then again the goggles are going to generate light to show you the image, hope you have a real good seal on them, remember the film will be out long enough to sew it!
She better put a black scarf over her head — that hair is giving off some kind of rays.
NV goggles do not work without light, however the small amount of light leaking into the room might be sufficient for 3rd gen NV gogs -not those 1st gen 1980s goggles. The right way to do this would be to just use larger format film instead of stitching together smaller pieces -then again I don’t really understand art.