How To Use A SplitCam

You're probably wondering what that is, so I'll elaborate. It's the type of camera I assume has been around for a long while, particularly sold in those old novelty catalogs you'd find in the back of comic books. It's painted half-yellow and half-black, which gives it a sort of contemporary noir look, which was popular in the 90s for whatever reason. It runs on any type of film, really, so long as the film is the right size. I've tried all types of film in it- some plain Kodak, some with a color variant, some with more light leak. At first when I walked into the camera store, I was kind of overwhelmed by just how many kinds of film there are to choose from. 

The novelty comes from the fact that you can either take normal pictures with it, by opening both flaps over the lens at once, or you can just open one of them, close it, and then take a completely different picture with the other flap open, creating a half-and-half double exposure effect. The result is fascinating, as one picture sort of blends into the other in an ethereal mist of film grain. It looks like something that should only be possible through computer processing, but the photo-trickery is entirely analog, and very rudimentary and simple at that. It even has a half-and-half viewfinder. 

The first roll I shot was in Larkspur, a little town a dozen or so miles south of Denver, where the Colorado renaissance festival is held every year. I was walking along a trail which used to be the property of a local dairy. The interesting thing about the trail is that you can still find the remains of broken milk bottles, cream bottles, and other dairy remnants. I took a few pictures of a small mountain across the railroad tracks which I tilted so as to give the landscape an impossible geometric feel. One was of me standing in front of the forest, and then I took the same shot without me, such that my face disappears at the bottom. You can also do things like take a picture of a tree, with the tree directly between the two halves, and then take a picture of someone poking out behind the other side of the tree, and it'll look like they're vanishing impossibly behind the tree. Really, though, the possibilities are endless. 

Most of the pictures from this Larkspur excursion I worked into a video called "Martin Scorsese's New Film," which features surreal sound which I felt complemented the equally surreal imagery. It's one of my favorite early videos. 

Recently, I've been using the Split Cam for more urban shots, in particular of run-down shops along Colfax at night and along South Broadway during the day. I particularly like South Broadway because most of the architecture hasn't changed since the 70s, which gives it a very atmospheric and laid-back tone. I took the film from this excursion to the camera shop about 20 days ago, so pretty soon I should be notified to go and pick it up. I'm really looking forward to seeing how these shots turn out, though it's always a fun surprise to wait for film development. 

I guess the point at the end of the day is that photo manipulation has been a staple of photography, long before Photoshop, even if the methods we used were more creative. One of the earliest examples that comes to mind is from my favorite cartoonist of all time, E.C. Segar. He took a photo of an average-sized fish he caught, and then glued it next to a photo of him, such that the fish looked like a whale. He even drew the same process out in one of his strips, "Sappo," whose titular character was somewhat of a photography nut. In the strip, the photo is explained as a kind of inexplicable double exposure rather than a deliberate subterfuge. 

All this history really helps put into perspective how dedicated analog photographers are toward the perpetuation of film, and how good and convincing film looks if used correctly. My SplitCam is a great little piece of technology, and I definitely recommend trying one out if you've already used a disposable camera on a vacation or something and want to graduate to something a little wackier.