Golf. On my life’s lengthy list of interests, it lies just below collecting doilies and just above… well… OK, nothing has ever been less interesting to me than golf.
Obviously, I have no problem with others enjoying it, and I personally know many who do. Humanity’s diversity makes the world an interesting place, so I make no judgement about the pastime of others, much as I hope they make none of mine, which clearly involves taking photos that almost no one else on the planet would ever choose to take.
That said, I will admit to having quietly lusted over one piece of golfing equipment for the past couple of decades: The Fuji Rensha Cardia BYU-N 16 golf camera. It’s a mouthful of a product name, but the clue to its objective lies in its decidedly laborious moniker. Rensha means rapid fire in Japanese, and Cardia obviously has something to do with timing. Byun is Japanese onomatopoeia for the sound of something flying through the air at a fast speed — like, say, a golf ball — while the number 16 tells us both the number of lenses on the front of the camera and the number of consecutive frames it shoots.
Head to the driving range, and tee up a ball. Enlist either the camera’s built-in self-timer or your golfing buddy to press the shutter once at the start of your swing. The camera does the rest — firing off 16 perfectly-timed shots spread across two standard 35mm frames. The point of such banality is not to take the world’s most boring photographs, but to analyze your golf swing and hopefully make corrections. That, and that alone, is pretty much the sole reason for this camera’s existence.
In fact, so singular is its purpose that there are little golfer logos adorning both the body and the LCD panel, along with a shutter button that’s dimpled to resemble a golf ball. I’m guessing the camera’s curious tealish/bluey colour is meant to complement the ridiculous golf clothing once popular in the 20th century. The back is fully adorned with text — which appears to be the entire owner’s manual, written solely in Japanese. This was a camera never intended to be marketed or sold outside Japan.
You’re probably asking yourself how someone with zero interest in golf could desire a camera designed specifically for and marketed exclusively to golfers. The most obvious reason is that its 16 sequential frames can be assembled into little low-fidelity animated GIFs, and indeed when I first acquired it, animated GIFs were a primary intent. But two things happened: 1) I decided I’m generally too lazy to stack, crop, align and animate the 16 frames; and 2) I discovered I liked taking multiple shots of the same subject and presenting one of the two frames in its entirety — a sort of instant Warhol machine.
The more I photograph with the BYU-N, the more I fall in love with it. Planning out single frame sequences has unlocked yet another avenue of creative exploration, and I feel like I’ve tasted only the first drop of an ocean of possibility. One has absolutely no control over the camera’s single shutter speed (1/250s), its single aperture (f/9.5), or its fixed single focus distance (however far away the golfer needs to stand in order to fit entirely in the frame). The only things you control is where you point it, and how long you feel like swishing around the exposed negatives in a tank of Rodinal.
The camera exposes two frames per sequence, with the first 8 exposures running across the top of the two frames, and the second 8 exposures running across the bottom. This means that no one frame has a single uninterrupted sequence. Frame 1 has shots 1-4 on top and 9-12 on the bottom. Frame 2 has shots 5-8 on top and 13-16 on the bottom. I find the act of planning around the non-linearity to be quite creatively satisfying.
Factor in an additional curiosity, in which the four edge photos on a frame are a different size and aspect ratio than the four centre photos, and the compositional choices become intoxicating. It’s cameras like this that make me truly mourn the rise and dominance of digital, when film is so much more malleable and open to experimentation.
I’m sure many will be baffled by my liking these photos, just as I’m baffled by their liking golf. But maybe they’ll find something appealing about them, much like I found satisfaction repurposing one of golf’s sillier accoutrements. It’s now got me thinking of all the alternative uses one might make of an old 9 iron.
©2024 grEGORy simpson
ABOUT THE PHOTOS :
With the exception of the photo showing the actual camera, all photos (and GIFs) were taken with a Fujifilm Rensha Cardia Byu-N 16 using either FP4+ or HP5+ and developed in Blazinal (Rodinal) 1:50.
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It’s like a nimslo got together with an action sampler and decided to make a baby. Somewhere along the line an extra chromosome got mixed up in there too.
I picked up a vintage style zippo recently. It was a knockdown price because it too had a golfer printed on there – soon remedied with acetone. I don’t suppose acetone would do the plastic body of your fuji any favours though.
Rather interesting results really, espeially Fugacious. I too like how you can stack sequences with some forethought. Lots of little vertical diptychs.
Perhaps you could macgyver together a 9 iron with your lomo spinner? I remember making animated gifs back in the livejournal days. A tedious process indeed, and rather gimmicky too I think.