storeHouse studio
Camera Guides and Monographs
& Interesting Little Books
The storeHouse is not only a studio - it's a publishing house. We have produced a series of books for the film camera collector and user plus a number of other idiosyncratic texts, all written or edited by Andrew Fildes who reckons he can write a bit! Some agree, some maintain a polite silence. He's spent the lockdown preparing a number of books, including a couple of children's books and a couple of picture books for grown ups. Good grief, he even writes poetry! Three or four are in proof stage at the moment so come back soon.
The Blurb addresses have been reproduced with the books (not as hot links unfortunately - that won't seem to work with nn-standard URL's so please cut and paste into your browser). These tend to change, especially with updates, or just sometimes don't work.
But you can always search under the name, Andrew Fildes, on www.blurb.com instead.
Present Photo Titles -
The SLR, TLR and Half frame Compendia were compiled by Andrew Fildes, former equipment reviewer and feature writer for Australian Photography Magazine, Digital Photography & Design Magazine and the late, much lamented Photographic Trader. They are updated when time or need permits or demands. But in several years, almost no corrections have been necessary. Only a couple of very odd cameras were missed.
These larger texts, the 400+ page Compendia are offered by Print on Demand through Blurb. You go to their website, leaf through a sample of the book and order one up. They print and post to you directly. This saves time and huge expenses in postage costs for US and European readers - remember, we're in Australia! It's in your hand within 7-10 days. Even for Australian readers it works out cheaper and even faster as it avoids double posting and I note that Blurb is now printing many of my titles in Australia.But they are a bit inconsistent so check the postage and if it seems excessive, wait a few days until they get local printing up again - or contact me as I usually have a few in stock.
Smaller books like the Olympus Trip 35 Instruction Manual, The Box Camera User's Guide and others are available directly from the author - message through this site or directly to soultheft@optusnet.com.au
The Kodak to The Brownie - The most Important Cameras Ever Made?
The SLR Compendium - An Evolutionary History and Guide
The TLR Compendium - A Guide and History
The Half Frame and 24 Square Camera Compendium.
The Box Camera - A User's Guide
The Olympus Trip 35 - Instruction Manual
And the others
A set of creative fiction and non-fiction works plus some small compilations of poetry from limericks to classic styles. And even a couple of children's books,originally for my grand-daughters. Writing and creating books is my pastime and passion, especially in lockdown.
The War Diary of Clarence George Hurley
How to Cook an Omelette
Sredni Vastar - a Horror Story
Photographica Collectors Books
Note - if ordering in North America, Europe or elsewjhere outside Australia click on the flag for your nation in tht top right hand corner of the Blurb page for the book. I'm not entirely sure (another cyber mystery) but this may affect where your copy is printed and the consequent postage fees.
The SLR Compendium
The ultimate general reference text for the SLR camera from wood and leather to digital. The SLR was and is the most popular form of camera ever created and it still is.
The SLR Compendium was first produced in early 2013 and is in it's first major revision. In here you'll find every brand, every model ever made with its history, design, features and reference images - everything the novice and user needs to know and an essential reference text for the collector. Crammed with essential details but with the weird and wonderful stuff as well. Also included are guides lenses and lens mounts, ancient and modern. There are also guides to technical details and such roblems as model rebranding to sort out who made what.
As it is produced by 'print on demand', it can be updated on a regular basis and reader contributions are encouraged and incorporated, a first for a reference book, perhaps.
Order by 'Print on Demand' from Blurb
https://au.blurb.com/b/4628309
The TLR Compendium
New in 2014 - Following on a year after the SLR Compendium, the ultimate general reference text for the classic TLR camera from wood and leather to the last Rolleiflex. The TLR was the simplest entry to medium format photography, immensely popular, the mainstay of press photographers and portraitists for decades and it still fascinates.
From the Rolleiflex onwards, here you'll find every brand, every model ever made (that we could find!) with its history, design, features and reference images - everything the novice and user needs to know and an essential reference text for the collector.
Order by 'Print on Demand' from Blurb
https://au.blurb.com/b/4744744
The Half Frame Compendium
As witht he SLR and TLR, a complete encyclopedia as far as is possible of the 35mm half frame (or single frame) cameras made in the 20th century. Half frame was the original format for 35mm movie and what we now think of as 'full frame' was original called double frame! There were many cameras made that doubled the number of shots on a film, for economies of film consumption or size. Man are still popular users.
As welll as the half frame camera, many were made with a 24mm square image format. These are less well known and have alson been included.
https://au.blurb.com/b/6639880
The Kodak to The Brownie
This was to be a special edition of the new collectors magazine 'Hunters and Collectors' but that was delayed by the Covid crisis.
The Kodak to the Brownie looks at the period in the history of Eastman from the first snapshot camera, The Kodak of 1888 to the first Brownie, the $1 camera that changed everything. The ability of literaly anyone with a dollar to now record history changed the way that we look at the past forever.
All the cameras of this innovative period are pictured in colour and described in detail along with the peoplewho developed them (no, not George and not even Eastman Kodak at times) and associated technology like celluloid roll film that made it all possible.
https://au.blurb.com/b/10771534
The Box Camera -
A Users's Guide
New in 2014. A pocket guide to the box camera from the original Eastman Kodak No.1 of 1888 through to the last forms of the 1960's and a few modern versions of the fantastic plastic era.
In a compact format, you'll find a comprehensive pictorial history, a guide to using various types, full details of 120 film, suggestions on how to modify large format models to 120 film and much more.
Note that this is not a comprehensive collectors guide but rather desgned for someone who actually wants to shoot with a Box Camera and experience true retro photography with all its challenges.
Available directly from the author at this site - $20 inc. postage anywhere
Olympus Trip 35
Guide and Manual
One of our most popular titles since it was released in 2013. The Olympus Trip 35 was perhaps the best compact viewfinder camera ever made. Around 4-5 million of the first metal model were made and many are still going strong. They still get a good price online from the new generation, anxious to try a good quality, solar powered, point and shoot film camera. But the original manual was a rather skimpy orange and black single sheet, unhelpful to a novice film user with their first film camera and unsatisfying for an experienced user. So we produced a proper instruction manual for those unfamiliar with ideas like 'zone focussing' and complete with tips and tricks, creative deas,a guide to cheap flash with the Trip and other such essentials.It comes in a handy pocket size.
Available directly from the author through this site -
$15 inc. postage anywhere.
The other books! Writing is a hobby, obsession, disease, whatever. So I write and the discoery of self-publishing was a revelation. So now I write little books that entertain me and mine, vanity volumes, whatever. Some are pretty good I think and pretty bad at times and... Well, friends are kind or silent. Short stories, a crime novel or two, collections of poetry, probably bad, children's books, whatever strikes me. The War Diary of Clarence George Hurley
One day while rummaging in family effects, I found a litle notebook. It was the diary of my wife's great uncle. He died at Paschendaale in 1917, wounded and gassed. A schoolteacher of little military talent, he kept a rough, little diary in pencil from arriving in theUK (with mumps) to a couple of days before he died a year or so later as a gunner near Ypres.
Many of the things he wrote about were mysterious after 100 years so on the left side of each page set, I annotated and illustrated, to bring some sense to it. Nothing before brought home to me that idea of war being long periods of boredom interupted with moments of abject terror. Transcribing the untidy scrawl over several months was difficult, both visually and emotionally - at times I had to walk away for a while. After all, as he came to ife for me in my mind, I also knew his awful fate. (Not quick and clean, but slow and obscene - Eric Bogle's sentiment).
He was not really a good soldier but I suspect ut a good enough man in an insane world. Good enough to have deserved so much more and better. A full life at least. I would wish him to be remembered.
Available as print on demand - www.blurb.com/b/10221705
As Slow As...
A Little Picture Book for Grown-ups
Facinated by the way we use bad similes to describe time (while stuck in traffic one day - 'As slow as...') I put together this little book on expressions for Slow and Quick. And illustrated it too. Even my family were impressed! I think it would make a great little gift for someone with the same bent sense of humour as me. https://au.blurb.com/b/10890478
How to Cook an Omelette
A most unusual approach to an autobiography - one that thrtows away the truth quite openly in favour of a good yarn. This is as much what should have happened as what actually did. And the author lived through some interested times in interesting places and observed them well - he says!
The horrors of a nice English middle class upbringing, of primary school brutality, Grammar school food and surviving London and France of the late 1960's. Worse, the escape in emmigration, of teaching to extinction, survivng the Trans-Siberian when 'hard class' really was and eventually an escape into professional photography.
It's weird, it's ordinary, it's funny, it's sad and it is certainly partly untrue, perhaps. And it even has the recipe for a proper omelette, learned in a farmhouse kitchen near Cognac as a lad. Because life is a bit of an omelette - potential great and simple but usually badly cooked and a bit of a mess.
https://au.blurb.com/b/10827395
Sredni Vashtar
If Sredni Vashtar is not among the best short stories ever written, it may well be the best short horror story ever written. No monsters here - just a boy, his awful guardian and a willing mongoose. Or perhaps, these are the real monsters. Taken to task a while ago by my adult son for never having told him about it, I prepared this compilation - the story itself, the bio of the author, H.H. Munroe, an analysis of the tale and some of the art that has been inspired by it. It is my homage to the master, the man who wrote a tale that chilled and fascinated me as a child. For what child has never contemplated a nasty fate for his adult oppressors...
H.H. Munroe (Saki) was very popular in his time but unlike Kipling or Conan Doyle, is now little remembered.
https://au.blurb.com/b/4788952