I’d never heard of the Koni Omega Rapid series of cameras until someone offhandedly mentioned it in a Bronica Users Group. I found one for not much money, complete with lens and 120 film back, and then quickly jumped on a 220 film back even before the camera arrived. It was a good move! The Koni Omega is a 6×7 medium format rangefinder. It comes standard with a Hexanon 90mm f/3.5 lens, which is really sharp! And the rangefinder is really very accurate, at least on the version I have. So it’s possible to shoot portraits wide open and have nice bokeh (out of focus background) and yet keep the subject very sharp. All without using a reflex mirror to see what I’m doing!

The 220 back turned out to have light leaks, so I need to work on that a bit. But I’m very excited about this camera. It has a leaf shutter, so the flash syncs at all shutter speeds (up to 1/500). This is useful when lighting outdoors, and so this will likely become my main outdoor-portrait camera. It’s not a ‘fast’ camera, in that focusing takes a moment. So I can’t practically run after kids, firing away. And with only 10 or 20 shots per roll (120 or 220), it’s not that sort of camera anyway. But for giant portraits of a more sedate nature, it’s perfect! Oh one other thing, the minimum focus distance is about 3 ft, so it’s not a close-up camera. But rangefinders aren’t ideal for that anyway.

All images shot on a 220 roll of Fuji Pro 400H, exposed at ISO 250.

Lead image: my dining room ceiling fan. Camera was placed on the table, and centered carefully. I pre-focused as best I could, but couldn’t really be sure since it had to sit on the table. f/5.6 and shutter speed of 1/15th.

Posters at the Majestic Ventura Theater, Ventura California.

Old church building, Ventura.

Another old church, this one painted pink and converted into a bed and breakfast!

This is Luis, who I met outside a barber shop. The shop hadn’t opened yet, and he feared the barber might have closed up permanently. He thought I was waiting for a haircut as well, so we started chatting. He agreed to pose for a quick portrait.

Hey look, I’m Jonathan Canlas! (Hardly.)

I’m giving a talk on photography to some Cub Scouts tomorrow, and the main event will be having them shoot each other using my Toyo-View C 4×5 view camera, using Fuji FP-3000B instant film. Instant photo gratification for nine year olds…can’t beat it! Strobes and everything. So I did a test with the camera today (haven’t used it in awhile).

Just like Mr Canlas, I scanned the ‘throw away’ negative rather than scanning the actual positive print. Has a little more character this way. Inverted it, flipped it, adjusted levels and added a little sepia tone. The solarization is interesting, as that doesn’t exist on the positive.

I set up an Alien Bees B800 strobe, and bounced it off the ceiling behind the camera. Since this is ISO 3200 film, a little light goes a long way. f/22.5 if I recall. I triggered the strobe using CyberSync radio triggers. 250mm lens.

My eldest son just had eye surgery last week, so he’s got an eye patch on. In case you were wondering.

I only have a polaroid back for this camera, so I had to borrow my friend’s Fuji pack film back. Unfortunately he’s going to sell it afterward, so this might be the last Fuji instant film I use on the Toyo. Oh well…

I was testing a newly-acquired 50mm f/1.4 lens for my Nikon N90s. It happened to be raining, so my youngest son and I went out to rescue worms from drowning in puddles. Loaded up some Portra 800…yikes is this stuff grainy! This was film I acquired from a friend, and is expired but had been refrigerated. No idea if this stuff is supposed to be this grainy, or the older emulsion is grainier than new versions, or if my cheap CVS scans are to blame (hey I didn’t feel like scanning it myself, nor paying for ‘pro’ scans…so sue me). I did buy some fresh Portra 800 to test, but after seeing the results of up-rating the new Portra 400, or pushing it several stops, I don’t see the point. I’ll just wait a week or two until it has been released in 35mm format.

Go Shoot! An occasional series where I just post my images from a recent shoot or outing, consisting usually of family snapshots or personal work.

Spent a recent weekend camping at Carpinteria State Beach here in California. Mostly overcast skies and cool weather, but that didn’t stop anyone from having fun. I made it a medium-format trip, by bringing my Yashica-Mat (6×6 twin-lens reflex camera) and my Bronica ETR-s (645 format medium-format SLR system).

My wife’s family has been going to this same camping spot every year for the last 30+ years, and I’ve gone for about ten years now. Every year I bring a camera, and sometimes it gets difficult to find something new to shoot. I had originally intended to stretch myself by shooting black and white macro images while there. I had planned on doing this with my Bronica EC, which easily handles macro just by flipping the lenses around with an adapter ring. However at the last minute I was asked by my wife’s aunt to photograph her side of the family, as all fourteen of them would be together for the first time in a long while. I said “fine!” (And then to myself, “but I’m shooting it all on film, because I’m on vacation”).

I’ll probably post those images when I get them back from the lab, assuming they came out ok. Risky business, shooting on film for such a rare gathering. I’m crossing my fingers that nothing got screwed up.

Meanwhile, the Yashica-Mat was used for a few snapshots. I shot using some long-expired Konica 160 film I bought from someone locally, and this was my first time using it. A little grainier than I’d expected for 160 ISO film, but the colors look good. And I do like the way the Yashica-Mat makes photos!

An action shot using a twin-lens reflex is always a dicey proposition. What this image lacks in sharpness it makes up for in energy! And in my defense, it would have been sharp if he hand’t been moving. Note the sharpness of the stationary foot.

Pure snapshot time: my wife and father-in-law relaxing and waiting for the sun to arrive.

A couple of weeks ago I found an old roll of 35mm Ilford Delta 3200 in my fridge ‘film collection’, and decided it might be a nice time to use it in my Yashica Electro-35 GSN (camera profile here). I shot the roll at its native ISO of 1000, so I wouldn’t have to pay the lab to push or pull it. Then to complicate matters further, I primarily used a heavy red filter on the lens, which reduced the light about 3 stops. A red filter on black and white film makes reds brighter, greens darker, and cyans/blues very dark. That ball in the lead shot is one of those red playground balls! Since I can’t control shutter speed on the Electro, I set the ISO for three stops down from 1000, to 125.

For most shots I also used a flash. The flash was a Nikon SB-28, set to auto mode. In many cases I wanted to “knock the ambient down” (in strobist talk), or underexpose the backgrounds a little. To do this, I made the camera think the film was a little more sensitive than it really was, and bumped the ISO up to 250. Meanwhile the flash was set to think the film was ISO 125 at whatever aperture I was using. Confusing? It was worth the mental gymnastics as I was able to get dark skies and backgrounds, and a nice bright subject.

The image directly below, unlike the first and last images, had no red filter and I set the ISO correctly at 1000 (the highest the camera will go!). Simple window light for this one.

Back to the red filter and all the gymnastics for this last shot.