Written by matt on 07 June 2010
[Note: this giveaway is now over. Winner named below. Subscribe to the blog for future film giveaways!]
I recently acquired several grocery bags full of film from a fellow photographer. It’s all expired, but has been kept refrigerated and so is still perfectly fine. I thought I’d share the wealth!
One lucky person will receive three (3) rolls of Fuji Acros 100 (black and white) 35mm film, 36 exposures. I’ll ship it anywhere in the world.
The rules:
• Void wherever taxed, licensed or prohibited. Don’t enter if it will get you or I in trouble. No purchase necessary (or even possible, as I am not currently selling anything).
• You must tweet (or retweet) the link to this post on Twitter. Use the handy icon below. If you don’t have a Twitter account, perhaps it’s time you signed up for one?
• Comment on this post, by putting your Twitter user name below. That way I can verify that you’ve tweeted a link to this post. Make sure you enter a valid email address when commenting (in the non-published email field), as I will contact the winner that way.
• The winner will be randomly selected from those who participate. The Twitter user name of the winner will be posted in the blog post itself, on Thursday, June 10th, some time in the morning (Pacific Coast Time). I will email the winner for his/her mailing address at that time.
And the winner is…
Syd Weedon!
How the winner was chosen:
First I counted up how many people who had entered (six). I went to random.org and used their integer generator. I set a range of 1-6, and then did a trial run of 20 integers to make sure it was actually hitting all the numbers. Then I closed my eyes, held my breath and reconfigured it to return a single result. Which in this case was “2″, and Syd was the second person to enter. Congrats, Syd! I’ll email you to get your address.
Thanks for everyone else who played and tweeted. I’ll be doing this again in a few weeks.
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Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments »
Written by matt on 06 June 2010
I have a Zenza Bronica EC, which is a medium format 6x6cm (2-1/4 x 2-1/4″) camera. One of the nice things about it is that it has two ways to mount a lens: it will accept a Bronica S/S2 type lens, or it will accept a simple screw-mount lens as well (57mm diameter I believe). This happens to work well with a very common Minolta extension tube set found on ebay. I turned the cap and one of the rings into a pinhole “lens”, by drilling a hole in the cap. I placed over it a pinhole I’d made a couple of years ago from tin, measured somewhat precisely using my scanner. It had an aperture of f/369 (no that’s not a typo!). So using Fuji HGII ISO 800 film, my exposure was 1/2 s to 1 s in full sunlight. The “lens” focal length was about 110mm, so slightly telephoto for the angle of view.
I like the blurry people, but I’m not very fond of the overall unsharpness. I did intentionally build sand castles and rock towers and placed the camera near them, so that the sense of scale would be distorted. But ultimately I don’t know if this is the best subject matter for pinhole (in my opinion, anyway).
The very last shot is one I took with a regular 75mm lens. F/16 at 1/1000 sec. I used that lens to help line up the shot before switching over to the pinhole.
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Tags: beach, camera, film, fuji, medium format, pinhole, zenza bronica
Posted in go shoot!, stunts, tricks and oddities | 5 Comments »
Written by matt on 05 June 2010
One photographer’s case for shooting film.
I’ve always been in love with black and white film (well, shooting film in general really). There is something about the look, the contrast, the grain, the tonality…its very organic. The look is organic, made of grains of silver rather than pixels. The process is organic, from manufacture all the way until you pull the reel/print out of the final wash in the darkroom. The result is organic, you fumbled in the dark, got your hands wet…you worked for it and the process itself gives a deeper more tactile relationship the images. I just love it.
Read the full text here.
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Written by matt on 03 June 2010
Nice combination of Holga shooting with wet plate printing. Dark, grungy self-portraits and other images. Insightful commentary from S.Gayle Stevens on her work, via the HolgaJen Photography site.
What is it about the Holga that draws you to it? Why do you shoot with it?
Low tech. It is all about creativity plus chance. Every camera is different and all these inconceivable things happen, accidental multiple exposures etc. I like the chance part a lot, the lack of ultimate control. It is also very unintrusive and a conversation starter. No one is afraid of a Holga, and people will come up to you and ask you about your strange camera. It is light, and easy to carry around. When I first started with the Holga I was shooting with a Hasselblad and a 4×5 view camera, plus pinhole cameras, very large ones.
Link here.
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Written by matt on 02 June 2010
Morgan Stanley Building, Oxnard CA
I was going through my camera closet the other day, digging out film cameras that had been sitting for awhile. Except for a few that I use all the time, I’ve gotten rid of most of the 40-odd film cameras I had collected. The only ones left were ones that were broken or unsellable for whatever reason. I stumbled across a Kodak Pony 135 camera, which is a cheap bakelite-body zone-focus camera that shoots 35mm film. I had previously dismissed it as worthless, and have never used it (I believe it came in a box with another camera that was much more interesting). However I realize now that there might be some lo-fi magic in that little box.
Before shooting, I headed over to flickr to see if anything good could come of a Pony 135, and found a flickr group dedicated to the camera. Immediately I was struck by this image by moxpox. And a whole series of these flipped double-exposures using different cameras. I was hooked, and loaded some (expired 99¢ store) film in the Pony right away.
I’ve never thought much of double exposures. Most of the time they look cheesy to me, because there is often no meaningful connection between the two exposures. It often looks like a cheap trick: ooh look I’ve got two pictures on one frame! But the flip makes sense visually. The content remains simple, and symmetry is built where perhaps none existed before.
The process is simple. You need a camera where the shutter cocking mechanism is separate from the film winding mechanism. Many cameras go out of their way to prevent double exposure.I have a few other cameras that will do this, and there are of course many more: Ricoh Super Ricohflex, Holga 120N, Bronica HC and Bronica ETR-s, Argus C3, Kodak Bantam and all my large-format lenses. Even some cameras that try to prevent double exposures can be tricked: I believe the Yashica Electro 35 GSN can do a double exposure, if you hold the ‘film rewind’ button underneath, while advancing the film wind lever. The film ends up staying in one place for that shot. Other cameras might be able to do this too…just give ‘em a try!
When shooting, you pick a simple subject and simple background, and visualize the final result. Examine the frame, to determine where different parts of your subject line up, because you’ll want to duplicate that. Turn the camera 180 degrees, line it up in the viewfinder, and fire the second exposure before winding the film.
For more fun, consider filtering one or both exposures with different colored filters. I used small sections of Rosco cinegel from their sample book, but you could use colored celophane bought at a craft shop if you wanted. A dark filter is going to reduce the light considerably, so you could either meter through it and get a precise adjustment for your exposure, or just guess, or not bother adjusting at all. I didn’t bother adjusting! Images 1-3 and the last one all have some sort of filtering for one or both exposures, although I don’t recall what I did specifically.
Two minor details to consider:
- Since you’re giving the film twice the amount of exposure, you should adjust your aperture and/or shutter speed so that you’re underexposing by a stop. It’s film however, so you can probably get away with just shooting normally. Film doesn’t usually mind if you overexpose it a little.
- Parallax can become an issue if you’re shooting a close subject. Even if you use a rangefinder that compensates for parallax error in the viewfinder, the flip will throw things off. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as is evidenced by the barbwire fence image below. It’s just harder to achieve perfect symmetry with close subjects. An SLR will not have this problem, but twin-lens reflex cameras, rangefinders and zone-focus/point and shoot cameras will.
For the brick wall below, I didn’t do a flip. Instead I shot the wall straight on, and then for the second exposure I angled up and to the side, to get a perspective shot.
The final shot is seriously overexposed! My finger was near the shutter cocking lever when I fired the second exposure, and apparently that interferes with the shutter closing. I’m surprised actually, as I would have thought the shutter’s closing would have been independent of that lever. Made for a nice effect though!
barbwire fence
gravel yard
brick wall
Altoid spill
my kids on the beach
Beach
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Tags: 180° flip, 35mm, double exposure, expired film, film, Kodak Pony 135, point and shoot, zone focus
Posted in go shoot!, stunts, tricks and oddities | 6 Comments »
Written by matt on 31 May 2010
I like this! Deon takes old Kodak Panoramic 35 disposable cameras, removes the color film in them, and adds a yellow filter and Tri-X black and white film to shoot panoramas with. And he reuses them hundreds of times before they wear out. I’d like to get my hands on one of these disposable cameras, but they haven’t been sold in about ten years, and sounds like Deon has first dibs on them. 
An excerpt:
In the darkroom, or if I’m out in the field, in a film changing tent, I re-load the camera with Kodak Tri-X film, and tape up the seams with black camera tape. I like Tri-X film because of the soft grain, and the ability to nicely push or pull the film with great results. I use several cameras for each different lighting condition, then push or pull the film in the darkroom.
Read the rest here (link). And the actual images are here.
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Tags: disposable, film, Kodak, panorama, panoramic, Tri-X
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Written by matt on 29 May 2010
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.
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Posted in go shoot! | 1 Comment »
Written by matt on 28 May 2010
A thoughtful and detailed essay on why one photographer still shoots with film.
Syd Weedon says:
I am finding that film and digital are different channels for me, as different as oil painting is from magnetic tape recording. I don’t try to do everything with film as I once did. I don’t have to. If I need a picture of a bottle for a brochure, I grab the digital, fire off a few frames and dump it to the computer. Life is good – no waiting for the lab to process the stuff. The job gets done and I’m off to the next thing. When I get a feeling in my mind that I want to express visually, I am still inclined to pick up a film camera and load it with a favorite film that I know will support the mood I want to capture. I’m talking about me here, not everyone in the world. I have years of experience with film. Like a painter who knows intuitively that cadmium yellow will produce a different feeling than yellow ocher, I know that particular films and developers will produce particular effects and moods in a photo.
Read the full article here (link).
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Tags: camera, digital, film
Posted in on the web | 4 Comments »
Written by matt on 27 May 2010
My seven year old, squished between lemonade and ice tea. Shot on a Bronica ETR-s with a 150mm lens, using expired Fuji NHG-II (ISO 800) (220 format). The blue color makes it look like I used tungsten film, but in fact I just tweaked the scan in Lightroom.
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Tags: 150mm lens, 220, bronica, camera, etr-s, film, medium format, photography
Posted in go shoot! | 2 Comments »
Written by matt on 27 May 2010
Oh this is great! A simple and cheap way to build a rangefinder using only a piece of cardboard, a pen or your computer’s printer, and your two eyes. Oh and your arm, and some math (but no math in the field, only to make the thing). I had a fashion shoot a few weeks back, that I used a zone-focus (aka range-focus) camera called a Zeiss Ikon Nettar. You dial the focus in by guessing the distance. Or in my case, I measured with a tape measure from the model to the camera. But now I can be more accurate than guessing—my guestimation of distance sucks!—but less accurate than an actual optical rangefinder. Check it out! I’m dropping what I’m doing right now to go make one of these (hop to the link to see how to make it and how to use it).
(That’s my version above, but yours will be different…unless your arms happen to be 28″ long and your eyes are 2.75″ apart!)
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