Category: Analog Film

A Different Brush, Part 2

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Another new old camera I’ve been trying recently is an Olympus Pen EE-3 half-frame camera made sometime in the 1970’s. This camera uses  regular 35mm film, but as the name implies, only uses half of each frame, doubling the number of images per roll. The really interesting thing about this (and other) half frame cameras is that when you hold the camera up to your eye, the default orientation of the image is portrait (height larger than width), rather than the landscape orientation we are so used to. It takes a conscious decision to turn the camera to shoot landscape.

We have all seen images in landscape that would have been so much better in portrait orientation, and I find with this camera I am forced to think about whether landscape mode is the best way to go. This is a cheap little camera and I may not use it much, but as a different brush, it gets me thinking about how to frame and compose using my other cameras.

 

Dead Tree In Earl Bales Park, Toronto, Olympus EE-3

A Different Brush

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Yesterday I went out for the first time with my Rolleicord V, a twin lens reflex camera I bought last week. It shoots 6 x 6 cm images on 120 film.

Looking down to focus, on a ground glass with a laterally reversed image will take some getting used to, but that’s what I like; different types of cameras inform the photographic process in a different way.

Old Farm Equipment

The lens has interesting characteristics; quite sharp (at least in the centre), but in some of the images the out-of-focus backgrounds have a very vintage look. Quite distinctive, and another step away from the sameness I find that one can get using DSLR’s.

The Same But Different

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This image is thematically related to the previous post, but different in many ways. It was shot at home, on a film camera, rather than on digital on a tropical island. Since the original was in black and white, I didn’t need to run the image through an expensive plug-in to get the effect I wanted; I just scanned the negative, and applied some very basic brightness and contrast settings to give the lighting the stark look I was looking for.

Sun on the door

The Corridor

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In Virgin Gorda we passed this stand of trees every day, and every day it caught my eye, as it seemed like a corridor in a cathedral. I took many pictures of it, and I think this is the one that best captures the impression it made on me. For this image I used my Mamiya medium format camera, 55 mm wide angle lens, and Ilford Delta 100 film.

Tree Corridor, Analog Edition

In Closer

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There were a lot of fascinating trees in Virgin Gorda, including one that had basically taken root and grown on top of a boulder. I couldn’t get a satisfactory shot of the entire tree that I liked, so I went in closer to focus on the gloriously messy root structure. I used my Mamiya, and a combination of Ilford Delta 100 film and Xtol developer; this could become my goto combination for a lot of photography!

Roots on Rock 2

Young and Old

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Here is the second image I am posting that I created using my 4×5 Cambo SC view camera; it is a portrait of my older daughter Julia. What I enjoyed about creating this portrait was the low tech approach I used. The lens used was an old brass lens, a Busch “Rapid Symmetrical” that is at least a hundred years old. The lens board (used to attach the lens to the camera), was homemade, using two pieces of mat board, glued together. As for the exposure, since the lens has no shutter, I made the exposure (about 1.5 seconds, using a paper negative) by simply covering/uncovering the front of the lens with my hand. About as far from modern technology as one can get!

Daughter Julia

Cloud and Texture

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This image was created on the only cloudy day we experienced on VIrgin Gorda in the British Virgin Islands. On a island known for sandy beaches and sun, I found this rocky beach fascinating. Much of the smaller rocks are actually old weathered pieces of coral that have washed onshore, along with small shells or broken bits of larger shells. Amazing textures, that demanded to be captured in black and white, so out came the medium format Mamiya, loaded with Tri-X.

A Rocky Beach On Virgin Gorda

Travel Textures

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I am continuing to work through the images I took in the British Virgin Islands, and while many of the photos are colour-centric (to be expected in a place where the ocean is a melange of breathtaking shades of blue), I do like the black and whites images I took. I’ve only had time to develop one roll so far, which contains images taken at “The Baths”, a famous beach on Virgin Gorda.

The Baths, Virgin Gorda, British Virgin Islands

Virgin Gorda is not only a place of amazing colours, it is also a place of  amazing textures and shapes, and I am looking forward to developing the other black and white rolls I shot during my week in paradise.

A Room With a View (Camera)

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I’ll be off the grid for a week, but I did want to get one more post in. I recently purchased a used 4×5 view camera (a beat-up but functional Cambo SC), something I’ve wanted for a while. While I have had little to no time to use it due to family realities, I have so far had a chance to take the picture below. I used the paper negative technique; instead of conventional photographic film I use real photographic paper (darkroom, not inkjet). It is very slow speed (about E.I. 6) but since a view camera must be on a tripod, the fact that a 60 second exposure was required was no big deal. Once the negative is developed, I can either do a contact print to get a 4×5″ image, or just scan the negative and invert the image digitally. I am really looking forward to the challenge of learning to use my view camera, the ultimate in the totally manual photographic experience.

An Empty Chair

Photographs and Memories

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As I write this, my father has passed away, and it is a time for reflection. Among the many debts of gratitude I owe my father, one I am thinking about this morning is how he instilled in me his love of photography.

In 1975 I bought a Brownie Hawkeye camera at a garage sale for $1.50. As a gift, he bought me rolls of film (the now discontinued 620 format) some flashbulbs (not cheap!! we have it easy in the strobe era) and processing. Some time later, he let me use his Voigtlander Vito B camera. This camera pictured below (not my father’s, just a representative sample) is a beautiful precision instrument.

Voigtlander Vito B 3

In 1977, when I was 15 he made it possible for me to buy my first SLR, my Yashica TL-Electro, which I still have. I used that camera for many. many years; the last roll of film I shot with my Yashica was of my eldest daughter, when she was born. Both cameras are “retired” but have places of honour in my collection of cameras.

The bulk of what I do know about photography was learned on these two cameras, so every time I snap a shutter in a sense I am paying tribute to my father.

Thanks Dad.