Tag: Kodak

A Tunnel of Trees

A Tunnel of Trees

Out I wandered with my long-lusted-for Nikon 50mm f1.2 AI-S lens attached for long-lusted-for Nikon FM3a. A maiden voyage for the lens with film.

The film was Kodak Tri-X 400, shot at 1600, and supposedly processed at +2 at the lab. Did they do it? No idea! I just have to trust they did – I think they did, though, because the images are pretty contrasty, which is what I was aiming for. I made them a bit more so in post.

There is a small liberal arts college within a short distance from where I live, and bits of it seem almost like you are in the country, but the truth is, you are not. Still, I like to wander over in that area to enjoy the trees and their canopy of leaves. This is a panorama of 6 photos I merged together.

I linked the photo to my Flickr account, and may start to do that in the future. It will save space on my WordPress site. Also, you can click on the photo and jump to the Flickr site, and from there see the trees in their glorious detail. It really worth it to see these trees (I think, anyway!).

Winter Sky (and then some more!)

Besides acquiring a bit of old glass, I have also, as said before, been wandering through my digital archives. Here, a photo taken in March 2017 using the Retina IIIc with the Xenon 50mm f2 lens and Agfa Vista 200. Some images I desaturated to B&W because I thought they looked better that way. Digitalizing film can be quite a good thing!

When I first used this camera, I found it rather trying. It has an EV metering system which made absolutely no sense to me, even after reading the manual. Yes, I do RTFM! However, YouTube came to the rescue once again, and there are several good videos about the Kodak Retinas from the 1950s. Many consider these to be some of the finest Kodak cameras ever produced. I won’t disagree. Nearly every American in my age group has used Kodak cameras, and many were rather cheap and produced rather poor pictures. But, for a kid, they were just perfect!

This camera came to me about 4-5 years ago from Chris Sherlock at Retina Rescue, across the sea in Australia. He’s great. You can find his videos on YouTube. Playing with it again, and having more experience with older cameras. I really appreciate this camera far more than I did before. I think I am going to throw some film in the camera and see what this puppy can do yet again.

Tomatoes in Suburbia

Nothing like a mistake that is rather a fun one – here, double exposure in my Certo Six folding camera. I forgot to advance the film and thought there was an issue, so released the exposure button again by choosing the “bypass” button. (If you have a Certo Six, you know what I am talking about.) It makes me think that it might be a fun exercise to deliberately, rather than accidentally, create double exposures. Maybe even triple. Or quadruple. Such is possible!!

This is with Portra 400, a film I always find way to delicate in color for my taste, but it could be I will change my mind after cataract surgery. This is pretty much SOOC with just some spot removal in post. I don’t like spotty film . . .

Evening Stroll & Random Thoughts

I picked up a roll of film I had processed and ignored scanning it for weeks. Photography just wasn’t interesting anymore. Yesterday I finally scanned it.

This hiatus showed me something very clearly: I prefer the looks of film to that of digital. Even the Fuji digital equivalents don’t come close to the beauty of film. However, in the pre-digital age, film was horrible because it was expensive and unsuccessful as far as I was concerned. Snapshots, bad lighting, poor composition, and more failures than success. And no education, just a camera and failed hope.

Now I think that digital helped me learn and digital helps analog. It’s good when things play well together, don’t you think?