Sunrise
Nikon
Train jumping, oops
When love comes to town gonna catch that train, when love comes to town gonna catch that flame.
Ironically, in the flight of the moment he failed to realize that this coal car had seen neither engine nor caboose in 13 years. It has indeed come to town, has been in town for a while and likely will be in town for a while to come. Smooth move, man, smooth move.
Nikon F3, E-series 50/1.8, Ilford HP5+
Road trip: part II
part II:
Nikon F3; Zeiss Planar 50/1.4 and Dad’s Nikkor 28/3.5 (except for a few shots I took with an E series 50/1.8); no photoshop.
(part I is here: http://wp.me/p11VMI-j0)
Roll 1: Kodak Gold 100
I have previously dissed on Kodak film. It’s for chumps? Real camera nerds use Ilford for black and white, and pro-grade Fuji for color, right? Well, this roll saved the day. I had decided to bring one roll of film–and absentmindedly grabbed an already-exposed roll. Smooth move dave, smooth move. As the dice fell, a nearby gift/souvenir shop just happened to have film. What film was it? Kodak Gold 100. Kodak, I apologize; your film is everywhere, you rock.
Roll 2: Fuji Pro 160S
I like this film. Nothing really super crazy, just good color and grain.
Roll 3: Fuji Sensia 100
The jury didn’t even have to go out on this one: I <3 slide film. It is beautiful. If I had to take a camera, lens and two films for the rest of my life, it’d be the F3, a 35/1.4, and Sensia 200 (or maybe the Kodak slide film, I haven’t tried it yet) and Ilford HP5+. Done deal. Actually that doesn’t sound like a half bad plan anyways…
Roll 4: Fuji Superia 200 (another one of the old rolls of film from pops)
Nothing too crazy here, same reddish vintage-looking hues from the 7-year aged film. This roll was halfway used up when we left, so it had only a few trip shots worth posting here. Why call it roll 4? Because I didn’t realize until a moment ago that it was the first, not last, roll I took on the trip; water under the bridge.
Without further ado, here they are:
..and that’s it. It was a great* trip.
*”great” is overused. I mean great, actually great.
Recently
Nikon D200, Zeiss Planar T 50/1.4
Road trip: part I
Rocky Mountains in Canada, 9 days.
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part I:
Nikon D200; Zeiss Planar 50/1.4 and Dad’s Nikkor 28/3.5. The 28 is pre-AI, which made for some trickiness, but with some creativity it’s nothing insurmountable. By miles and miles this takes the pie, cake and tart in the biggest-post-on-dave’s-blog competition, and will likely keep those respective desserts for a long time. No Photoshop.
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Nikon D200; Zeiss Planar 50/1.4 and Dad’s Nikkor 28/3.5. The 28 is pre-AI, which made for some trickiness, but with some creativity it’s nothing insurmountable. By miles and miles this takes the pie, cake and tart in the biggest-post-on-dave’s-blog competition, and will likely keep those respective desserts for a long time. No Photoshop.
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part II:
Nikon F3; same two lenses (except for a few shots I took with an E series 50/1.8).
ETA: ~2 weeks. No Photoshop.
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Thoughts:
Shooting scenery with a 75 is really interesting–I liked it, but the few times I used the Zeiss on my film camera, seeing that pretty 50mm perspective through the viewfinder was a breath of fresh air. Shooting so many photos of such variety as a road trip gives gave me lots to think about in the realm of lenses. I think a 18-70 (which, with sensor crop, is actually 27-105) would be an absolutely stellar all-rounder as long as it’s reasonably fast. The 18-200ish lenses are pretty cool, but that just seems like trying to do too much.
It was a great trip; I do hope the 53 photos were enjoyable.
Things
Where your treasure is, there your heart will be too; home is where the heart is.
Letting a thing be your treasure makes for a shabby home for the heart.
That’s something to not forget, especially when buying things.
Especially especially when buying things like a Nikon D200.
So..ah..on that note, I bought a Nikon D200.
Side note: it is unbelievably hard to not spend a lot of time looking at more stuff to buy right after buying a really, really really cool camera:
“Ah that lens isn’t all so expensive, considering I’ll be shooting for National Geographic as soon as they see some of my work and realize I’d be a positively stellar staff photographer. Heck, may as well spring for a Nikon 200mm/2.0 IS, one of their 17-35/2.8 deals and one or two of the Carl Zeiss primes, while I’m at it..just for the sake of being ready to travel to foreign exotic places and do crazy work at the moment that National Geographic calls. Oh gees, I hadn’t even thought about a tripod. Maybe I’ll look at those basalt fiber ones as soon as I finish picking out my flash setup…”
South Seattle
I got out of bed at 4:30 to catch a bus to South Seattle in time for the sunrise and Murphy’s law did it’s thing: the morning was fully overcast as daylight came. Mostly undeterred, I shot 22 or so frames of the area. Here are a few I liked.
Nikon F3, Series E 50mm/f1.8, Ilford HP5+. Scans done by Omega Photo, numbered by frame number.
Back in black (and white)
Ilford XP2 Super. I like this film a lot, but it just doesn’t have the nice grain and tone of the HP5+.
All except for the beer-and-chips shot are from a day a few weeks ago when we spent the summer day helping Alicia get started painting her and Jon’s house (while Jon was on a business trip in Alaska–surprise Jon!). Don’t get me wrong, we did stay well nourished and hydrated while painting. A watermelon fight also took place, but I didn’t get any pictures of it; turns out it’s difficult to get good action portraits while dodging flying pieces of watermelon.
New-old paintbrush/emergency-battle-mace
Graduation gift-money + selling math textbooks –> new old-camera owner and thank-you notes aplenty, and sad feelings of having betrayed my old standby math book.
I’ll miss you, oh antiquated 3rd edition Taylor and Mann calculus text.
Six important things she does:
1. accept 35mm film
2. aperture priority mode
3. meter light
4. time things (12 seconds, namely)
5. battle-mace duty in case somebody thinks they’d like have her, or other things
6. exposure lock
Six important things she doesn’t do:
1. shutter speed priority mode
2. automatic mode
3. auto focus
4. kill batteries (battery life measured in years of use…let’s see a dSLR do that)
5. exposure bracketing
6. tempt me to ruin moments by snapping off eighteen frames when one is perfect.
“Bess,” maybe?
(shot with my digital camera. odd)
The best yet
Pre-post note #1:
It’s a bit late to finish it now, but I’m working on writing/editing what I think about the “best” photo(s) I will ever take in my life. Hopefully this weekend I’ll have it coherently together.
Pre-post note #2:
These are the last shots I’ll be taking with Dad’s Nikkormat; hello Nikon F3 :D. Dear new camera: I hope you and I will do lots together and I appreciate that you double as a battle mace when I unlatch one side of your neck strap.
I decided to try Ilford’s C-41 400 film (so I can get it processed for…*drumroll*…cheaper. notice a trend?), XP2 Super. I like it, and when I finally get access to a good scanner, I’ll put it up against the non-C-41 (HP5+) shots I’ve got and see what differences there are.
This roll is the best photography I’ve done. I could be wrong about that..time may tell (do I hope it will in fact tell? I’m not sure). Here’s something odd though: I was convinced that one particular frame was the single best picture I’d taken, ever. Like, no doubting at all, I knew this. It wasn’t…it flopped. It flopped really badly. Composition, focus, aperture setting and all the works. It’s frustrating, but I can’t bring myself to be too cranky, considering how well so many other shots came through. Uncorrelated to that, I pulled my act together and numbered the scans by frame # finally.
Without more ado, here’re eight shots I feel good about:
Color film: hello 20th century!
After shooting a roll of color film, it seems to me that it’s great for making pretty pictures, but those pretty pictures don’t really say anything. Sorta the idea that Ted Grant gets at about portraits:
“When you photograph people in color, you are photographing their clothes. When you photograph them in B&W, you photograph their souls. ”
Regardless, I’ve got a lot of work to do before I am someone to opine one way or the other about what different photo mediums are good for what all. This is nice, because “work” means taking more pictures :).
All were shot with (again, grand thanks to my pops for letting me borrow his camera!) a Nikon Nikkormat through a Nikkor 50mm f1.4; the film is Kodak Ektar 100, rated at 100. Kenmore Camera did the developing, and I used an older/cheaper Canon flatbed scanner to scan the negatives (less $$ than having it shop-done, but my word it took a lot of time. I’m going to start shopping for a good negative scanner soon).
(I forgot to keep track of exposure # when I scanned them, hence the “scan #” labeling. Smooth move David, smooth move.)
Here are seven of them:
