The Pentax SP1000 was the first real camera that I ever owned, and will probably never forget. It took the better part of a year working on a paper route to earn enough money to buy the camera and a Takumar 50mm f/1.8 lens to go with it. The lens screwed on the body, which would sometimes come loose when I adjusted the focus. The film advance was smooth. The satin chrome and leatherette body was a joy to hold and the shutter was easy to fire. The shutter and film speeds were easy to set and read, and the film counter was as obvious as the gas gauge of an old Chevy pickup. I still remember looking into the lens to see sharply contrasting shades of amber from the coating, or Super Multi Coating as Pentax called it, reflected between the glass elements.

The SP1000 was a budget version of the famous Spotmatic and was perhaps the best consumer camera available for the price. The photographer had to push up a switch on the side of the pentaprism to activate the match-needle light meter and close the lens aperture to the indicated f-stop on the lens to set the exposure. The meter used the old 1.35 volt PX400 mercury oxide battery that lasted quite a while but died suddenly when it did. At least the meter was consistent all the way to the end.

It was plain by even yesterday’s standards, There was no self-timer or hot shoe, but I didn’t need those features. I couldn’t afford a flash anyway. The viewfinder was bright when the lens was wide open and the exposure was easy to set by centering the meter needle in the viewfinder. Had I known that its sister, the SP500, was the same camera without the ‘1000’ engraved on the shutter speed dial, I probably would have saved a few bucks and bought that one instead. It was reliable, durable, and took great pictures. I shot both color and monochrome, but mostly monochrome, and processed the film myself.

I no longer have that camera, but everyone remembers their first.

Tags: SLR, Pentax

My favorite lug-around-town camera isn’t a pocket digital point and shoot, a Nikkormat, or even my Nikon F100. For sheer grab-shot enjoyment, I love the Mamiya M645 1000s. The negatives from this workhorse are huge compared to the 35mm format. Larger negatives mean tack-sharp prints with little or no noticeable grain. Unless a photographer invests in medium format digital equipment at the price of a new car, DX or FX digital formats can’t touch a 6x4.5cm negative for image quality.

The camera handles much like a large, heavy 35mm SLR with the metered prism, but I prefer the waist level finder. It’s lighter, fits in the bag better, and makes the camera easier to handle. It takes a bit more planning to use a medium format camera than digital or 35mm equipment requires, but the results are worth the effort. When I use the metered prism, I also use the hand grip with its built-in shutter release so holding the camera at eye level isn’t quite so awkward. Most of the time, taking a quick reading from a hand held meter and ‘shooting from the hip’ is simply faster. I can also see the aperture and shutter speed settings using the waist finder without looking away from the image.

In addition to the camera’s own focal plane shutter, the camera can use the 70mm lens with its integral leaf shutter. There are no limitations using an electronic flash with a leaf shutter as there are with focal plane shutters, so fill flash in bright daylight at fast shutter speeds is not an issue. Most of the time, I leave the lens locked in the focal plane mode and use it as a standard lens. It’s one stop slower than the Mamiya Sekor C 80mm f/1.9 lens, but the 70mm lens accepts all of the filters that fit the 150mm f/3.5 and the 55mm f/3.5 lenses that I carry in the same bag. I save the faster lens with its large diameter barrel for indoor portraits.

Should a photographer care about what make or model camera the pros use? Only if it keeps the photographer’s attention away from the camera and focused on the image. If a photographer takes too much time setting modes or thumbing through menus, it’s time to get an easier camera and use the brain for creativity instead of ‘switchology’.

Monumental Sunset

“Monumental Sunset” was taken with a Mamiya M645 1000s camera fitted with a Mamiya Sekor C 55mm f/2.8 lens on Fuji Velvia 100 film. Exposure data was not recorded.

Tags: Mamiya M645, medium format

In these days of ‘professional’ cameras, you are unlikely to find a photographer who still uses a hand-held light meter. With through-the-lens metering, 3D matrix metering, and color intelligent meters built right into a camera, why would anyone want to carry a relic like a Gossen LunaPro around?

Modern digital cameras, and even some professional-grade 35 mm film cameras, are capable of calculating acceptable exposures for most scenes using algorithms developed by photographic experts and engineers, but no camera can know what a photographer sees in the mind’s eye at the moment of exposure. Will the highlights or the shadows be most important? Will the print be one of high contrast, or of subtle changes from the dark to light? These decisions should come from the photographer, not the camera. Digital cameras usually have a histogram feature, which measures the number of pure white pixels (255), pure black pixels (0), and those pixels in between (1-254), but they can’t ‘see’ where those pixels are. A photographer needs to look at the image and the histogram together to figure that out. By then, the moment has already passed and, if the exposure isn’t right, it doesn’t really matter anymore.

External light meters are a wonderful tool for the artistic photographer. Many can measure the incident light hitting a subject, which is important for slide film and digital sensors. They also measure the lighter and darker areas of a scene to determine the range, or contrast, between them. Film photographers use this information to determine not only the initial exposure, but also how much to develop the film to manipulate its tonal range and balance the detail in the highlights with the detail in the shadows. Ansel Adams invented the Zone System for this reason and an external light meter is essential to use it effectively. Some meters, like the Gossen LunaPro F, can even measure light from an electronic flash to calculate lighting ratios between the subject and its surroundings, which is useful in the studio.

Most photographers that I have met don’t use external light meters, but rely instead on the computers in their cameras. PhotoShop can do a lot, but a poorly exposed photograph is a poorly exposed photograph. If detail is lost in either the shadows or the highlights, it is simply lost and software cannot resurrect it.

A good light meter can help a photographer better understand light and eliminate the need for digital surgery. After all, without light there is no photograph.

Tags: Gossen LunaPro, Digital, film

While attending the fair in Puyallup a few weeks ago, I used my Nikon F100 camera so that I didn’t have to worry about managing exposure and focus settings or load the film by hand while life proceeded on without me. The F100 is famous for its highly accurate exposure and autofocus systems. It’s so fast that I don’t have to think about it. I spent four rolls of film that day and got some great shots. A few of them made it to my gallery.

Some photographers complain that automation disturbs the creative process because the ‘cookie cutter’ settings of the camera assume too much about depth of field, exposure balance, and center of focus decisions. For those artists, all they need to do is disable the automation and use their own judgment, but there are consequences. Switching between automated photography and 'rolling your own' can be hazardous to your images.

For some portrait work that I will soon attempt, I wanted to familiarize myself once again with the process of balancing available light with electronic fill flash. I used a Mamiya C220 camera, a Vivitar 283 electronic flash, and a Gossen LunaPro F light meter which was useful to find acceptable flash and camera settings. Light reflected from the different elements of the scene must be ‘metered out’ to balance the exposure without blowing out the highlights or darkening the shadows. Electronic flash helps achieve that balance.

The Mamiya C220 twin lens reflex is a completely manual camera. Turning a crank advances the film. The shutter must be manually cocked before each shot. The lens aperture, shutter speed, and focus must be set by hand. The C220 is as far away from fully automated modern digital equipment as a Ford Model T is from a Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano. Manual adjustments in photography are part of the art, but sometimes my experience with automated equipment makes me a bit complacent.

It didn't occur to me until after the first roll had passed through the camera that even when the exposure is correctly set for ambient light in the background, the flash insists that I use its lens aperture suggestions to get the exposure right in the foreground. In the prints, the subject looked as if he were standing in front of a nuclear blast at close range only milliseconds before incinerating the pleasantly exposed landscape in the background. If that were not enough, I wasn't watching the focus closely because I became accustomed to the Nikon F100 automatically focusing the lens for me. That old Mamiya has no idea how far away the subject is unless I tell it. At the end of the day, I had whole roll of grossly overexposed and unfocused portraits. Fortunately, I woke up before I shot the second roll so all was not lost.

I'm sure glad that film is cheap.

Tags: Mamiya TLR, Nikon F100

It happens to every photographer, at least once.

I was on travel last week, for my day job of course, but I chose not to bring a camera this time. Being a film photographer, I ask TSA to check my film by hand at the airport security checkpoint lest they run it through their ‘safe’ x-ray scanners. It may very well be that film less sensitive than 800 ISO won’t be damaged by their equipment, but x-ray radiation is cumulative and each pass increases the chance of damage to the film. Since I usually carry ISO 100 film, all it takes is three scans and I just hit the limit. My trip was only two days of meetings, so to save a bit of time and hassle I left the camera at home.

According to Murphy, the chance discovering a great photograph is inversely proportional to the availability of a camera. While I was waiting for my flight at SeaTac airport, the sunrise bathed nearby Mount Rainier in hues of purple and orange light set against a cloudless sky. I had a window seat on my flight to Reagan-National Airport in Washington DC. While the plane was on final approach, the Capitol Building was framed perfectly between the wing-mounted engine and the fuselage set against the DC skyline. The meetings ended a half-day early, so I had the opportunity to find a metro station and spend some time in the Capitol Region. Would I have captured another award winning image? Perhaps not, but without a camera the answer was definitely “No!”

On this trip, I could have easily shot at least a few rolls of film without even looking for a shot. I guess a loaded camera is essential, no matter how short the trip.

Bargains abound for film cameras these days. On eBay, a Canon AE-1 SLR sold for $6.50 while a classic Canon FTb, with a lens, didn’t get a single bid on its $59 starting price. An EOS-1N, once Canon’s flagship 35mm professional camera, sold for a paltry $77. Nikons fare no better. A Nikon FM was had for $50, an N90s for $80, and an N80 body, with the MB-16 battery holder, sold for just $50. For those of us still using film it’s a buyer’s market but at the same time, sad. These precision machines once sold for hundreds of dollars, even on the used market. Computer controlled shutters, 3D matrix metering systems, and lightning-fast autofocus lenses are marvels of modern engineering. These features are also found on digital cameras so what’s the difference? It’s the type of ‘film’ behind the shutter, of course.

The digital revolution also brought unexpected consequences, even for those of us still in the analog world. The Nikon Pronea S SLR was a Nikon flop because it used the controversial APS film format. Known as the Advanced Photo System, its “advanced” features led to its demise. The APS film cartridge could only be processed professionally using specialized equipment and the developed film cartridges were difficult to store and catalog. The size of the negative was smaller than that of 35mm film, which became obvious when the image was enlarged. There was no traditional monochrome film in the APS format, although black and white film using C-41 color dye technology was available. To Nikon’s credit, the Pronea featured Nikon’s magnificent balanced 3D matrix light meter. I bought one on eBay for $15 for that reason alone. I use it as my primary light meter when I shoot with my meter-less Mamiya C330 and M645 medium format cameras. Since the matrix light meter considers distance and image contrast as well as available light in the exposure calculation, I get perfect images every time.

I’m sure that most digital equipment will meet the same fate as their film ancestors after memory cards, lenses, and other digital camera features show a magnitude of improvement. The Fuji Finepix S2 Pro that I occasionally use today once sold for more than $3,000. You can get one now in good condition for about $200.

It won’t be long before even that will be asking too much.

Tags: film, SLR, Nikon, Canon, Mamiya M645, Mamiya TLR

When one thinks of Minnesota or North Dakota, industry usually isn’t the first thought. All you can see over western North Dakota are canyons, rolling hills, and the occasional oil donkey rising and falling as it pumps ‘black gold’ from the Bakken oil fields. Farms and field spread over the flat prairie of eastern North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota. Quiet county roads carry only a few cars or farm machinery from town to town and field to field. Grain elevators are usually the only buildings higher than an equipment storage shed. City dwellers don’t think ‘industrial’ when they see the prairies. At first glance it looks flat, empty, and very rural.

Running a farm is an industrial operation. Modern tractors are capable of dragging heavy machinery through dense topsoil in swaths thirty feet wide and two feet deep. Combine harvesters cut through thousands of acres of ripened crop and separate the stalks and other foreign material from the grain. Full size semi-tractor trucks haul tons of grain from the fields to terminals where it is loaded into railroad hopper cars for transport to food processing centers or seaports for shipment overseas. The agriculture industry in this region produces soybeans, sugar beets, barley, oats, wheat, potatoes, and corn. All of this must happen during the short growing season before brutally cold winters and blizzards encapsulate the landscape.

The risk is high but the rewards are great. No one can control the weather, pest infestations, market fluctuations, or labor disputes. Different crops require different equipment, moisture and temperature levels, soil quality, and production timing. Agricultural businesses experience production delays from regional flooding, crop disease, drought, excess rainfall, wildfire, and equipment failure. Market price fluctuations make forecasting difficult. Farmers must be skilled businessmen to produce food on large economies of scale. They need to understand the commodity markets and their own production and storage capacities. They have the experience and skill of any industrial plant manager to assure that equipment is properly maintained, capital resources are efficiently utilized, suppliers understand their requirements, and the labor force is trained and ready in sufficient numbers to complete their work on time and on budget from planting to harvest. Farmers need to produce the right mix of crops to reduce their losses should the weather be too cold, too hot, too wet, or too dry, yet provide the greatest yield for the lowest cost to maximize their profit. If commodity prices are too low, they need to sell enough product to satisfy their creditors while storing the rest at the proper moisture and temperature levels until demand improves and commodity prices increase.

Being a film photographer, I need time to harvest my crop, but I brought a digital Fuji Finepix S2 Pro SLR along for those subjects of opportunity. ‘Harvest Ready’ is an image of a Versatile 435 articulated tractor highlighting its two critical features: power and traction. It stands as tall as a two story building and can pull anything from a large cultivator to a sugar beet harvester through knee-deep mud in all kinds of weather. It is a symbol of power and capability. A machine with attitude.

More from my Industrial Prairie assignment will come as I unlock the latent images from exposed film.

Tags: fuji finepix S2 pro, industrial, farm, machinery

In this age of automation and instant digital gratification, it is hard to imagine anyone still using a purely mechanical camera, unless they have been lured into the Holga niche. Even among film aficionados, most ‘analog’ cameras use autoexposure or autofocus to help the photographer. There are a few of us who still prefer manual methods.

The Nikon F put Nikon on the map. Back in 1959 this camera was a less expensive alternative to the high precision German cameras, which were the ‘gold standard’ of the day. The Nikon featured interchangeable lenses, focusing screens, viewfinders, and even film backs. It did not have a built in light meter, but back in the 50’s most photographers distrusted integral light meters and preferred the more accurate dedicated light meters. The Nikons and Nikkormats later featured more accurate integral light meters and photographers began to appreciate their convenience.

The Nikon F was built like a brick and able to take the usual knocks and drops of professional photojournalism. The Nikkormat series cameras were the ‘poor man’s’ Nikon. They didn’t have all of the features of the Nikon F, but they did use the same interchangeable lenses and were often backup cameras for the working pro. Along with the build quality of a professional camera, it’s the optics that matter. For years, Nikons have been THE cameras to which others were judged.

It’s wonderful that these legendary machines have become so affordable since the rise in popularity of digital photography, but also sad that they are so ‘last century’. The images they produce are as excellent as they have always been, which brings me back to a time when photographers had to instinctively know the optimal combination of lens aperture, shutter speed, and focus for the film they were using, and a bit of luck helped.

‘Pre-Game’, found in the Baseball Gallery, won First Place, Best of Category, and Judge’s Choice at the Kitsap County Fair in 2008. It was shot with a Nikkormat FTn mounted with a 50mm f/1.4 Nikkor-P lens on Fomapan 200 film.

Go Nikon!

Tags: Nikkormat FTn, Nikon F100, film, Nikon F

Traditional photography, now referred to as analog, uses chemical solutions to change the latent image on film into a printable negative. Hydroquinone is the main active ingredient in black and white film developers. Acetic acid is in stop bath. The ammonium thiosulphate in fixer stabilizes the developed image while washing away excess silver compounds left on the less exposed areas of the film. With all of this chemistry entering our waste water systems, how can traditional chemical photography be considered ‘green’?

In very dilute solutions, the hydroquinone in developer decomposes in minutes. The acetic acid in stop bath is of the same kind found in orange juice or vinegar, just more concentrated. The ammonium thiosulphate and silver compounds in exhausted fixer are a different matter. With use, the silver concentration in fixer increases to the point where the fixer becomes exhausted. The silver can be recovered, refined, and reused. The ammonia thiosulphate is treated in waste water plants to remove excess nitrogen and prevent excessive algae growth in rivers and streams. If ‘analog’ photographers work responsibly, all of these chemicals can be treated and neutralized. Commercial processor technology uses color chemistry to its maximum potential. Modern hazardous waste processing later renders it environmentally safe.

Before digital photography, people kept their cameras longer than they do now. For example, a photographer who bought a Nikon FTn would use the camera for years while building an investment of lenses. New camera models were introduced every five to eight years instead of every year or two as digital cameras are today. Photographers would ‘upgrade’ to a new camera body from time to time, but they usually kept their lenses and older bodies until they wore out. Back then, any Nikon lens worked on any Nikon body. Today, photographers need to watch which lenses work with certain cameras. A Nikkor-P 105 mm f/2.5 lens built in 1968 will not function on a Nikon D200 camera. In fact, older lenses used on newer digital cameras can permanently damage them.

I can’t use my Nikkor-P 105 mm lens on my Fuji S2 Pro digital SLR, but I can use my Nikon AF-D lenses on my Nikon F. Now that’s green!

Tags: Digital, film

Yesterday, the Puget Sound Photographic Collectors Society (PSPCS) held its annual Photographic Show and Swap Meet in Puyallup, Washington. I look forward to this event all year long. Vendors and private collectors gather to buy, sell, and trade their photographic wares that range from century-old box cameras to modern professional grade digital equipment. It’s like eBay, except buyers get to look at the merchandise before money changes hands, there are no last second bidding wars, and no haggling over ‘postage and handling’. If you’re lucky, you can even win a door prize!

I wasn’t in the building five minutes when I came across a table sporting a pair of Mamiya twin lens reflex cameras. I asked how much the seller was asking for one of them, a well maintained C220f, like I was even interested. I already own a C330 and a model C330f. What on earth would I do with a third body? The camera included an 80mm f/2.8 blue dot lens and a strap. I would need to produce $90 cash to walk away with it.

Up to this point, I had never used either the C220f or the C330s. I performed the usual superficial inspection. Wind the film crank. Look in the viewfinder for cracks and the kind of gunk that can accumulate over a few decades. Cock and trip the shutter. Check out the shutter speeds, especially the slower ones. Open the camera back. Look for damage or corrosion. Check out the condition of the light seals.

But where was the door latch? The usual chrome button-shaped film door catch release wasn’t there! I pulled every knob and moved every slide and protrusion that I could find to release the film door but I just couldn’t open it. The seller was equally baffled. Most Mamiya C series TLRs have an obvious round silver catch on the top edge of the film door, which was conspicuously absent in these two models. Since the vendor was also selling a C330s with a similar film door design, I thought that I could find some leverage with technical information should I decide to take the camera home. With the seller’s permission, I took the camera from vendor to vendor looking for someone with expertise in the Mamiya C220f.

I asked four of them, including someone who looked like George Eastman himself if he were alive today, but no one could pull the sword from the stone. The fifth man was the one I was looking for. After a bit of fiddling, he discovered that by moving a spring loaded slider on the left side of the body next to the film door while depressing the film take-up spool axel knob, the film door would pop open with ease. (He later confessed that he was a camera repairman with over 20 years experience and couldn’t bear the humiliation if word got out that he couldn’t open the film door of a 35 year old camera!)

I approached the original vendor and, armed with confidence and my newfound knowledge of Mamiya TLR film doors, offered her $80 firm. Her best price was $90, but knowing that unless her next customer was profoundly familiar with Mamiya C series cameras, she would be stuck with two unsalable items. A deal was struck, and I am now the proud owner of a THIRD Mamiya TLR body and a second 80mm lens. The lens alone was worth the price!

Since my mission that day was to find 46 mm filters for my two other Mamiya TLRs, I bought a roll of Agfa Isopan ISS 200 black and white film that expired during the Johnson Administration and a roll of Kodacolor 120 film that I simply MUST expose and process. The color shift from film that is more than 30 years outdated will be a spectacle to behold, or an utter failure. I’ll have to shoot it and see for myself. While digging through bins of used filters of all colors and sizes, I bought a lens wrench, a couple of 620 film spools, and a 58mm #29 red filter for my Mamiya M645 150mm portrait lens. You never know when you will shoot a portrait of someone riddled with acne. Besides, a filter THAT red will render clear daylight skies on monochrome film practically black, which will bring out any cumulus clouds rather nicely. This filter also fits my Mamiya M645 55mm wide angle lens so I’ll have to experiment a bit, Puget Sound weather permitting.

As I was about to walk out the door, I found myself in front of a table full of Agfa Isolette viewfinder cameras. If you want the full specifications of this camera, complete with the universe of reviews written by rank amateurs, then I leave you to the Internet to continue your quest. All I can say is that the shutter appeared to open and close at 1/25, 1/50, and 1/200 second as best that my calibrated eyeballs could surmise, and the lens was still transparent. At $15, the worst that could happen was that I would have a non-functional conversation piece on my desk at my day job. This little relic of the ’50s also takes 120 format film, which saves me the step of re-rolling 120 film onto a 620 spool should I have purchased the Kodak Brownie sitting on the next table.

For less than $100, I walked out of the swap meet with a Mamiya twin lens reflex camera, a great lens, a 46mm orange filter, a 52mm R72 infrared filter for my Fuji S2 Pro digital camera, three rolls of practically worthless film, and a piece of German photographic history. I shot a roll of Ultrafine 100 Plus through my ‘new’ Mamiya C220f today and the negatives appear very printable. The film advance works as it should and the body is light-tight. I shot Fujicolor 160C film through the Agfa Isolette, so the results will be a few days forthcoming after I get it back from the processor.

All in all, a good day for someone who just can’t seem to make the great leap into the 21st century, photographically speaking. You just don’t get that kind of fun buying the latest digital gadget from a box store.

Tags: Mamiya TLR, medium format, film, history, Washington

Every week, I see advertisements for the latest in digital photographic equipment that varies from inexpensive low quality mini-cameras to high-end professional grade instruments. Leaving the low quality cameras on the discount store shelf is a no-brainer, unless you want something you can leave in the glove box of your car to document your next accident. If you want high quality photographs, your options are to risk rapid obsolescence by buying today’s latest digital technology, or buy a professional quality film camera from eBay or perhaps a garage sale or local pawn shop. So what does an “old school” film camera have to do with high quality digital photography? Besides the obvious costs involved, more than you might think.

Not even a decade ago, photographs in magazines and exhibitions were created from photographic film exposed in cameras that have changed little in principle for a century. A photograph made with a forty year old Nikkormat or 10 year old Nikon F100 was of better quality than a digital photograph shot through the same lens. Digital imaging technology has improved much since then, but you can still get high quality digital photographs from a film camera if you let the processor scan and digitize the negatives and slides for you when the film is processed. It doesn’t cost much for the casual photographer to get high quality digital images from film. If your volume is low, the cost of the latest digital SLR camera with its dedicated lens is far more than an older film camera using the same optics. If you shoot lots of film, like some folks I know, a quality film scanner can be had for less than $1000.

For less than half the cost of a refurbished $1,300 Nikon D300 body, you can get a professional quality Nikon F100 in excellent condition with a 28-35mm Nikon autofocus lens that produces images, when scanned, rival those from any digital camera. If you prefer a mechanical camera like a Nikon FM2, a Minolta SRT 102, or a Canon AE-1, the cost is even less. In case you didn’t know, a Nikon lens produced in 1975 will fit the Nikon F100, albeit without autofocus. For the price of a few memory cards, you can get a superb Nikon autofocus or a Canon FD zoom lens. There are thousands of them on the market and most are available for a song. Lenses from other manufacturers, like Pentax or Minolta, cost even less.

As a bonus, the photographer also gets low-cost, incorruptible image backups with the negatives and compact discs full of digitized photographs. No corrupt memory cards. No lost image libraries. No missed shots because of dead batteries or faulty electronics, and no confusing menus or settings to fiddle with while awe-inspiring photo-ops slip away.

Besides, good photographers can create outstanding images with any camera, even if it is just a light-tight box with a pinhole for a lens.

(This image was created with a 35 mm pinhole camera and TMax 100 film)

Tags: SLR, Digital, Nikon F100, film

When the world began chasing after digital photography, most film cameras were left behind, doomed to abandonment in closets and camera bags by their owners, never to be appreciated again. When digital ‘point-and-shoots’ and cheap single lens reflex cameras fell within easy reach of the average consumer, the venerable SLR film camera, once revered by advanced amateurs and professionals alike, became like so much baggage. eBay was, and still is, flush with them. As with any market where supply exceeds demand, the prices of these magnificent machines had no where to go but down. Once coveted precision photographic tools were to be had for a song. Enter the bottom feeders.

For anyone who has followed this blog or even read my home page, you know that I am committed to preserving 35 mm and medium format film photography. Digital imaging is what I do AFTER I process the film for the sake of this website. I have a rather broad collection of 35 mm cameras and I often enjoy taking them out for a stroll. A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of running some Fujichrome Velvia through one of my favorites, the Canon AE-1. This camera was a technological breakthrough in 1976 when electronics assumed control of the focal plane shutter in a quality camera built for the consumer market. Deciding on the proper exposure was still a matter of the photographer’s judgment, but now electronics controlled the exposure. Canon was one of the first manufacturers to use flexible circuit boards and microchips tightly wrapped in the camera body. These wonderful machines continue to capture great photographs long after the advent of mainstream digital cameras. To discover more about the Canon AE-1, or any of her sisters, visit the Canon F-A-T section of the Photography in Malaysia website.

I wonder if my Fuji Finepix S2 Pro will be as relevant in 2044 as my Canon AE-1 is today, 34 years after its introduction?

Tags: Canon, SLR

It seems that most photography that I see on the web or displayed in local exhibits began as a digital image. If you see a photograph on the web it has to be digital, but some do not start that way. I see many people with digital cameras taking pictures and publishing them on a website somewhere, like Flickr, Picasa, or Facebook. The photographs that you see on this website are also digital images, but most of them came from scanned ‘analog’ slides or negatives.

Firing the shutter on a camera is just the first step. If you are a digital photographer, the images still need to be downloaded into a computer and then manipulated somehow with Photoshop or similar software. The result can be surreal dreamlike images, false colors, absurd composites, mosaics, or other fragments of the photographer’s imagination. Sometimes digital images are only cleaned up a bit. The color is adjusted or the edges sharpened. These manipulations can culminate into a work of art, but somehow I think a photograph that begins as a digital image is a derivative of photography that I would rather not explore, at least not yet.

I shoot slides or monochrome print film most of the time. Occasionally I’ll shoot color print film, but I prefer the saturated reds, blues, and yellows of chromes, also known as slide film. Chromes are predicable. As long as the film is fresh, Velvia 100 from one batch looks very much like Velvia 100 from another batch. Monochrome film on the other hand, holds a special fascination for me.

Forrest Gump could have said that monochrome photographs are like a box of chocolates. You never know just what you’ll get. A lot depends on the film and developer combinations. Some of it depends on the temperature of the developer, how the film is exposed, or the length of time that the film is in the ‘soup’. Medium format film, of the 120 or 220 types, gives better definition and finer grain than 35mm negatives can on the same emulsion, but often the characteristic grain of 35mm film contributes to the texture and quality of the resulting photograph and the statement that the photographer is trying to make.

Digital? It is very predictable. It is static. It begs to be manipulated post-production. Digital photography is a legitimate art form, but it is not what I consider authentic. I need a certain level of random variability to make photography exciting. It is one thing to get instant gratification seconds after an image is shot, but it is quite another to savor the anticipation of what I think I have captured on film compared to the photograph that is really on the negative. In one instance, I kinked and damaged a roll of 35mm Fomapan 100 because I had a hard time winding it on the processing reel when I processed it. To make matters worse, the film had doubled up on the reel and the emulsion surfaces of the film contacted each other and stuck together during development, leaving only a few printable frames. Winter Rails was on that roll. It remains one of my favorite prints.

That’s why I bother.

Tags: monochrome, film, railroad