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The Bahamas - Kodak Portra 800

4/19/2017

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We recently returned from a vacation on New Providence Bahamas. It was a wonderful time away and I got to take my Minolta Hi-Matic AF2 out on the town in Nassau to capture some of the scenes. My scans aren't the best but the prints actually turned out pretty nice.
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Tamron 19-35mm f/3.5-4.5 Minolta AF

2/15/2017

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A friend recently gave me a Tamron 19-35mm f/3.5-4.5 lens for the Minolta AF mount. So, I hooked it up to my trusty Maxxum 7000i and took it for a spin! It was fun to shoot film with such a wide angle. My normal digital rig only goes down to 24mm so it was both fun and challenging to use. I shot it on long expired Kodak Gold 200 during the setting sun hour so the pictures are plenty grainy, but I think the lens was sharp enough and performed very well.
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Really Vintage Cameras

1/16/2017

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Aside from the Brownie, these guys are really, really old.
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Canon FT QL

1/16/2017

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The FT QL was introduced in 1966 making it a solid 50 years old now. I got these two warhorses at a local option for next to nothing, and I still haven't gotten around to running film through them, but I love the patina and wear marks that make you wonder what these cameras have been through over the past half century.
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Minolta Maxxum 7000i - Fresh Film

9/16/2016

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I've shot this camera before, but I intend to use it this weekend and wanted to make sure everything was working right. This time, I even used non-expired film and it was really nice to see the difference. I also tried some shots in the studio with the strobes. I guessed on the settings for the first shot, but then used a light meter and realized I needed a wider aperture to get correct exposure. The meter turned out to be correct and I was pleased with the results!
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Minolta X-700 MPS

9/5/2016

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The Minolta X-700 was introduced in 1981 and received the first "European Camera of the Year" that year. In my experience, the Program and AV modes work excellently and the Minolta glass is exceptional. Of course, if you feed it old expired film, the results are less than spectacular.
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Film VS Digital - FIGHT!

8/26/2016

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So, this week I took the opportunity to try out a Mamiya m645 1000s medium format film camera. I got a 70mm f/2.8 "standard" lens, as well as a 150mm "portrait" lens. I ran one roll of fresh Kodak Ektar 100 film through it.

I wanted to do a head to head comparison of 6x4.5mm film vs my Canon 6D full frame 20Mp digital to see if there is truly any sort of magical quality to the film pictures that I could not replicate with digital. For the pictures where I used the 70mm Mamiya lens on the m645, I used my EF 50/1.8 "nifty fifty" on my 6D. For the pictures taken with the 150mm Mamiya lens, I used a Tamron 70-200/2.8 Di VC USD with the zoom set to 90mm on the 6D.

I was honestly rooting for film as I wanted to be able to point to it's wider dynamic range and smooth bokeh as advantages..... BUT.... sadly it did not. I'm pretty sure it's more a matter of the quality of the 35 year old Mamiya glass and not so much the film's fault, but in every way my digital pictures were better by any objective measurement.

Just for fun though I thought I'd share the comparison shots here for your amusement!

Digital

Film

I was under the impression that you could see more in the shadows without blowing out the highlights on film, but as you can see here, the digital actually did a better job of showing both the darks and the brights.

Digital

Film

I was also under the impression that medium format film would produce significantly more bokeh than 35mm, but alas as long as you shoot the equivalent focal length and aperture, the bokeh looks the same.

Digital

Film

I had the film negatives professionally developed and scanned at the highest possible resolution which yielded a 48Mp file, which I thought would mean more detail and sharpness, but as you can see, the digital picture has more of both

Digital

Film

Digital

Film

Digital

Film

The Ektar film does indeed have vibrant colors, but with a minimum of post production work, I could make the digital file look the same if I so desired.

Digital

Film

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Nikon FG

8/23/2016

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This camera has the very handy features of both Aperture Value and Program modes which make it a very easy camera to use, but also has the flexibility of full Manual mode. It worked great for the most part, but I did notice a couple of light leaks, so it might be time for new seals. The old expired film didn't render colors all that great, and 8 shots on the roll didn't turn out at all, but still managed a couple nice ones.
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Olympus OM-G

5/2/2016

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I've been wanting to shoot my Olympus for a while, and finally got around to it.! This is a nice light and compact camera with both AV and Manual modes that makes it really handy to bring along. I have a variety of Olympus lenses that provided a bit of flexibility too. These were shot on Kodak 200.
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Konica FP-1 Program

5/2/2016

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At first I did not want to shoot this camera since it is Program Mode, or AV mode only., and I didn't like not having the option of shooting in Manual mode. I have to say though, that it did a wonderful job of choosing the correct exposure! It's a solid little camera that really performed well. I just may need to find more lenses for it than the 57mm I used for these shots. I used Fuji 400 film for these.
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A First for Me

4/26/2016

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Last weekend I got to shoot my first Prom session with a group of fun loving High School students. We were supposed to shoot outdoor, but the weather didn't play along so we did most of the shooting indoors. I'm still happy with how they turned out and we did manage to sneak in one outdoor pic between the raindrops :)

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Minolta SRT 102

4/1/2016

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This old warhorse is a heavy brick of a machine that had some advanced metering abilities for its day. The bundled lens was a 58mm 1.4 that might not be the sharpest piece of glass, but has some beautiful bokeh to the background blur. These were shot on 9 year expired Kodak Max 400 film.
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Zeiss Contaflex

3/19/2016

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Forget Instagram filters! All you need to do to make your pictures turn out crummy is to use a 50+ year old camera. Oh and use expired film. Plus if the film says ISO 200, be sure to set your camera to 400 so it underexposes everything. And to make those cool flares? - be sure to open your film back before the film is rewound all the way, that works great.
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Last Contax/Yashica Post for a while

2/16/2016

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I have had a great time using the Contax 139 Quartz and Yashica FX-3 as my main film cameras for several rolls now, but with many more cameras to try out and evaluate, it's time to put these back on the shelf for a bit. Here are some scans from my latest batch. Stay tuned for the results of my next camera to sample!

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Yashica FX-3

8/28/2015

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This was another late 70's machine that I did a leatherette and light seal replacement on. The red of the alligator skin was a little more garish than I would have liked, but the camera shoots well. These shots were on Kodak Gold 200 film.
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Car Shoot with the Novatrons

8/2/2015

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I haven't posted in a while since the summer has been getting busy, but today I took the opportunity to try shooting a car with the Novatron studio strobes. It was fun figuring out how to shape the light the way I wanted it to look. Overall, I'm pleased with the results, but there's always room for improvement.
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Yashica FX-70 with Fujifilm 400

7/29/2015

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It's taken a while to finish the roll, but I finally got to test out my refurbished Yashica FX-70. A while ago, I replaced the peeling leatherette with the blue alligator skin an installed new light seals. These are were taken with a variety of Yashica lenses and Fuji 400 speed film. I gotta say, focusing with manual lenses is really tough.
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Getting Adventurous

4/28/2015

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So after 2 years of shooting, I'm finally venturing out from the "clean edit" as it's called. So far I've been happy just producing a well balanced, properly exposed picture with sharp focus. Lately though, I've felt like trying out some more dramatic processing and I'm liking the results.
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Canon EOS Elan IIe

3/26/2015

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This camera represents nearly the pinnacle of "enthusiast" level film cameras for Canon. Produced between 1995 and 2000 it's jam packed with features and has great ergonomics. It only has 3 focus points, but you can select which one to use just by looking in the right direction. The camera actually looks at your eyeball to see where you're looking! Creepy.
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Nikon N2020

3/22/2015

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This was Nikon's first auto focus camera and all it all, it's a great little package. Great features and good ergonomics. The only thing I didn't like was the on/off switch is a bit fiddly for big hands. But, even loaded up with old film we got some interesting shots out of it!
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Nikon FG

2/17/2015

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I picked this little gem up from K-Bid for a whole $13.00. It had a 12exp. roll of Fuji film in it so I shot up the roll, not knowing if the camera even worked. These two were with a flash, but all the non-flash pictures were underexposed so I think I was doing something wrong.
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Minolta Maxxum 7000i

1/22/2015

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Recently another kind soul donated his vintage 1989 Minolta to my collection. Included was a 35-105mm f/3.5-4.5 lens and a 70-210mm f/4 lens. I finished off the roll of Agfa 100 that was in it, and unfortunately due to the age, the pictures all came out with a very purplish hue. They look pretty good in black and white though!
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Canon Z115

12/10/2014

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Well the best I can say about this little point n' shoot is that it takes pictures. The lens is nothing to write home about, but it does have a decent zoom range. To my eye the pictures were generally washed out and not very sharp, and the flash really didn't have much power so the only thing it lit up was whatever was just to the left of the lens. It also rewound my roll 4 frames early so I'm not sure what happened there...
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Contax 139 Quartz

12/9/2014

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When I got it, the light seals were bad, and the leatherette was peeling (which is par for the course for these.) I got replacement kits for both and spent a couple hours refurbishing this beauty to the condition you see here. Soon I'll be running some film through it and posting the results!
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And here's a shot of it before the new leatherette.
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I've been looking forward to making this post for some time now. Contax is a Zeiss brand of lens infamy, but in the 70's they licensed the name to Yashica to make a line of SLR's that are just a cut above the standards. The mechanics are smooth and the design is elegant.

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Here are a few pictures with with another favorite of Japanese manufacturing - the Yamaha DG-80 guitar amplifier.
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Fujica ST605

12/1/2014

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This camera is all about simplicity. It uses the old standard M42 threaded lenses, and you have to push in the depth of field preview button to activate the light meter. The only oddity is that the top shutter speed is 1/700... most cameras are either 1/500 or 1/1000 so I don't know why they settled on 1/700. But in any case, it's easy to use and makes a very satisfying 'clunk' when it fires!
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