Blog Posts

Kodak Portra 800

12/30/2014

I was excited to get to try some professional film and see if it made a difference in the contrast and colors of my pictures. I would say it did indeed help with the outdoor shots as they look pretty good, but contrary to what I thought, the film is still daylight balanced, so indoor shots still came out yellow/orange. I was also disappointed to see light leaks on some shots which means my light seal replacement did not go as well as I planned....

Canon Z115

12/10/2014

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...

Contax 139 Quartz

12/9/2014

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!

And here's a shot of it before the new leatherette.

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.

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

Fujica ST605

12/1/2014

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!

Pentax K1000

11/16/2014

This has long been the standard camera for film students, as it is incredibly simple, no -frills, and solidly built. The lenses I have for it are superb and I got several very sharp pictures as a result. Unfortunately, I had a mishap when rewinding and ended up opening the camera before the roll was all the way re-wound. So, several pictures are now fine examples of light leak....

Canon Rebel K2

11/5/2014

This is a perfectly clean example of the camera Canon used to take over the world. Few SLR's are as well known as the Canon Rebel, and this one doesn't disappoint. Fitted with the ubiquitous 35-80mm lens, it took reliable picture after picture.

Minolta Maxxum 5000i

11/5/2014

Using a fully automatic film camera sometimes feels like cheating. This camera has fast autofocus, automatic metering, and even a built in flash, so the challenge for me was to actually choose Manual mode and do something artistic. I've got to say though, that the option of fully automatic mode was handy when I was in a hurry or unsure of how to expose a scene...

Vintage Lens Collection

10/28/2014

In the past year, I've been collecting vintage cameras and lenses, these are almost all of them. It's a lot of fun, but they do take up a bit of space.....

Sony NEX-3N Auto HDR

10/27/2014

I took a few minutes the other night to try some HDR using the built in function on the Sony NEX-3N. It allows you to specify whether you want a 1.0/2.0/3.0/4.0/5.0/6.0 stop spread of the 3 exposures. I generally found the 3 or 4 stop spreads to give the best balance of the effect without looking garish. I then edited them in the computer to further enhance the dynamic range while still avoiding the obvious "HDR look" that so many have come to despise.

Canon FD 200mm f/2.8

10/24/2014

... and as a follow up to yesterday's victory, I was able to successfully de-fungus this lens as well. There was significant wear on this guy so I suspect it was a favorite, but after a good cleaning, I was able to put it back together and take it for a test drive. Like the 300mm it has very nice bokeh and is capable of very sharp pictures, although it does show quite a bit of Chromatic Aberration at f/2.8, which you can remedy by stopping down to f/4.0 or with the CA removal tool in Lightroom.

Canon FD 300mm f/4.0 S.S.C.

10/23/2014

I got this lens from a kind soul that's been selling off part of his camera collection on Craigslist. I've bought several items from him and on my last trip he gave me two lenses for free because they had quite a bit of fungus inside. I was trepidatious at first about taking these lenses apart since they were pretty high end units in their day, but curiosity won out and I dug into the bigger 300mm first.

It was touch and go for a while since there are no manuals that I could find on the Internet, but I figured it out eventually. The fungus cleaned off very easily and I'm really liking the results this lens is producing. Now on to the 200mm f/2.8 that still needs cleaning!

Minolta XG-M

10/19/2014

I acquired this camera as part of a group of 3 from a retired couple. They were moving to Florida and wanted to unload old stuff before they left and these cameras had been sitting for some time. There's tons of information on the web about the specifics of the camera so I won't re-iterate it all here, but one thing I didn't care for was the electronic shutter. If they on-board computer thought the exposure was too high, it simply wouldn't shoot. That got old really fast and I found myself switching off of Av mode and using manual quite often. Nonetheless, this camera/lenses produced some of my sharpest film pictures yet, so I really have to give props to the Minolta and Vivitar glass I was able to use.

Slow Shutter Speed

10/16/2014

I had a chance to do the old "slow shutter waterfall" trick. I used my EF-S 18-135 at f/25, ISO 100, and a 2 sec. shutter. Of course to keep it from overexposing I used my variable neutral density filter set to its darkest setting. It also helps when the setting sun is nice and golden!

Black Beauties

10/12/2014

Generally, I prefer the two-tone silver and black SLR's but along the way I have collected a few all black ones. So, I thought I'd feature them in pictures taken with the two-tone Pentax SP500. The cameras shown from left to right are:
1. Yashica FX-3
2. Minolta X-700
3. Nikkormat FT
4. Konica FP-1
5. Chinon CM-5

The only one I have plans to shoot is the Minolta X-700. That one was the top dog in Minolta's lineup in it's day.

Yashica 230AF

10/9/2014

This rather ugly camera is from the late 1980's and is now an abandoned platform. Yashica had been bought up by Kyocera and had a beautiful lens with the Kyocera and Yashica brands on it. The lens is super heavy duty and produced very sharp images. (I have the 28-85mm). The camera was produced in response to the success of Minolta's auto-focusing units, but it never gained the popularity, and sadly there are no modern DSLR's that use this mount so the lens is only useable on the old cameras. (unlike the Minolta lenses that can be used on new Sony DSLRs, and the Canon, Nikon, and Pentax AF lenses that can also be used on their modern counterparts.)
The funny looking flash actually slides on to the hotshoe and uses the main camera battery for power. It's ugly, but it works well as most of the indoor shots you see are with the flash.

Pentax Spotmatic SP500

10/8/2014

Well, I had high hopes for this camera as it is in excellent cosmetic condition for its age and has the highly vaunted Super-Takumar lens. This camera is the one on the far right of my header picture, and as a side note, it doesn't have a flash hotshoe, what you see in the picture is a cold shoe attachment made by Mamiya/Sekor that slides onto the viewfinder.
Unfortunately, I discovered the light meter was not working right and it told me everything was overexposed when often it was underexposed. I figured it out halfway through the roll and switched to using my phone with a Light Meter app I found on the Google Play store. It works OK, but it tended to underexpose my pictures so I just couldn't win. I also experienced a couple occasions when the mirror would stick in the up position and would stay that way for the next frame or two.
On the upside, the lens was fairly sharp and even though the Solaris 400 film was pretty blueish in daylight, I was able to correct for it in Lightroom once I scanned the prints.

Is Art Important?

10/3/2014

So, lately I've been mulling over the concept of art. Not the question of "what is art?" because I think it's been beat to death already, but more the question of "does art matter?". and more personally, "does art matter to me?"

As a musician, I've never really approached music from an overly artistic standpoint. I've always thought of myself as a technician that performs music to fulfill a function. Whether as a pit orchestra musician, dinner music pianist, or worship team member, I've generally approached music as a means of serving a larger purpose than the music itself. Even when I was in High School or College orchestra, I never felt all that connected to the music. Looking back, orchestra was mostly a means for me to hone my skill on the bass, and to play concerts for people that would clap.

I know that sounds fairly cynical, but that's where I'm at.

I've spent the last year learning photography and videography, once again for the purpose of facilitating weddings, or other events, but certainly not for art. Lately though, I've been watching a YouTube Channel called the Framed Show (https://www.youtube.com/user/framedshow) and it's had me re-thinking my opinions on art.

I'm a long ways off from turning into a reclusive-anti-social-starving artist, but I do enjoy creating something that evokes an emotion. Maybe because I'm so new to it, I'm still surprised when a single picture can make you stop and think. It makes you wonder what was going on, and look for the story.

In music, there is very little that I've heard or played that has moved me emotionally. I like music that is fun, raucous, and technically adept. (think Stevie Ray Vaughan). But, anything you'd describe as dark, moody, or evocative, is just boring to me, and I'm reaching for the scan button on the radio.

So while art is certainly intriguing and fascinating, is it really important? As I've heard it stated recently, it certainly doesn't matter in the hunter/gatherer paradigm. But does it rank at least as important as say... coffee or socks, or more?

I'll stop there because this post is getting long, but this might be a topic I'll come back to, and I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.

Yashica Electro 35 GSN

9/25/2014

This little beauty was part of a larger collection I got from a local collector who's decided it was time to downsize.

These were made in the mid 1970's and are very simple to use, but actually produce beautiful images. It is fixed with a 45mm f/1.7 lens, but it's closest focusing distance is about 2.6 ft. so no macro shots with this guy. I used a long expired roll of Solaris 400 ISO film so I was surprised how well the pictures came out.

Canon EOS 10s

9/25/2014

The EOS 10s was released in 1991 and discontinued in 1994. It was the 2nd best camera Canon made at the time so I guess it's the 5D MkIII of its day.
This came in a group of cameras I obtained from a nice couple re-locating to Florida. The roll of Kodak Gold 200 in it was only half shot up so I finished it off. The coloring was way off for indoor shots, which I'm not sure if it was just the age of the film, or 200 speed film is just no good for indoor shots, but the images weren't very impressive. The outdoor shots were alright though and the 35-135mm f/4 USM lens that came with it is no slouch. It might be interesting to try more shots with modern lenses, which is entirely possible since it uses the same EOS mount as our modern DSLRs.

Five Star 500mm f/8

9/24/2014

So if you ever thought about picking up one of these cheapies for some distance shooting, don't bother. You can get them for $50 or so on eBay, but I got it thrown in with a bunch of camera stuff I bought. Will it focus light onto your camera sensor or film and produce an image? Yes. Will the image be tolerable on Facebook? Sure. Can you zoom in and see sharp detail? Not on your life. Oh, and I hope you like chromatic aberration too...

Chinon CM-7

9/22/2014

This was another Goodwill find. It's from the late 80's so the build quality is pretty cheap, and there's a lot of plastic on it, but everything functions well, and it goes up to 1/2000 shutter speed so it's nice for outdoor light. I've been shooting up some really old "Solaris" brand film and I think it's lost some sensitivity over the years, so I'm disappointed by the washed out colors, but I was able to get some of the saturation back in post processing. It'll be fun to try these cameras again with some fresh film and see if there's a difference.

Minolta Maxxum 3Xi

9/21/2014

So I got this camera as something of a freebie when I bought some more vintage ones. It has a crack in the case where the handgrip is, but it didn't seem to affect it's ability to take pictures. This is a 1991-1994 era machine with all kinds of bells and whistles including a sensor in the grip and eyepiece that causes the camera to start focusing when you put your eye up to the viewfinder. I didn't care much for that feature, but it's a nice little camera that uses the same lenses as current Sony DSLRs.

Grandpa's Canon Sure Shot Owl

9/19/2014

I recently received my Grandpa's last camera that he owned before passing several years ago. It was wonderful to see the pictures he had taken, plus the roll wasn't finished so I got to take a few shots with it too!

A Tank of a Lens - Nikon 105mm f/2.5

9/12/2014

This old beauty is a hefty piece of gear from roughly 1973-1975, that just produces beautiful images. I was really pleased with the results of using this lens on the 7D and I'm looking forward to using this one a lot more! It's the P.C. version meaning it's 5 elements in 4 groups and multi-coated, which is the same specs as Nikon's brand new version.

Pentax Super Takumar 55mm f/2.0

9/7/2014

This is a classic M42 lens from the late 1960's that's highly sought after by videographers for both it's image and handling characteristics. I mainly use it for video, but thought I would try it on some stills tonight. It does alright and the pictures are reasonably sharp, but sometimes the bokeh is a little greasy looking. I'll let you be the judge on the aesthetic qualities though.