Yet another camera with a photographer and a blog

White Courtesy Phone, originally uploaded by Focal Intent.

Taken on Christmas Day, 2010 at the Powell St BART station in downtown San Francisco, CA with a Hasselblad 2000fcm w/80mm lens on Ilford PanF+ film.

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Yesterday at NIMBY, we got the first arm raised for Syzygryd. Here’s what that first, 60 feet of arm looks like:

Also, I took another time lapse of what was going on yesterday:

For those of you who are attention deficit here’s the double speed expurgated version:

More recent photos added to the flickr set here.

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Yesterday, at the Syzygryd work day, I played around with taking a timelapse of our day. Using a Canon 5d mk II with a sigma 12-24mm lens (at 12mm) rented from Lens Rentals I took one frame every 5-10 seconds over the course of a 10 hour work day. Here’s what we got:

It was good to play around with the time lapse generation. I was just using canon’s own EOS Utility to drive the camera, and I have an AC power kit for the camera itself so I don’t have to worry about batteries. My one frustration with the day is it seemed like EOS Utility could take about 700-800 photos before it crashed out, requiring me to restart the process. Hopefully it will be better behaved today. In the future, I want to get one of those slow moving setups so that the position/angle of the camera changes very slowly over the course of the time lapse.

We’re going back in today to place the giant arms on this structure and finalize orientation and such. I’m planning on setting up to take a time lapse again today. This one should be good!

Also, since I seem to be remiss in posting photos from this project here, have a photo of our welder doing his work:

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Posted in photography
Tags: james, liz, preview, wedding

Today we took a somewhat earlier start on our day than yesterday, and this time I was one of the people driving for our day’s travels. We took off up 101, the weather alternating rapidly between merely cloudy, raining, and more than occasionally, hail! We made a pit stop at Sourdough Bakery on rt. 101 for bread, a bathroom, and drinks. After another hour or so of driving we arrived at our first stop for the day, Sweet Creek Falls.

As we started in on the trail towards the falls, Joe remarked that things were far wetter than when he had scouted the location a few days previously, including the presence of some new runs of water crossing our path. Of course, I felt compelled to get a photo of this before continuing up the path towards the falls themselves.

Ah, the falls. They were amazing, I wish my photos of them had come out. The combination of a near constant rain, combined with the spray from the violent falls left me with a lens covered with water, ruining many of my shots of the falls themselves. At some point in the future I may revisit some of those photos and see if I can clean them up. In the meantime, this rock to the left took the brunt of the creek’s assault after the falls.

Fleeing the spray from the falls, I made my way back down the trail. Roughly a mile of trails from the falls to our cars meant there were plenty of opportunities to shoot the creek as it roared its way alongside us, and shoot I did. Dozens of photos of rain soaked trees, our trail, the bridges along the creek, the creek itself. Alas, many of them suffered a similar fate to the waterfall photos, one notable exception being the stairs coming down the trail at one point, flanked with green on both sides, snaking its way through the forest. I think this is probably one of my favorite photos from the day.

Finished with the falls we all piled back in our cars and continued north on 101. We made a quick stop at a turnout to catch some shots of a lighthouse further up the coast. Some more driving and a stop or two followed before we turned around and booked it back down 101, racing the sun to try to get back to Bandon before the sunset. More rain, more hail, and some teasing from blue skies.

We made it back to Bandon in time, but the weather had other plans for us. We set up off of face rock to try to get the sunset over the pacific but rain, wind, and cold quickly set in and cut short our time shooting there. Again, I was left with some shots that I think may need some more work before they get shared with the world at large. In the meantime, here are some shots from today that I liked.

Also, check out the workshop pool to see some of the photos posted by some of the other photographers on this trip.

Posted in photography, Travel

This week I am up in Oregon, attending a 5 day photo workshop, Exploring the Oregon Coast I arrived in Bandon, Oregon late sunday night after a weekend visiting family up in portland. I checked into my hotel, tossed a log on the fire, and unpacked and unwound a bit from my drive down before crashing out for the night.

Monday morning started out with heading over to the house that’s acting as our ‘home base’ for the week. I met up with the other participants in the workshop, a couple of whom I already knew through other circles. Once everyone was there Joe ran through our rough plan for the week, talked a bit about what he wanted to do with the workshop, and then filled in details on our day. We then piled into a handful of cars and set off on our day’s adventures.

Our first stop was Cape Arago (I believe, I’ll try to do a better job of catching where we stop in future days). One of the first things that we saw there were the incredible waves crashing into the rocks below us. We spent an hour or so there, walking up and down the shore. I followed a fence into a small wooded area where I found some upturned trees and roots that I felt a strong need to shoot.

Someone then suggested that I head up to the other end of the park where the ground looked more like a moonscape than a beach. I took her advice and made my way up the coast, finding the eroded, moon-ish landscape that she described. I very quickly got distracted from the landscape, however, by the massive waves crashing onto the shore a hundred feet or so down from where I stood. I spent most of the rest of my time at the park trying to catch shots of the waves coming in.

We hit a few more spots after there, including the beach near the hotel that I’m staying at. I ended up spending much of the day shooting with a Canon 17-40mm f/4L lens that I had rented for the week. I have more to say about this lens in the future, but so far, I love this lens.

Tomorrow, there’s a lot of driving, and a lot of rain. In the meantime, here’s my photos from day one.

Posted in photography, Travel
Tags: oregon, workshop

I have an art project that I have recently gotten involved with, that calls for ending up with nearly 400 portraits, in 4×5 negative. My initial plan was to use my Speed Graphic for the work, but I’m starting to have a number of problems with it that are making me consider other camera options.

First, though, I need to take a step back and think about both what I need specifically for this project and what I need and want for my large format photography work in the future. I’m beginning to think there’s two routes to go camera wise. The project requires a number of portraits/photographs that may be in tight environments, which could make working with a tripod mounted camera awkward. With that in mind, I’m considering one of the Polaroid 110B 4×5 conversions. Probably one of these cameras from Alphenhause. The big advantage with this camera is I can shoot with it like a large rangefinder. I’ve grown rather fond of rangefinder shooting over the past few months with my Leica. With this camera I can shoot 4×5 negatives or large polaroids happily – and I can probably, in some circumstances, get away with handheld shooting which is also something i’m going to need. Depending on how things go with the project, I may be able to get away with shooting tri-x and developing in diafine, giving me iso 1250-1600 with my shooting!

However, while this camera will be useful for a number of the portraits that I need for my Project[tm] (more thoughts/details about that in a future post most likely), I don’t think it falls in line with what I want in general from large format photography. I want to play with bellows and movements and all the ways that I can image the world through them. I’d like to play around with macro photography on a very large scale. I like the (much) slower process of composing and making an image with the 4×5.

I made the decision at one point that I prefer field cameras to monorails, mostly because of a simpler setup. It doesn’t hurt that the field cameras tend to be gorgeous pieces of work, but not having to deal with the setup of a monorail is the big win for me. I think it’s down to four cameras for me. The Chamonix 4×5, the Shen Hao HZX 4×5-IIA, the Tachihara 45GF, and Zone VI class camera (no ready link available – I have some ebay links but they will disappear shortly).

The Zone VI stands out from the pack because it has an insanely long extension – over 450mm, which would be fantastic for doing macro work. The downside to the Zone VI is that it is limited to tilt/swing for rear movements. No shift/rise/fall on the rear standard.

The Chamonix comes close on extension, with 395mm, and has a similar set of movements to the Zone VI. The advantage with the Chamonix is I would be getting a new one, vs. rolling the dice with a used Zone VI. It’s also a bit lighter than the Zone VI.

The Shen Hao i’ve read a fair bit about recently as well. The Shen-Hao gives me all movements on the back standard, sacrificing shift on the front standard. I’ve read a number of good things about the Shen Hao cameras online, and they seem promising.

The tachihara, I think, is coming off of my list – as it doesn’t provide much in the way of shift, either front or rear. There are times that I want/use the ability to shift, and while it seems like i’ll need to go to a monorail camera to get shifts on both front and rear standards, I think i’d want a field camera that could shift on at least one or the other.

So that leaves me with the Shen Hao, the Chamonix, or the Zone VI, and now that I’ve done more writing out about it – I think it comes down to a showdown between the Shen Hao and the Chamonix. Time for more reading/research on my end before I pull the trigger on this one. I know I want one or the other, but I don’t believe I have the resources to buy both, pit them against each other, and then sell off the loser.

Posted in photography
Tags: cameras, large format, musings

As i’ve been going through recent film scans, I’ve noticed something. I’ve become lazy with focusing. I’m not entirely sure why, and it’s definitely starting to show up in my shots. I think some of it might come from trying to take shots too quickly. I need to remind myself to slow down when I’m focusing manually, and make sure that things are focused right – paying extra attention to the split focuser/rangefinder. If I want to shoot a little bit more loosely, then I need to shoot with a narrower aperture, to up my depth of field. That has its own set of potential issues, for example a handheld exposure for so long that the world becomes blurry. Finally, I need to remind myself that film is not digital. I can’t quite get away with accidently underexposing a stop or two, and pull it out in post. Likewise, I can’t exactly go shooting at iso 6400 with wild abandon.

Posted in photography
Tags: flaws, focus, navalgazing, photography

The UPS man showed up earlier today with this, my Leica m6 with a Voigtländer Nokton 40mm f/1.4 lens. Over the course of the morning, in between working (hi, boss!) I shot off a roll of BW400CN film as a test. Some of the shots were actual, you know, ‘shots’, while others were test strip type shots – e.g. meter a shot, then shoot all up and down the range of apertures or exposures to compare results. I then, over lunch, gave the film to my friendly neighborhood walgreens with a “rush, please, and gimme on a cd!”

I have to be honest, here. I have zero interest in shooting 35mm film. All of my film shooting up over the past 10 years has been 120 medium format or 4×5 large format. Digitally, I shoot with a Canon 5d mk II, and shot with a 5d for over three years before that. My thought process was something along the lines of, “I have a digital camera that beats the resolution one gets out of 35mm film, so why waste my time with it?”

I think I now have a reason to waste my time with it. Before I go into some of the shots from that first test roll, I have to say, shooting with this camera was a dream. Everything just fit in my hands and flowed very naturally for me. The only bit of awkwardness was the initial film load, though even that became natural when I swapped out the first roll and put the second roll in. The camera has some heft to it, it’s heavier than I thought it would be, but still lighter than anything but my WWII era folders. When I hold it in my hands to shoot, I feel like my fingers can reach everything without having to reach – focus, aperture, exposure, film advance, even the adjustment lever for the framelines.

I think I’m going to enjoy living and shooting with this camera.

The first shot that I’m grabbing from my roll, over here on the right is a sculpture that’s in my apartment complex made from the old fire control system that was in place when the building was a warehouse/factory. This sculpture has been on every first test roll of every camera that I’ve gotten over the past 3 years. It’s practically a tradition, at this point.

I’m already comfortable focusing with this system, even though I’ve never used a rangefinder before today. Partly because I use a split image finder on my medium format cameras (a Hasselblad currently, and Mamiya 645 and RZ67 cameras before that). If you’ve never used one before, it can take a little bit of getting used to, but once you do it’s great for rapid manual focusing of a scene. The short version is, you find a vertical line in your scene, and center the rangefinder on that line. Through the center of the range finder, you’ll see that the line is broken, a small segment floating off on its own. You adjust the focus on the lens to bring the floating segment of the line back in line with the rest, et voila! You have a focused image!

While I liked the responsiveness and immediateness of getting my film developed at walgreens, unfortunately they scan their film at a sickeningly low resolution (and I suspect they may be scanning their prints, not even the negatives, but don’t quote me on that). I need to find someplace that will develop my 35mm film -and- provide me with decent scans. They don’t need to be massive, but I’d like something in the 6-15megapixel range – not the mere 2 that walgreens gives me.

Here are some more random shots from that first roll:

There are a few more images in the Flickr set for my first roll.

Also, as a reminder – there’s a Flickr Group set up for people playing along to share!

Posted in A Year With Leica
Tags: cameraporn, film, leica