A Year in Photos

Photography, fiction, and personal essays form my three primary creative outlets. For this blog's first 18 months, I used it primarily for photography. As I've returned to creative writing, I'll use this blog for fiction, too. Sometimes, when reality needs to be discussed more than truth, I write personal essays.

This blog will continue to showcase as many above-average photos as I can muster. Hopefully my written work will be as good or better than the visual. Whichever drew you here -- photographs or fiction, I hope you enjoy both.

Sunday, January 8, 2012

A Year In Photos -- Week Two

This year's first week returned mixed results with two rolls returning poor results and two returning acceptable ones. This week you'll get to read about last week's results and hopefully learn from a few of my mistakes.

This week's blogs will begin with some shots of the Embarcadero in fog. Had I remembered to put a battery in the Mamiya/Sekor that morning, the shots would have been better. There will be other foggy days, though, so I'll have a second chance soon enough. Tuesday will look at my results with a Minolta SRT 102 and the kit Rokkor-PF 50mm lens. This is a great combo and this camera is rising quickly on my list of favorite gear. Wednesday I brought out my trusty K1000 for some fair-to-middling results. Thursday took me to Alameda with the Nikon N70 and an NAI 50mm f2 Nikkor lens. I know what you're thinking -- an NAI lens on an N70, doesn't work -- no metering. Well, that's not true. I found a way to trick the camera into proper metering with NAI lenses. And yes, they do mount. I'll explain how on Friday.

This week features an exciting camera lineup. Monday I'll be taking out the N70 (2314287) again this time with the kit 35-80mm lens (4438066). I also picked up some old Photoworks 400 ISO film the other day -- 15 rolls of it and five rolls of Verichrome -- for $10. So I'll be shooting that and then cross-processing it as monochrome. I've done this before with good results. Photoworks used very good movie film tailings for their rolls and, handled properly, the results are quite nice. So next week we'll also have a post on cross-processing film.

Tuesday I bust out the Voigtlander Perkeo 1 (3645721). It has a roll of ShangHai 100 ISO in it already with one exposure used. So I'll have 11 more to take. ShagHai is, well, to be kind, not my favorite film. The results are okay, but it's not TMax or Ilford.

Wednesday I'll get my old Spotmatic SP1000 (5815145) out and load it with a 15-exposure roll of Imation 100 ISO film. This is color film, so I'll have to hope that the local shop changed their chemicals since the last time I took film there. The lens: A Focal 28mm f2.5 (550357) that returns amazingly sharp images on every camera I've tried it on. This will be its first outing on the Spotmatic, though.

Thursday I'm going to use a strange combination with my Canon RT (2463369) and a Takumar 55mm f1.8 lens (1426697). I own no EOS-mount lenses, just an EOS-to-M42 adapter, so for the forseeable future all the lenses used on the RT will be M42s. Backing this combo will be a roll of Kodak Gold 100.

Lastly, on Friday, I'll bring out a beautiful old viewfinder -- a Zeiss Ikon Contina Matic IIa (T 81756). I'll use another roll of Imation 100 ISO in it. I got the Imation film for free and need to use it at some point. So why not now?

This could be an exciting week with a nice camera lens and make diversity. I hope you enjoy this week's blogs and pictures. With luck, you'll get to learn a few things in the process, too.

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