Old Camera, Old Film, Good Results.

The first vintage camera I bought was my Kodak Retina IIa. This camera began my passion for grabbing old film cameras and using them on a regular basis. I had never before seen a folding camera and the Retina's lines, angles, and very substantial feel grabbed my imagination like a fly on sticky paper. I love this camera and its results. Small size, great lens, and a substantial feel make it a very nice piece. Also, the rangefinder helps it be more widely usable than my Retina Ia, a viewfinder.


1/100th, approx. f13. Palm Shadow. Black and White captures shadows and reflections well. As a flat medium, it steals depth from the images and causes the shadows and reflections to look like solid elements within a photo. In color, this shadow would have simply been a shadow -- very dark blue and mostly transparent against a cream-colored wall. In monochrome, the shadows becomes the image's central object, dominating the image like a ruler-wielding Catholic School nun. The palm is out of frame, but becomes the component which makes this image a photograph. Even a color-to-monochrome conversion would not have had this effect -- color film and digital sensors see light differently than monochrome film.


1/50th, f11. More Palm Shadows. In monochrome this walkway in Willie Mays Plaza become more. In monochrome, this path between palm rows becomes a jungle floor, dark and lit only by spots and stray beams.


1/50th, f6.3. Submerged stump. In color, this would have been a muddy, green mess. Monochrome presents an opportunity to explore an object for qualities not impeded by color registration. More tactile and visceral, monochrome converts texture and shape into grays and tones and provides a image qualities that become more naked and more deceptive.


1/50th, f16. Not just an art form, monochrome also presents a different type of honesty in reportage. In this image, the San Francisco police are doing something in China Basin. The stopped, threw something in the water a few times, then left. Probably just practicing life preserver throwing.


1/10th, f16. The Bay Bridge from my favorite vantage point.

Bridge Study

For fun, I decided to use this entire roll (almost) on the 4th Street Bridge in SOMA. I've photographed this bridge before with good results, but wanted to try some new perspectives.


1/125th, f11. I've seen this exact scene a number of times. I'll try and capture it again when I don't have to brighten the shadows to get detail. This is a very sweet rotty that belongs to, I think, a homeless man. Many days he gets lunch here and the dog sits and watches for him while he orders.


1/125th, f2. Bolts. I own three copies of this lens. This was my first outing with this one. My original copy causes bokeh swirling wide open. This one does not. Odd.


1/125th, f5.6.


1/1000th, f22. This bridge is much less imposing and impressive than the 3rd Street Bridge. Also, it is less of an intriguing design. But it presents a number of interesting angles and shapes nonetheless.


1.250th, f16. Those white blobs are actually gray, and appear not too different than the surrounding dark gray. Some quality of the paint must make them appear orange to film. The organge filter lightened them disproportionately to the rest of the image.


1/1000th, f22.


1/1000th, f5.6.


1/1000th, f4.

Pioneer, California, on Christmas Day

On Christmas day I took in Pioneer, California, with my girlfriend but didn't use the entire film roll. So I finished the roll on Friday 30 December 2011 in San Francisco. This roll was one of four I finished on 30 December with the Nikon F3. For the Christmas day shots, I used a Nikon 50mm f2 (yellow filter) and for the 30 December shots a Nikon 43-86mm f3.5 (red filter). The zoom lens is an interesting piece of gear and will, at some point, get its own post.

This post will focus on the Pioneer Christmas shots and a post later this week will discuss the 30 December shots. The photos below were all shot with Kodak Safety Film 5062. That's Pan-X 125 ISO. This film was produced in Kodak's Rochester plant in 1976 and sat in a bulk loader until a few weeks ago. Kodak produced their film with a code in the film name to track production. For that code, check out this link. The film has held up well, considering that I doubt ti had been refrigerated. In fact, I'm fairly certain it was stored in a garage and exposed to heat and cold cycles that are no friend to film. So the images are a bit foggy, but they retain their quality and contrast fairly well. I've included a couple shots below straight scanned and then a few with minor post processing to correct contrast issue, film fogging, and poor framing.


Christmas Day Redwood Sapling. This shot, straight out of the camera, was taken with a yellow filter. That resulted in the faux infrared look. The sapling had very light green leaves which, in visible light spectrum terms, were reflecting a lot of yellow light. Much of what we see as green is actually yellow light. So using a yellow filter caused the yellow light to lighten compared to the surrounding tones, causing the film to record the yellower areas as near-white.


This is the image run through Photoshop. I balanced the contrast and then used the magic wand to select the hyper-white areas as a single mask. I copied the areas and pasted them back on the image. I dropped the gamma to .4 and the layer transparency to 60%. After flattening, I did the same with one small remaining white area only with .2 gamma and -.009 offset followed by a 50% transparency. After a second flattening, I dropped the overall gamma to .73.


Redwood Sprig. This is new growth on an old redwood. Similar postprocessing as above, but less intense. Same effect as above, with the yellow filter, but somewhat lost during postprocessing.


Here's the final image I'll share in this post, some empty chairs and a table. The property we stayed at had numerous benches, tables, and such scattered about the acreage. The owners must enjoy relaxing in nature's spaces with many of the garden and outdoor areas well suited for peaceful evenings with friends and warm drinks.

Lessons learned this roll: Yellow filters can produce faux-infrared effects under certain conditions and expired film remains usable for monochrome, but requires more postprocessing.