Domo Aragato, Mr. Roboto -- the Film Version

In early July I had a post called Domo Aragato, Mr. Roboto. It featured some still lifes I made with my dad's old toys and my Pentax K-7. This week I'll share some of the film photos I took that night along with the camera I used.

Pentax 6X7 (Fuji 100 Acros)


Minolta SRT 102 (Foma 100)






Pentax Spotmatic SPII (Foma 100)

Yellow filter (note that the red caboose is substantially lighter than a red caboose would normally be while the blue robot in the front is very dark.)


Red filter (here the red caboose is dark enough to read the white American Flyer text, mostly due to a slightly longer exposure time, and the robot is much darker than in the previous image.)


Blue filter (here the caboose is dark and the robot much lighter.)

Filters work by cutting lights waves that don't pass through the glass color. So a red filter actually cuts all the light waves except red. The further the color rests on the spectrum from the filter color, the more effectively that filter blocks it. So red filters make blue dark gray or black and blue filters make reds dark gray or black.

Canon RT (Kodak Double-X, 5222)






Zeiss Ikon Contaflex (Kodak Double-X, 5222)














Canon AE-1 (Kodak Plus-X 125)

SRT on the Docks

I took my Minolta SRT 102 and the Tamron 28-70 north of the Ferry Building, an area I've never walked to before. No sinister reason, but why walk when there are antique trolleys?



1/60th, f6.3


1/125th, f11
From a technical perspective, the first image is clearly the better. However, I like the drama that the second image, with its non-vertical verticals and dark sky, creates. The first image nicely frames away the neighboring buildings, focusing just on that one apartment complex. The second image includes hints of the neighborhood. I admit I like the framing on the first image better.



1/125th, f11


1/60th, f11
After taking some shots of the building, as practice for the portfolio I'm developing, I wandered around. I love the old Milan trolleys, two photos above, for their look, but not so much for their noise. If you've never ridden one, it's like riding inside the acoustic equivalent of a rock tumbler -- it's loud. But they also have the nicest interiors of San Francisco's classic trolleys -- wood and large windows. This dock was where I finished my roll. The above shot includes some additional photo processing besides contrast balance to correct for scanner flatness and sharpening. The deck had some gamma reduction to enhance the grain.


1/30th, f22.
I was lucky with this shot. The dock was extremely windy and many of my shots at 1/60th turned out too blurry to use on this blog. However, this shot turned out decently well despite the slow shutter speed and high wind. This is downtown San Francisco with Embarcadero Center in the middle (the tall, dark building and two similarly-shaped buildings to its right) and a bunch of other buildings I don't know the name of.

Finally, Some Color

Lest you worry that this whole week would be dedicated to statues of religious figures, this post will dissuade you from that notion. We'll return to statues of religious figures tomorrow, an inadvertent theme this week.

On April 3rd I took my SRT 102 out with the Tamron 28-70 and a roll of Fuji Velvia 50. I got it back from the processing lab on Saturday, and here are some results.

"I Gots Teeth."

"View the Back of the Mirror"

"Statues are People, too."

"Left-Right, Blue-Green"

"What a Socking Photo."

"Still Proving I can Balance it the Longest"

Friday Fun Day!

What's the dino saying? Leave your caption as a comment.

Not Every Day has Ten Good Photos

Yesterday was one of those rare, prolific days that photographers love -- every shot seems to be perfect. Some mix of gear, film, light, and timing combine through nothing shy of divine intervention to create a nice mix of quality shots across the whole roll.

Today is not a repeat. The Minolta SRT102 and 135mm Celtic lens are a great combination and work very well together. But none of the shots today have a great 'wow' factor. That said, let's see what we've got.


1/1,000th, f6.3. The Giants' mascot moonlights as The Giants' bouncer. He's clearly taking no gruff.


1/60th, f22. "There is Light Somewhere" -- Noor. This shot exemplifies why correction filters are useful. I left this lens unfiltered and wish that I had brought a green for this shot. The paint, red, blends into the pavement almost invisibly. Had I used a green filter, then it would have been near-black against charcoal shadows. Much more easily read.


1/1,000th, f5.6. A marching percussion troupe outside Giants Stadium. They were good.


1/1,000th, f6.3. Giants Mascot, moonwalk us into the weekend.

SOMA Marina

So not a whole lot worked with the SRT 102, Telesar 28mm, Foma 400 ISO combination. I suspect it relates to bad developer chemical, improper exposure estimating on my part, and a sub-par lens. It's too bad, too, because I wanted this lens to be nice. I'll give it a couple more tries, though, with different film and different subjects. I had only limited time for my walk last Thursday, so I had to limit my pictures to an area not well suited, typically, to wide-angle photography: the marina near AT&T Park.


1/125th, f8. This lens vignettes worse than any lens I've ever used except the 18mm Samyang I have in K mount. Wow. And this is with some cropping.


Full second exposure, f16. I enjoy photographing playgrounds. They present a challenge and have interesting shapes and colors. However, I will not photograph one if there are kids there. On this day the playground was closed, or else I would have gone in for better shots. I like that the central play piece here mirrors the design of the sculpture behind it.


I forgot to write this one in my notes, but i twas certainly wide open at f2.8. This shot hints at this lens being able to deliver crisp results, so my initial feelings about it being a soft lens may be inaccurate.


Full second, f16. I had to drop the gamma to add suitable contrast. Also, the negative was touching the previous spiral and so the image's right side didn't develop.

SRT in SOMA

I picked up my Minolta ART 102 for a song on eBay along with a bunch of other camera bodies listed as 'broken.' The SRT works great, mechanically, but the light meter is dead. This may be repairable, or not, but I'm not one to mess with electronics (though arguably I couldn't make it worse...) But I also don't feel a huge need to repair it as the SRT returned more well balanced photos than any of my other meterless cameras. So last Tuesday I put the kit 50mm Rokkor-PF lens on and loaded some Foma 100 ISO film and took it around SOMA. For a filter, I used a circular polarized light filter to darken the sky and allow the clouds and buildings to stand out a bit.


Hanging flower sifter. For post-processing, I dropped the gamma and raised the offset in the white areas to reduce the amount of white burn. I should have taken more photos of this thing as I don't care much for this angle, but suspect that as a subject the flour sifter could be interesting being that it's comprised of multiple curious and difficult shapes.


A beater attachment. Shooting through windows presents a challenge and this shot exemplifies a bad example of that challenge being failed at. Windows prevent photographers from getting the best angle and I think that getting closer to and more below the beater would have improved the shot.


I tried to make the five red stars stand out, but failed. Instead, I managed to capture some interesting light play within the glass brick. For post-processing, I overlaid the image on itself, dropped the gamma on layer 2 to about .6, and then made the transparency about 40%, this exaggerating the contrast within the brick. That said, the contrasts were already there and visually interesting.


I see you -- a security camera hidden in an old light housing.


I admit I don't get it. Though I suppose that this would make it hard to mistake one's car for another red Firebird. Maybe it's also an experiment in drag and how to optimally detriment a car's gas mileage and wild resistance. Not a great shot, but an interesting street sight.


I had this feeling my whole walk that I wasn't taking great shots, so I headed over to AT&T Park. There is no bad angle for photographing the Willie Mays statue, so I tried a new one and a new focus -- his right hand. But I also had a deep enough DoF to keep most of the statue in focus.


In keeping with my promise to share my failures, too, this is from another statue (I forget who it depicts.) I wanted to get his hand but for some reason focused on his wrist. The background is as intended, and the contrast on the hand and ball as hoped, but the framing is terrible.