F3 Workout

I took my Nikon F3 on a Memorial Day hike in the Lime Ridge Open Space. I wanted to get some nice nature photos and see if any wildlife was active. None was, but I managed a few nice shots in the open space anyway. I shot eleven rolls of film, including a roll of mystery film that exposes at ISO 1.6. It came in a container labeled Kodak 2383, and the film matches the general description of 2383, but it lacks the edge markings. Anyway, here are some of the better shots, taken on various films, from the hike.



















Here's a sample shot from the mystery film. You can see it has pretty nice tones and incredible detail, but it's ISO 1.6 and I just don't know what I can even do with that.

The Dogs Visit Another Fort

Earlier this week I shared images from my dogs' trip to Fort Funston. In early May I took the dogs to the Marina Green and Fort Mason while my apartment's carpets were shampooed. I have a roll I shot in red scale that I haven't developed yet, and when I do I'll share those as they'll be my first experiments with red scale photography.

These Chili Peppers are RED HOT!

I'm not really a studio photographer, but I decided to try some studio-type shots with my F3. The F3 is well made for this work with a shade to cover the eye piece I switched the lens from the Nikkor zoom to the 50mm 1:1.4, though, because the zoom's close focus distance was too far for my available space. I decided to try some long-exposure work -- twenty-second plus -- and work on multiple exposures and faux smoke. The multiple exposure shots all turned out poorly. The faux smoke shots turned out okay.

So if you'd like to achieve this effect -- only better than this first experiment, take a flashlight, tape a string or piece of tinsel onto it and, in the dark, move the flashlight over the camera. This should be a flashlight no bigger than a two AA-battery-size Maglite. The flashlight also needs to have an adjustable beam to achieve different effects.

Make sure your lens is CLEAN and your film washing and drying space DUST-FREE. On some images, I had to remove a number of white spots. On others, I didn't have to. On a few, I left the spots in place so you can see how important it is to have a clean setup for this. The white spots on my images are from dust that got on the emulsion during drying.


20 seconds, f11


8 seconds, f8


20 seconds, f11


20 seconds, f8


20 seconds, f11


I didn't record the polar bear exposures. But pretty soon, given global climate trends, this will be the only way to photograph polar bears -- plastic toys.

Great Lens, but Maybe not for me.

Last Tuesday I was supposed to take my Nikon F3 out. That didn't happen until Friday, so these are images I took Friday with the 105mm lens. The 105mm focal distance was difficult for me. Perhaps I was in a bad area for it, or perhaps it's just not a focal distance that I mesh with. Either way, I'll try it again in the future and see if I have better results.









Last Friday I also took my girlfriend's Nikon N80 with me, and that lens and camera combination yielded much better results. So we'll see those on Friday. Friday promises to be a long post.

Super Saturday Special -- Four of Four

This is our last Super Saturday Special from the film I shot on March 31st. So, hopefully, this will be the best. No promises, though. This roll was a 36-count roll of Fuji Velvia 50 ISO slide film. Most of the shots were of the Walnut Creek Library. What a great building. It looks as though it was designed to be photographed. I also grabbed a few shots of the new Neiman Marcus (or Needless Markup as I call it.) The building is very retro looking with muted-green glass in various patterns. One may find themselves asking if they designed it to look retro so it would seem as though they've been here a long time or because they liked the look. There was some manner of fuss over NM's entry into Walnut Creek with a number of people fighting it. Not something I'm too concerned about not being NM's target demographic, but I do like the building a lot.




They say Fuji is known for their greens. I happen to like their reds and blues, too.

Super Saturday Special -- Three of Four

Nikon F3, Kodak 125 ISO Plus-X, 24-120mm zoom.

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Super Saturday Special -- Two of Four

Nikon F3, 24-120mm zoom, Adox CHM ART 100 ISO.
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Super Saturday Special -- One of Four

Yesterday I said I would have enough photos to give you rare Saturday posts until May. I wasn't kidding. My girlfriend and I walked around Walnut Creek, California, for about four hours this past week. In that time I shot one roll each of Ilford PANF 50 ISO, Adox CHM ART 100 ISO, Kodak Plus-X 125 ISO, and Fuji Velvia 50 ISO. Each Saturday for the coming weeks, I'll post the results from one of those films. This week, Ilford PANF 50 ISO. The camera: Nikon F3. The lens: Nikon 24-120mm.

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A Thing for Shadows

"And there may be some who argue that if beauty has to hide its weak points in the dark it is not beauty at all" (Tanizaki, Junichiro. In Praise of Shadows. Stony Creek, Connecticut: Leete's Island Books, 1977.) Like Tanizaki, I believe that shadows present depth. Light, as Americans (and all Westerners use it) becomes a bleaching sterilizer. An ideal American room could be a hospital room -- white, evenly lit, uniform throughout, and devoid of shadows and depth. Another, similar room could be a cell in an asylum. Americans have fetishized light to a point where an overabundance in all aspects of every day is seen as normal. Too much light forces our eyes to work harder, with our pupils shut way down, and brings on eye strain and fatigue quickly. It robs what we see of depth and character. And so, today, we look at photos which praise shadows and in which shadows become the central actor in each picture.


San Francisco Public Library, Mission Bay Branch.


Fourth and King Muni stop. I liked that the shadows make a train track for the Muni light rail stop at Caltrain.


Leasing.


Cherry blossoms in their tree's shadow.


Willie Mays Silhouette.