Motion Made Still

This was my first experiment with motion picture film -- Kodak Vision 3 50D. The lab removed the rem-jet backing then processed it at C-41 film in tetanal. That's not exactly the right way to do this at ECN-2 development uses different chemicals. So, technically, this was a cross-process experiment. I had to correct the color cast in Photoshop on all of these. With the curves feature, I dropped out the green. Ever seen the movie Domino (I haven't)? That was filmed and processed using a cross-process to give it the green cast. Same effect here.


Sunset in the Canyon.


The Tulip, by Embarcadero Center architect John C. Portman, Jr. It's a big tulip. And one of my top 10 sculptures in SF.


Trans America Pyramid at sunset.


Lighted Stairway.


Art Deco San Francisco


Mandarin Hotel

Contina Accompanies the K-7

A few days ago I shared some graffiti shots from my K-7. I had one of my Zeiss Ikon Contina Matic IIa viewfinders with me, too, and grabbed some shots with it. This was a camera I had taken out the week before but failed to use the entire roll. First, some shots from the previous week at Yerba Buena Gardens.




A backhoe and its shadow. The latter looking like an abstract horse to me.


Someone needs to gentrify this thing.


I could never live or work in the building with this detail on the front door. IT looks like a very abstract face and it creeps me the heck out.


A repeat of an image also captured on the K-7. Here we see why SLRs are better than viewfinders. The SLR did not partially crop the subject due to parallax.

Special Edition: Easter Sunday

Took in my girlfriend's Easter service and games last week. Here are some shots worth sharing.

Graffiti, Sculpture, and Mannequins

Last Monday took me literally all over southeast San Francisco -- Dogpatch, SOMA, Downtown, and Embarcadero. I was testing out my new Tokina 35-70 AF on my K-7, and here are some results.


Graffiti on some old doors. Blur on the right side is the chain-link fence between me and the building.




As one of my friends observed: "Regardless of its artistic merits, someone still has to pay to clean it up."

While I was documenting some buildings' conditions, I decided to grab some shots of the architectural details, too. Once abrasive blasted and repainted with only one coat, these could be promising details.


Dodged the highlights and burned the shadows to emphasize depth and contrast.


I enjoy photographing mannequins because they're like sculptures but also because Picasa keeps trying to get me to tag them.


This photo's point is not the foreground mannequin, but the background reflection, which looks very unhappy and ominous. To achieve the desired look, I modified some color and contrasts to amplify the reflection's presence.


Converted to monochrome in Photoshop with the levels adjusted to make the sculpture look more gritty than it actually is. It's still plenty mucked up by rain and salt, though.


Same sculpture as above, Mistral, by Elbert Weinberg. This sculpture represents the warm winds that originate in Africa and move into Europe, according to the Embarcadero Center's sculpture tour website. I thought it was a fish.


Mistral and the Hyatt.


Mistral in color. This photo shows how I arrived at the above images. By removing color, the colors in this image became lights or dark, resulting in a textured look. Make the yellows light or dark and the image takes on a different character. Combine that with light or dark reds, blues, cyan, magenta, and greens, and the image has hundreds of thousands of different appearances.

The Pony Kicks

This week is going to be a jumble of out-of-order posts. This one, at least, will go where it belongs. Last Monday I used an 828 camera for the first time, a Kodak Pony 828 I picked up for about $20. A LOT more than it's worth, but it's fully functional and -- most importantly -- included a roll of 828 film and two spools. That meant I could actually use it to take photographs. So this test roll was a proof of concept. As such, there are no award-winning photos here. However, this test demonstrated that the 828 Pony presents an interesting lo-fidelity artsy prospect.

A Year In Photos -- Week Sixteen

This week I got three rolls of film back from the processors that I had expected for last week, so this should be a photo-packed week. That's fortunate since one of the cameras I'd planned to use last week broke and another I didn't get out to shoot with due to work deadlines. So without delay, let's see what this week has in store.











This week I'm hoping to have some creative, new shots to share, too. Having gotten my K-7 back from being repaired, this week I decided to use it, but not just for shots like the first three above. Instead, I'll be taking some infrared photographs, too. That involves placing a visible-light cut-filter over the lens, making focusing somewhat difficult as it removes all visible light from the viewfinder. Also, it requires exposures of around 20-30 seconds, which means a tripod. So that could be exciting. Here's an example of an infrared shot I took last year with the same technique.



Monday: Pentax K-7 (9788270), Samyang 18-28 (211773), and an IR 720 filter. most if not all digital cameras can shoot infrared photography with no modification. Some are better than others. The K-7 happens to be pretty good.

Tuesday: Nikon N70 (2314287), Nikon 24-120mm (343019), Kodak Plus-X 125 ISO, and a red filter.

Wednesday: Pentax Spotmatic SPII (5012707), Mamiya/Sekor 55mm (87084), Agfa 100 ISO, and a UV filter. This is a new camera to me. My girlfriend's father gave it to me as a thank you for scanning about 5,000 slides he's taken over his life. Obviously, I didn't undertake the scanning project for two cameras and two lenses.

Thursday: Canon AE-1 (4120937), Canon FD 50mm (4229124), Ilford P4 400, and a Nikkor Y48 filter. I need another FD lens badly or I'm going to quickly not be able to use this camera any more. OH NO!

Friday: Pentax K2 (7084574), Tokina 35-70 (8804232), Adox CHM 400 PRO, and a Nikkor red filter. This is my black-body K2. My chrome-body needs repairs (the mirror is locked up with the shutter open.) So now that my taxes are paid (yay!), I can get to the business of fixing a half-dozen cameras that I want to get back into rotation on this blog. This lens was also part of the package for the slide scanning. I've used it on my K-7, including a few shots I've shared and will share this week. However, on a digital camera is causes substantial purple fringing, an image quality issue unique to digital cameras and the way digital sensors see light differently than film. But being an AF lens, the focusing bit is very thin and hard to focus. That said, I'm still excited to see how this lens performs with film.

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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Another Pirate

YAAAAAAAAAAAR!

The Man with the Midas Touch

Alternate blog title: Gold Fingers.

"Do you expect me to talk?"
"No, Mr. Tog, I expect you to tip."

Pirate

Arrrrrr!

Pinhole Camera Results

Here are the results from the pinhole cameras. The first shot I'll share is what the images looked like. So the paper recorded a negative image. To understand that, film records a negative image. When printed on paper, it makes a positive print. (Two negatives make a positive.) So each image came out as a negative but, with the wonderfulness of modern computer-based photo editing programs, I converted each image to a positive. Each image after the first will be a Photoshop-converted positive.















So, mixed results. Mostly, the poor results came from too-short an exposure time or camera shake. But, as a proof of concept experiment, it worked. Next step: Attemp high-quality results.