In photography on
22 June 2009 with 3 comments
So I got some new toys. What, you’re not surprised? Yeah, neither am I.
I almost thought I gave up on 35mm film. I didn’t shoot a lot of it anymore, and granted, other than the Vivitar Ultra Wide & Slim it just didn’t do anything for me really. The Praktica BX20s is nice, and the Nikon N90s is a fancy and fast beast, but yeah, not that exciting.
But I didn’t want to get up that easy. With a recent affinity for black and white film I started looking in a different direction, to the rangefinder cameras. Obviously the king of the hill is a Leica, but I really should start off easy, and work my way up. Maybe I’ll stop by a Bessa R4 on the way, but for now, let’s start with something about 40 years old, a Canon Canonet QL17. I shot some real cheapo film with it, and while the film itself is far from being a favorite, it only had 12 shots, perfect for shooting a test roll. I’ll have to work on the focussing, but this one turned out okay.
It’s a cute little camera, and while it’s quite heavy, it sure comes in handy and is more compact than the Praktica, not to mention the Nikon. Sweet camera too, but yeah, rangefinder focussing is a different school. Not seeing what you get sure makes it more interesting.
Boom, there’s the kicker, things got interesting again.
But! Why not crank it down a notch? There’s another, a smaller infamous rangefinder camera, with a touch of lomo, though just a small one, and it’s a lot cheaper. It’s the Olympus XA, not the XA2, not the XA1, no, it’s the original. I got one off ebay, and I’m very much looking forward to trying it out. It also sports a rangefinder focus.
I’m looking for something that I can take with me in my pocket, the Holga is cool and all, but something more general purpose for the every-day is what I’m looking for. So there, my explanation for the current state of my addiction.
Last but not least, it’s the king (or the queen?) of the Polaroid cameras, a Polaroid 110B converted for pack film. Well, maybe it’s not royal, but it sure looks like it.
Now, I can hear you say that doing the conversion yourself is a fulfilling experience, you should do it yourself, blah blah blah. Sure, I could, but I’m neither capable nor even remotely patient enough to pull that off. Believe me, it’s better that way, for all of us. I’d curse a lot, probably kill this blog, and my Flickr account too.
Ebay once again to the rescue (if until now you haven’t realized that ebay is awesome to get old-ish cameras, there, I just said it), I scored the beauty above. A conversion sets you back around $500 on ebay US, and I got the 110B for a pretty good price. Apart from some focussing issues, this time it’s the camera not me (or is it?), it’s an amazing beast. Sweet lens, fully manual, and huge!
As soon as the sun is really out, it was a little short with us lately, I’ll get down and funky with this bad boy. I still have two expired packs of ID-UV which I’m very much looking forward to shoot
In music on
17 June 2009 with no comments
That’s right. Depeche Mode. The one band I’ve been stuck with for more than 20 years now. My sister got her first tape in East-Germany, an album with their greatest hits from around 1981 to 1986. That was my first contact with Depeche Mode, and I still like their music from back then. Crazy huh?
Last week we went to see them at Berlin’s Olympic Stadium, together with 60,000 other people. Yep, that’s a lot of people. It’s gotta be the biggest concert I’ve been to. Except for the supporting bands the show was awesome. I do prefer the show from three years ago, but it still was good to be there.
We were reasonably close to the stage, only being annoyed by people desperately trying to get a photo or record video. Pro tip for you guys: Turn off the flash when you want to shoot a stage that’s 50 meters away.
I only took one awful photo during the show, just to post it on Twitter. The other photos I took were of the awesome Olympic Stadium. My word, it’s awesome. It sure has a controversial history, but when you stand out- or inside of it, it sure looks quite impressive. I only had my iPhone with me, but here’s a preview.
We’re sure to go back soon for a detailed photo tour. Luckily they’re open all week when no show or game is on, hoping for awesome clouds like these.
In holga, photography on
9 June 2009 with 8 comments
It’s probably no secret that I’m very fond of the Holga. Wait, isn’t the blog title even suggesting it? Right. Glad we straightened that out.
Anyway, things are happening in the Holga world. The company making them recently started their own website. Can you believe it? It’s 2009, and some companies still don’t have websites! Apart from that, they’ve also been busy cranking out new Holga models, and boy are they awesome.
The weirdest one is probably the Holga TLR, a twin-lens reflex Holga. How weird is that, some people don’t use the viewfinder at all, and now this.
(Image courtesy of Holgablog)
The Holgablog has some inside scoop on this beauty, but in general I don’t think it’s for me. The Holga is an extension of my eye, if you will. Call me a weirdo, but I even use its viewfinder, as far off and inaccurate it may be.
The other one, though not entirely new, really tickles me fancy. A wide-angle pinhole Holga that produces 6×12 pictures. Really, how cool is that? I fell in love with pinhole a while ago, and this one is right up my alley:
My birthday’s coming up, by the way. Just saying.
In other news, a while ago my good friend Marzena interviewed me on all things photography, coffee and cupcakes. If you haven’t already, head on over there and read it, I dare you!
My personal stash of cameras has expanded over the last weeks, I just got a Canon Canonet QL17 (first roll still waiting for development, if it works nicely, I’ll keep stuffing black and white film in it), a Polaroid Automatic 355 (to replace my 101 which is on its way to Korea) and, ohmigawd, a Polaroid 110B, my oldest camera so far, and nicely converted for pack film already. I’m so looking forward to playing with that bad boy.
I also discovered (thanks to Kai) what is probably the nerdiest film shop in Berlin, Foto Impex. I’ll see you there!
Also, since about yesterday I can’t get this out of my head. While you’re at it, watch this as well. Metric is my band of the week.
So, what else is new?
In flickr, photography, photos, polaroid on
18 May 2009 with 1 comment
Okay, so it’s been a while since Roid Week, but somehow I haven’t been in the mood to blog. Let’s remedy that, shall we?
It was incredibly fun. I shot four films I haven’t used before, and I shot a lot of it, as you can see.
It looks like a lot, but granted, there’s still an enormous amount of Polaroid film in our fridge, and whil I’m a bit careful with not wasting any, there’s no reason letting it go to waste. Plus, there’s no such thing as a ruined Polaroid, right?
So, seeing all those photos, there must be some leftovers. There sure are. That’s why I’m declaring this week Roid Rejects Week. A week filled with all the good stuff that didn’t make it into Roid Week. Someone suggested opening a group on Flickr, but for me it’s really just about the spirit. Come join me, will ya? Let’s see what we have for a start.
Yep, that’ll work.
To sum up, I found two really nice new films, the 669 and the 779, luckily I just stocked up on both.
In polaroid on
5 May 2009 with 1 comment
The one event in spring and autumn to look forward to the most? Why, Roid Week of course! Get out your cameras, jam some film in there, go out and shoot. It’s not about worrying too much about wasting film, it’s about shooting with all you’ve got, and having fun with it.
I started out with three films I’ve never shot with, including the most awesome 779, the Artistic TZ and some 600 b&w film that’s been expired for more than six years. I can’t speak too highly for the latter, but it was still fun to finally take them out for a spin. They’re not something I’d use more often though. The Artistic TZ is a film totally standing on its own, and I think it’s only good for shooting outside, in the sun, with some blue sky in the picture.
About the b&w, I shot a pack last year, but it was expired in 99, and it didn’t really come out at all. On some shots you could see some shapes, but that was about it. Sadly, the b&w film I ordered from PolaPremium is in the same league, but on some shots you can at least recognize something. Not my favorites, that’s for sure.
Today I put a pack of expired 669 film in my Automatic 230, and the colors are awesome. Boy I’m glad that I just recently bought two more twin packs of that film.
The best part about Roid Week though is the excitement around it. Everyone interested in Polaroid is celebrating this week, either by digging out old shots, or by going out and shooting just for the occasion. Me, I do both, though I don’t really have old shots, just some taken over the last couple of weeks. But I’m also taking a camera with me every day, trying to shoot as many things a day as I can, without getting the feeling I’m wasting film.
Also, fitting with Roid Week, I scored eight twin-packs of expired 664 film. Here’s to some more b&w goodness, and to an awesome Roid Week. Check out the pool for some mind-blowing Polaroid stuff. And keep your Poladroids out of our Roid Week, will ya?
In photography on
3 May 2009 with 6 comments
It’s not for the faint-hearted, and it’s not for everyone, it’s cross-processing! It’s also the only option for people who don’t access to labs developing slide film.
If you don’t know what it is, you basically develop a roll of slide film (E6) in development liquids for color negative film (C41), or vice versa. I have never tried the vice versa though, it seems like a waste of film to me, because the results don’t look as nice as they can with cross-processing slide film. I can’t speak for developing C41 with E6, but the other way around you also need to be aware that cross-processing usually also pushes the exposure by one stop. This works nice with the Holga, especially with very low-speed film, but with other cameras you need to factor that in.
But even with slide film, I have mixed feelings about it. Most films get a very odd color tinge. Some films adopt the color that’s most present in the photo, others just turn purple. I’m not too fond of that. Sure, you could try to get a good share of different colors in your photo, but then again I might as well develop slide film as slide film, because some films are just plain awesome on their own. Plus, I’m not a fan of some people’s notion that slide film just has to cross-processed. Because it’s Lomo, because everyone else does it, who cares? Truth is that slide film can look nice just processed as slide film. Do whatever works for you.
Take Fuji’s Velvia series, for example. The Velvia 50 and the Velvia 100 (including F) result in awesome, saturated photos. The colors are almost insanely saturated, but to a point where it still makes for a nice combination, not as with HDR. Did I mention I’m not fond of HDR? Okay, there you have it.
Plus, there’s nothing like holding a stripe of 120 film in your hands where you can see the photo as it is. Screw those tiny slides with plastic casing your dad used to put on a show with, this is the real deal.
But, coming back to the original topic, there are two films that are just awesome for cross-processing, one of them is Agfa’s RSX-II 200, the other is Fuji Velvia 50. Unfortunately, production of the RSX-II has been stopped years back, and Agfa shut down altogether, but there’s hope. Rollei released a film called Digibase CR 200 which is based on the emulsion of the original RSX-II. I’m looking forward to trying it out, but until then, I still have ten rolls of the original in my fridge. An example of how it turns out cross-processed.
That’s an improvement I can get on board with. The colors are greatly saturated, but not yet to the point where it looks totally unnatural. But it’s not only great for cross-processing, it has amazing colors all by itself, especially with the added expired-ness.
Get your hands on a roll of that new Rollei film. Either way, you won’t regret it.
Now, just last weekend I put a roll of Velvia 50 in my Holga and had it cross-processed. The film stripes had a purple-ish tinge which made me suspicious, but when I scanned it, I was blown away. Sure, it has a slight shift to green, but it still looks awesome.
Velvia 50 has now officially taken the spot on being one of three slide films I would cross-process every once in a while. As a matter of fact, when shooting it with the Holga, I might just always get it cross-processed. If you’re wondering what the third is, it’s Fuji Provia 400X. It also mostly improves color saturation with a gentle touch of green.
There’s one other film people like getting cross-processed, it’s the infamous and now almost distinct Agfa Precisa CT 100. I think it was produced until some point last year, under license of good old Agfa Film. It’s cheap, and apparently it makes for amazing results. For me, I don’t care for it too much, because I prefer shooting roll film, but other people swear by it, so you could, no you should try that as well.
In the end, it’s all about experimenting with the medium film, and I prefer that over experimenting in Photoshop or with awful Holga or Polaroid filters anytime.
In diana, pinhole on
30 April 2009 with 3 comments
Last Sunday was World Pinhole Day. I took that as a good enough reason to finally try out the pinhole mode of the Diana+. Crappy camera as it is, there must be something about it that’s worth keeping it. Now I can say with some confidence that at least the pinhole mode is.
I put the Diana+ on a tripod, and together with family and a friend, and a timer, we went out to shoot some pinhole. Well, it was more me standing there holding a shutter for some time while the others waited and chatted. But what can you do, be patient, young padawan.
I shot two rolls, on black & white (which for me is the best kind of film for the Diana anyway) and a roll of Kodak Ektachrome 100VS, a slide film which I had cross-processed. I can say with some confidence that the slide film was pretty much ruined. It might’ve been the cross-processing, since it usually adds a stop to the exposure. The shots were mostly overexposed. I’ll try another roll without cross-processing soon, but in general black & white is the safer choice, because it’s a lot less sensitive to over- oder underexposure than slide film.
The funny thing about pinhole is, it’s not a very big problem if you expose a couple of seconds too much. When you want a two-seconds exposure, and you end up exposing it for four, remember that it’s only one stop, you just doubled the amount of light coming in, but it’s still the same stop as switching from 1/60 to 1/125.
It might be worth writing down the exposure times. But then again it always is, but I wish I would’ve done it for the slide film’s sake. In the future I’ll underexpose it by one stop, should I do cross-processing combined with pinhole again. One shot came out quite decently though, it was of course a selfie. A 60-seconds exposure during which two adults and three kids went through the picture, but are nowhere to be seen.
It was pretty good fun with the Diana+, but of course now that I’m hooked on pinhole, I want this in my collection:
In everyday, food, polaroid on
28 April 2009 with 2 comments
Yes, it’s true. The rumors are in fact correct. Asparagus season has begun in Germany. Let the white and green asparagus madness begin. If you can get your hands on white asparagus, go buy it. I love it, and I cherish this season.
White asparagus is available throughout the old continent, but the best is without a doubt from Germany. No need to brag any further, but the really, really good asparagus is growing right outside Berlin. I could eat it every day, just with potatoes and sauce hollandaise.
But of course I’d just eat it every other day, because the rest I’m going to eat green asparagus. I actually prefer the green asparagus, but I can get that most of the year, so in April and May it’s all about both of them. Green asparagus of course goes oh so well with the infamous Flickr risotto. Just sayin. Maybe you should make it again? I sure will.
In other news, I broke out the Spectra again. I shot so many photos of Mari with the SX-70 that I felt like the Spectra could be jealous. Also the amount of film for both was becoming too uneven. The close-up lens for the Spectra is a lot less flexible than the one for the SX-70, but it’s still awesome.
Go get some asparagus, like now!
In coffee, polaroid on
28 April 2009 with 7 comments
Hi! I’m Mathias, and I’m a coffee nerd.
Let me just go ahead and warn you right up front: Coffee nerdism is a downward spiral! There, I said it. Now that we got that out of the way, let’s get to the photo. What do you see? Beans. Coffee beans. Roasted coffee beans. Locally roasted coffee beans, to be fully specific.
When you get a nice espresso machine, it starts to be all about the bean. You don’t buy pre-ground coffee anymore, that should be obvious. You buy freshly roasted beans. I started looking around our neighborhood, and before I knew it I found three roasters in a one-kilometer radius. That’s awesome. When you look a bit closer you realize that there’s not only much coffee love in Berlin, but also a lot of local roasters, most of them caring about a really good bean, and about a good roast.
The next thing you obviously need is a grinder. Of course you can have the shop grind the beans, but it needs to be as fresh as possible, otherwise it’ll lose a lot of its deliciousness quickly. Luckily we already had one before, but now that I know better, our old espresso maker didn’t do it any justice.
But it doesn’t end there, when you start talking to the real coffee nerds in the shops, they give you all kinds of advice, the most important one being that you should clean the machine and most importantly the brewing head, mercilessly. It must become a ritual to let water go through it before and after the shot. You need a blind filter to clean the insides of the brewing head. And the list goes on.
The downsides of really caring about coffee is that you get very picky about the coffee shops you go to. But then again, if the coffee shop doesn’t care as much about coffee as you do, why bother? Coffee for me is all about enjoyment, it’s not about caffeine getting me high and worked up. I like good coffee, I like a good flat white, I like a neatly pulled ristretto. I stopped drinking my espresso without sugar, for the most part, mainly because without it, you really get to suck in the full aroma of it.
As if I didn’t have enough things to worry about with film photography and Polaroids. But seriously, I think there’s worse things than coffee to be picky about.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to pull myself a ristretto.
In everyday on
26 April 2009 with 3 comments
With a newborn your life changes in a lot of ways, no doubt. But recently I realized one thing you start to do every day. It’s thinking: “My gosh, Mari just did xyz for the first time, that’s so awesome! I need to remember this moment forever!”
If you had a baby at some point in your life (which you should, it’s exhausting but awesome), you know what I’m talking about. Coincidentally we went out for a long walk around Berlin with friends from Australia who now live in Germany.
What follows is a short list of first time moments we had during that walk:
- First time on the tram
- Changed diapers in public for the first time
- First time on the train
- First time in the city
- First time out with her for more than two hours (she slept like a baby during the night after that. oh wait!)
There’s things to add to the list every day. Weird stuff, but it’s small moments to cherish, even though it’s kind of normal, and she won’t remember any of it.
When we went shopping for a baby hat I happened to snap a Polaroid of a small car for kids just outside the shop. I walked in with camera and the slowly developing peel apart shot in my hands, and the woman at the counter told me that she thought the camera is awesome. Of course I ended up giving her advice on which camera to get. Coincidentally, just around the corner from the baby shop, Berlin’s very first Polaroid shop will open on Monday, including products from PolaPremium.
I’m guessing they’re slowly building up a retailer base for the film that will hopefully come out of The Impossible Project. The opening party is on 30 April, and there’ll be a nice film on sale, and one of my Polaroids will be projected on the wall. See you there!
