THE BLOG
More Thoughts on my Aunt's Camera - 8/28/24
My aunt's Konica Minolta Zoom 130c has an interesting and frustrating personality. It kinda just does whatever it wants. I've found it good for low light LED concerts over my A7s2 kit partly because there's no rolling shutter artifact on film whether or not you're using a flash, partly because I don't have an autofocus lens for that guy yet that gets closer than 70 and that's probably my next investment. Thing is, that would also be true of any film camera with a flash and an autofocus feature. That'd be true of a damn Quicksnap.
The 130c just doesn't like to take pictures. It will, but you need to coerce it. And half the time it's not in focus, or it's not in focus on the right thing, and the flash doesn't throw very far so you need to be right on it, and once you push the shutter button it goes and gets a cup of coffee before it takes the shot.
That's not necessarily bad from an aesthetic standpoint. Especially with the date printer going, it's kinda good for the grungier rock acts I've shot with it because it just feels of an era. There's a certain layer of idgaf spontaneity that it makes me work with that would almost be fun if I wasn't spending a dollar a shot.
Something has to change.
The 130c just doesn't like to take pictures. It will, but you need to coerce it. And half the time it's not in focus, or it's not in focus on the right thing, and the flash doesn't throw very far so you need to be right on it, and once you push the shutter button it goes and gets a cup of coffee before it takes the shot.
That's not necessarily bad from an aesthetic standpoint. Especially with the date printer going, it's kinda good for the grungier rock acts I've shot with it because it just feels of an era. There's a certain layer of idgaf spontaneity that it makes me work with that would almost be fun if I wasn't spending a dollar a shot.
Something has to change.
First Impressions: Lomomatic 110 - 6/18/24
This is off my new Lomomatic 110 Golden Gate on Lomography Tiger and I have to say I'm very unimpressed with the machine. Very squishy shutter controls. All of the switches and buttons are either too stiff to be comfortable or too soft to be responsive. I did not take any multiple exposures on purpose. Sometimes the flash can fire without the shutter opening. My main takeaway going into the second roll is to push the shutter more decisively and confirm the frame advance more actively. It's a camera that demands a lot more attention than I want to give it. These are all criticisms I'd heard of the Lomomatic 110 from forums and things and I will corroborate those experiences. We can't all have lemons.
Whatever extra functionality it has over something vintage does not make up for a lack of reliability.
Briefly, everyone I show it to is enchanted by it. It's a phenomenal conversation starter. I do think it's strange that the switch to go from f2.8 to f5.6 is labeled "night" and "day." You need to be really really deep down a camera nerd rabbit hole to even know that this thing exists, and I don't understand why there's a maneuver towards novice-friendly labels on a product that will only be used by people who know the physics of what that switch does. This isn't a problem, it's just a strange choice to me.
This is the second camera I've bought from this company that I found underwhelming (the first being the Lomoinstant Square Glass) and I'm coming to the conclusion that they're a film company before they're a camera company and it's probably good to stop shopping with the brand for platforms and just appreciate their film stock portfolio.
This is a persistent issue I've noticed with modern film cameras where they're kinda just not very well built and less than totally functional. I'm looking at the Kodak m35 whitebadge, the Ektar H35 and the other stuff Reto makes, the Fivebelow camera, Lomography's slate. There's all of these little plastic shitboxes on the market trying to be the shovels in the film revival and it's working because I've bought a lot of them for the sake of novelty, I guess, but they just aren't well built. Polaroids are off in their own little universe propelled by being properly kitschy, those cameras actually work really well.
I'd like to guesture to two factors: brain drain and a lack of demand. These sorts of cameras have been out of the market long enough that we've lost how to make them more effective than the bare minimum of the specifications of patents and standards. It's not that they can't be more effective, it's that the people who know how to make them effective are no longer in the industry. All these companies are starting from scratch with no institutional knowledge for how to make a quality product, hence the jump in quality between the two generations of the H35.
Then there's the supply-demand issue, where the market for a film camera with basic functionality is extremely limited in 2024. This leads to a number of viscous cycles. Low expectation for returns leads to cut cost in manufacturing leads to lax spec management or overly generous specifications leads to a product with a poor UX experience or several known defects that don't get polished out until a second generation if there is a second generation. And this issue is made worse by a marketplace flooded with bad products so there's less room to stand out.
The end result is all of us paying too much money to take bad pictures on purpose.
There is a willow grows aslant a brook - 5/9/24
Recently, I produced a video based photography project set to a reading of Gertrude's monologue from Hamlet act 4. One of the things that made the shopping cart attractive to me as a sort of a lightly dada found sculpture was the way the water of the creek perfectly bisected the shopping cart thru the middle so from certain angles the reflection of the shopping cart in the water gives the appearance of one complete shopping cart on it's side. So, within the visual metaphor, and I am just coming up with this now, Ophelia is made complete by the water. In her drowning she is made whole. I think that fits into a Tom Stoppard deterministic interpretation of the text. Poor thing. I wouldn't want to expand that particular reading of Hamlet, but it is legitimate. I'd like to thank my friend and colleague Erin Celine for getting me to think about that more.
Drew's Camera Wishlist - 5/6/24
-That new 110 camera Lomography made.
-Sony Rx100 Mk SoMeThInG. I wanna, like, rent a couple different ones before I lock in.
-Barring that, I was looking at Lumix's compacts and they're definitely the budget option but they have decent reviews.
-I wanna swap up my late aunt's Konica Minolta Zoom 130c Date to a different 35mm point and shoot that's more to my liking. I want more responsive autofocus, the ability to program in an ISO rather than relying on DX code, and I want mode one when you first turn the thing on to be an infinity focus tight F disposable simulator so I can hit the button and go (if such a thing exists). Wilson Camera has a small fleet of Styluses for sale but there's also one Canon thing they swear by. I'll need to look into it.
-Some maintenance: I want to replace the light seals on my X-370s, I wanna get Julie's SX-70 working, I want/need lens caps for a buncha new acquisitions, and there's a minor electrical problem with my late aunt's Sureshot Owl I want to repair for sentimental reasons.
-It's time to upgrade from the A7sII. I wanna keep that body, but it's really time to get a III or a IV. I don't want to leave the ecosystem, I just really need more megapixels than 2015 has to offer and the battery life situation is less than preferable.
-My horse boss would really prefer it if I was using my own camera for horse stuff. She swears by Nikon. Honestly, I like some of the cameras we're using. I don't know if I'm going to act on this yet, but it's there.
-I'd love a Canon Demi. That's gonna be my Christmas present to myself in, like, two years.
Process Art - 5/1/24
Because the nature of Twitter or Instagram stories is short real-time updates, these platforms encourage art production conducive to short real-time updates. This discourages people in new media from creating single, dense gesamtkunstwerk, instead focusing on smaller, shorter, more digestible variations on a theme. Tiktok was built on the back of silly dances, if you're a dancer, do dance, but the platform also likes short variety, and so we have a new generation of amateur dancers who are resistant to choreographing original work longer than the platforms they’re accustomed to would allow.
There are some mediums that work well in this ecosystem, and others that kinda don’t. Mediums that work well tend to be shorter, more iterative, and requiring fewer hands in the creative process. Dancing, drawing a day, monologues, individual songs, poetry, software tutorials, photography. Media that don’t play nice tend to be larger in scale; rather than a song, an album. Rather than a dance, a ballet. That doesn’t mean it can’t have any kind of life on Tiktok, it’s just usually that that life is paratext around the work rather than the work itself. Game cutscenes are rare in Instagram stories, that’s where I’d put the development diary. The short film you've made can be cool or whatever, but if the process of making it hasn't been documented, it might as well not exist.
The incentives of the current ecosystem have led to some strange behaviors. Corridor Digital hasn't made a proper Corridor Digital short in goddamn years, instead focusing on interviewing professionals on their couch and occasionally doing some kind of VFX breakdown or recreation or an interesting camera experiment without applying any of the things they're doing to a creative endeavor with, y'know, like, themes and shit. They're constantly enamored with the process of making movies without actually making any of them.
It’s interesting to see how the new media and old media paradigms collide and how incompatible they are with each other. There’s a twitch streamer named “littlesiha” who was doing dance stuff on Tiktok and Twitch, and they were in the most recent Just Dance, which is genuinely an accomplishment to be proud of, but I keep getting different reels recommended to me of her framing her experience shooting two dances for Just Dance in as many different ways as she can think of, when ultimately that one day of work was enough of a story for maybe five reels and I think that’s pushing it. It’s a production, not a content mill. And we see the opposite of this when producers ask actors to make reels promoting the movie or whatever; they’re bad at it, they can’t keep a schedule, they have nothing to say. Crucially, I don’t think that old people don’t get tiktok, I think that painting 50 foot murals for a living requires a very different method of thinking than doodling a daily comic strip. Both are legitimate, but it's difficult to marry them.
And then you get stuff like First of October which manages to be the best of both worlds by being both good music and an interesting documentary series that's very clippable.
So now we come to me, and the way this effects my own work as a photographer and aspiring multi-hyphenate. And I’m not really ready to actually put work into ameliorating this situation right now, but I also want to be aware of the way this is effecting other people so that I can see it more clearly in my own behavior.
I do suspect that my desire to explore different imaging methods is kinda not actually helping me. The only thing stopping me from getting into 110 is that I don’t wanna drop $130 on the lomomatic right now. The other things stopping me from getting into 110 are the clear and obvious drawbacks of the format in a modern ecosystem, but also there’s an instinct that Instagram has given me saying that it’ll be quirky and novel and different and in-keeping with my philosophy of experimentation and variety. But also, it’ll be spending a lot of money to take shitty pictures on purpose. It’s a back burner item.
I have a desire to get more complicated, but I also want to find new ways of getting more complicated that actually develop me and aren’t only Instagram friendly.
A New Hill to Die On - 4/18/24
Clayton's 135
My New 50 from Wilson
A recent acquisition of mine is a small kit from Wilson Camera: A Minolta X-370s and a prime 50 to go with it. Together I paid $30. Turns out the body has a bad gasket or something like that. I wanna try to use it artistically once before I get it fixed. The lens, however, the thing I wasn't excited about in the store, is a fantastic new addition to my collection because it gives me hexagonal bokeh.
I'm grateful to my grandfather for building a robust kit of primes for his X-700 but they aren't the best glass in the world. I think there's a distinct look to each lens, but it isn't a unified kit. The case-in-point here is that the 135 has six straight aperture blades where the 45 has five curved, and that means that switching back and forth between the two lenses you get hexagons and pentagons in the bokeh. My new 50 also has six straight blades, and so shooting a roll switching between the 50 and the 135 gives me a more consistent shape in the bokeh. In my mind, whatever differences there are in the glass rendering different colors or chromatic aberration is completely secondary to the hexagons for creating a unified look.
And so, I have a new hill to die on: I think there are only two acceptable bokeh shapes: perfect circles and hexagons. Anything else is an incomplete shape.
There's a certain logic to more blades = better. I don't think that holds up in court. Any lens worth using is designed so that it's circular when the aperture is open all the way (which, by the way, I'm pretty sure a deficiency of my 135 is that it stays hexagonal all the way down to f=2.8) but that means once you start tightening it, unless it's the billion dollar uberlinse, the bokeh is going to turn into a regular polygon. So, from there, squares are stupid, pentagons are okay, but hexagons are superior, heptagons look imbalanced, octagons are stupid for the same reason squares are, nonagons are also imbalanced, and once we're above that we're in a region of impractical expense where the lens is designed to have the perfect circle at any f stop anyway so it becomes a moot point.
There was an era of photography where every lens was extremely clunky to use, but had a tremendous amount of versatility as a trade-off. The default archetypal camera of 1865 had tilt-shift capability because they were all huge bellows lenses, and this is something that we've decided to lose for the sake of compactness and being user-friendly. That large bellows form factor has not made a recurrence in the digital age and I think that's a mistake. I have a Kodak dry plate camera that uses tiny tin plates for it's aperture, you literally remove the thing with the hole in it and put in a thing with a different hole. Yes, this adds an easy to lose thing to your equipment compliment. Practical upshot: perfectly circular bokeh at any f stop. In fact, any shaped bokeh at any f stop. You want snowflakes? We gotcha snowflakes. In a more documentary run-and-gun environment, the current dominant form-factor is superior, but in a studio environment with more control where the time budget allows you to be more deliberate, I think that would be a powerful tool in a modern smart lens.
I also don't like anamorphic ovals. They look weird. They're an incomplete shape. I understand some people are in love with that aesthetic, I'm not. I see it as an artifact of the non-euclidian geometry that we've decided looks better because it's nostalgic or something. And I think that we can correct it out into a circular bokeh by building an anamorphic lens with a wide elliptical aperture to bend the incoming light. I think this would be a very practical application of swappable f stop plates, you can have an oval shaped hole at multiple different dimensions without needing to engineer blades that are capable of doing that. I don't know what this would do to the foreground image, but you'd get circular bokeh in an anamorphic photograph. I'd like to build this contraption as an experiment, but I don't have the resources. One day maybe.
So, yeah. I have a strong opinion about this now, to the point that heptagonal bokeh in movies is annoying to me when it didn't use to be. This also makes all my Sony E-Mount lenses absolutely unusable outside of a deep-focus scenario becasue they all have seven blades and I know I'd annoy myself. Fine, whatever. Everyone stop having heptagons in the background it looks bad.
Yorgos Lanthimos and Robbie Ryan can keep doing whatever they want.
Pictures at the Colorado Street Bridge - 3/20/24
When I was in Pasadena briefly at the beginning of the month, it was suggested to me by my friends Shannon and Cameron that an interesting place to photograph would be the Colorado Street Bridge about three blocks from their apartment. I had the wherewithal to go under the bridge which required passing under the Pasadena Pioneer's Bridge supporting the 134 to Glendale and the 101.
I took several pictures of the Colorado Bridge being careful to strategically frame out the larger bridge behind it. As I continued the nature walk towards the freeway I found myself in a swampy but not unpleasant wooded reservoir hiding in this concrete jungle. I continued to take pictures of the Colorado Bridge, slowly moving towards the freeway, until I was actually under the freeway, standing along the edge of the stream at the very bottom of the canyon, and this bridge broke my brain a little bit.
I saw Dune 2 last night. This bridge felt like something in Dune. I attribute that partly to the texture and sculpting of the concrete, but mostly it was just biblically large. This is a bridge for a six lane highway and two ramps spanning a hundred feet and it's a hundred feet up. The fact that trees were growing under this thing felt impossible, it was such a wide canopy.
In a different era, we would build something this big because we were burying a king in it, and here this thing is constructed for the extraordinarily mundane task of facilitating cars driving very fast over a small canyon. But that is, in it's own way, profound, both in a "what hath we wrought" way and also in a <humanity working together and achieving the impossible> way.
Heidegger described a phenomenological process where the technology we use becomes incorporated into our extended sense of self. Literally "incorporated" brought INto the CORPus. When you hold a hammer, the hammer becomes a part of you. You focus on the nail. When you become proficient with a keyboard, the words just flow and you don't notice the technolohgy unless it breaks. When you drive a car, your sphere of self becomes the vehicle. The car is your body.
Infrastructure like this stuns me in part because, in a car, with that adjustment to my corps, this bridge is a normal size. It is only outside a vehicle that I'm walking through the vast machines from Forbidden Planet, built for a body larger than mine. It feels alien because it is, we're looking at Car Scale. In a plane it becomes a model.
The two bridges are an interesting case study in that phenomenon because the Colorado Street bridge is no shorter than the freeway next to it, in fact it's taller, but it's significantly narrower and designed with pedestrians in mind. It's big, but it's not monumental. But, when your design is car-centric, ergo the bodies you are designing the space for are larger than a person, suddenly the design is Baron Harkonnen's botanical garden.
Shot on Lomography Potsdam 100.
I took several pictures of the Colorado Bridge being careful to strategically frame out the larger bridge behind it. As I continued the nature walk towards the freeway I found myself in a swampy but not unpleasant wooded reservoir hiding in this concrete jungle. I continued to take pictures of the Colorado Bridge, slowly moving towards the freeway, until I was actually under the freeway, standing along the edge of the stream at the very bottom of the canyon, and this bridge broke my brain a little bit.
I saw Dune 2 last night. This bridge felt like something in Dune. I attribute that partly to the texture and sculpting of the concrete, but mostly it was just biblically large. This is a bridge for a six lane highway and two ramps spanning a hundred feet and it's a hundred feet up. The fact that trees were growing under this thing felt impossible, it was such a wide canopy.
In a different era, we would build something this big because we were burying a king in it, and here this thing is constructed for the extraordinarily mundane task of facilitating cars driving very fast over a small canyon. But that is, in it's own way, profound, both in a "what hath we wrought" way and also in a <humanity working together and achieving the impossible> way.
Heidegger described a phenomenological process where the technology we use becomes incorporated into our extended sense of self. Literally "incorporated" brought INto the CORPus. When you hold a hammer, the hammer becomes a part of you. You focus on the nail. When you become proficient with a keyboard, the words just flow and you don't notice the technolohgy unless it breaks. When you drive a car, your sphere of self becomes the vehicle. The car is your body.
Infrastructure like this stuns me in part because, in a car, with that adjustment to my corps, this bridge is a normal size. It is only outside a vehicle that I'm walking through the vast machines from Forbidden Planet, built for a body larger than mine. It feels alien because it is, we're looking at Car Scale. In a plane it becomes a model.
The two bridges are an interesting case study in that phenomenon because the Colorado Street bridge is no shorter than the freeway next to it, in fact it's taller, but it's significantly narrower and designed with pedestrians in mind. It's big, but it's not monumental. But, when your design is car-centric, ergo the bodies you are designing the space for are larger than a person, suddenly the design is Baron Harkonnen's botanical garden.
Shot on Lomography Potsdam 100.
Batteries - 1/26/24
One of the less discussed positives of film vs digital is the power draw problem. This might just be me with my A7sii and it's chicken nugget batteries that don't hold their charge, but I often find it more convenient to grab the camera that doesn't need it's battery changed that often and when it does you can get it at a pharmacy.
My Minolta X-700 takes these two weird watch batteries, and unless I leave the camera turned on for two months straight, I don't have to replace them, like, ever. My A7sii goes through batteries like it's trying to prove a point, and they're rechargeable, but also proprietary, so we've just added at least a charging dock to our equipment compliment and that isn't a stupid amount of logistics to be juggling, but if I was going on a backpacking trip, I'd take my Minolta with me over the Sony any day.
It's a trade off. Your handicap with digital is battery life, your handicap with film is how much stock you have. Either is going to stop you shooting, which problem would you rather solve?
Which, by the way, film cameras with too many bells and whistles is the worst of both worlds. Whatever quality of life additions the camera has is just gonna draw more power. Auto-focus might be worth that, but I also have a camera that only has auto-focus and it's a pain in the ass. Kodak has that new super8 digital hybrid thing that costs as much as my car and uses an internal lithium ion battery and I fully do not understand who that's for.
My Minolta X-700 takes these two weird watch batteries, and unless I leave the camera turned on for two months straight, I don't have to replace them, like, ever. My A7sii goes through batteries like it's trying to prove a point, and they're rechargeable, but also proprietary, so we've just added at least a charging dock to our equipment compliment and that isn't a stupid amount of logistics to be juggling, but if I was going on a backpacking trip, I'd take my Minolta with me over the Sony any day.
It's a trade off. Your handicap with digital is battery life, your handicap with film is how much stock you have. Either is going to stop you shooting, which problem would you rather solve?
Which, by the way, film cameras with too many bells and whistles is the worst of both worlds. Whatever quality of life additions the camera has is just gonna draw more power. Auto-focus might be worth that, but I also have a camera that only has auto-focus and it's a pain in the ass. Kodak has that new super8 digital hybrid thing that costs as much as my car and uses an internal lithium ion battery and I fully do not understand who that's for.
Why I stopped buying Ilford HP5 - 9/18/23
There's nothing wrong with Ilford HP5, I just don't know what it's for. I bought a bunch of HP5 to use in my Kodak m38 (aka Ultra-9) because that camera is prone to underexposure and the Ilford Plus line has better exposure latitude than Delta or the Kodak stuff. Except I never had the lab push develop so as to not screw up the correctly exposed shots and then I decided to retire that camera because it's a piece of shit. With a reliable camera, I'm one to just shoot box speed. I know I can push HP5 to 3200, but at that point why aren't we just buying Delta 3200?
Let's buy a 24 shot. I can afford to spend a dollar more on Delta 400 over HP5. If I'm in a hurry, I can afford to spend 150 cents more on XP2 over HP5 and it'll still be a little cheaper than Tri-X. Hp5 is sharper, but Delta would be, like, sharpest.
A couple days after I shot my most recent roll of HP5, I put my first 24 of Kentmere Pan 100 through the same camera in the same area. I've included two similar images below for the sake of comparison, Kentmere first. Lab work included I think I spent 19 bucks and I genuinely can't tell the difference. I also know I have a bad eye for color subtleties so take that with a salt grain.
I'm in the camp now of Kentmere for messing around, Delta for glam. I think Hp5 is the true generalist of the Ilford family. I see why you'd want that, especially if you're bulk loading, but I'm not a bulk loader. If you're buying a single roll, the same company is offering a true budget option and a pro option and a monochrome c41 in the same speed regime. HP5 is the generalist, but it's too generalist for it's own good and I've decided to stop using it.
Let's buy a 24 shot. I can afford to spend a dollar more on Delta 400 over HP5. If I'm in a hurry, I can afford to spend 150 cents more on XP2 over HP5 and it'll still be a little cheaper than Tri-X. Hp5 is sharper, but Delta would be, like, sharpest.
A couple days after I shot my most recent roll of HP5, I put my first 24 of Kentmere Pan 100 through the same camera in the same area. I've included two similar images below for the sake of comparison, Kentmere first. Lab work included I think I spent 19 bucks and I genuinely can't tell the difference. I also know I have a bad eye for color subtleties so take that with a salt grain.
I'm in the camp now of Kentmere for messing around, Delta for glam. I think Hp5 is the true generalist of the Ilford family. I see why you'd want that, especially if you're bulk loading, but I'm not a bulk loader. If you're buying a single roll, the same company is offering a true budget option and a pro option and a monochrome c41 in the same speed regime. HP5 is the generalist, but it's too generalist for it's own good and I've decided to stop using it.
Kentmere Pan 100
Ilford HP5
Oppenheimer's Aspect Ratio - 8/13/23
This is a criticism directed at Oppenheimer, but it's broadly applicable to all IMAX filmmaking.
They know that they can blow the thing up to IMAX, but they're also planning on the digital moviegoing experience being a significantly narrower aspect ratio because, in part, the academy ratio that the IMAX 70 standard uses is not a ratio that basically any theater is actually equipped to project properly. Ideally, the general audience would also be watching the movie in 4:3 and then the film could be shot to the strengths of a squarer frame, using every part of the wildebeest so to speak, but that's just not a reality of the modern exhibition environment; everything is 16:9 or 2.35:1.
So, there's this odd push and pull where the taller frame, while occasionally very beautiful, is mostly imagery you can ignore. They can't actually put anything the audience needs to see outside of a narrow strip. That narrow strip could be at the top or bottom or in the middle, they could even pan and scan up and down, and I suspect there was at least one shot where they did that, but, fundamentally, they're limited to a 2.2:1 sized stripe. Everything outside of that stripe is extraneous. It's like the AI images where they expand famous movie stills like they were shot vertically and it's kinda just taller.
Except it's not a gimmicky AI thing, it's one of the most famous directors using all of the weight behind his name to deliver a once in a lifetime cinema experience unlike any other that you see in a building you can fit a space shuttle in and you pay, like, twice as much for a ticket and it's the best thing ever. And it's kinda just taller.
I'm glad I got to see it in IMAX 70, especially considering I don't know if I'll ever see it again. I'm picking on it, but, honestly, it was often beautiful. All the explosions and particle physics stuff did genuinely benefit from filling my entire field of vision. Those moments were the moments that made it worth it, not coincidentally, photography that was abstract enough that it could probably be significantly cropped OR enlarged without altering the emotional effect.
It might just be a me problem, framing is sorta my strong suit as a photographer, but I felt myself distracted by the shifting aspect ratio and the knowledge that the composition of the taller frame was being effected by the necessity of a narrower version. I was, like, thinking about it. It's something that's supposed to draw me into the movie and instead it becomes a game I play where I try to imagine what the crop of this particular shot would be. I have the same problem with ATMOS surround where I notice sounds behind me that are supposed to make me feel like the world of the film is dynamic and immersive and mostly I think "Oh! Yeah! Surround sound!"
Looking back on the frustration with "Croppenheimer," it's not that you're losing half the movie when the 2.2:1 version chops off half the picture like Justice League, it's that the 4:3 version is significantly compromised in order to make the 2.2:1 version coherent. Personally, I think that's a greater artistic loss. It's like seeing Michael Phelps swim in thick syrup or Lebron James play Basketball on a trampoline. I can tell there's exceptional skill and craftsmanship happening, I just wish it was happening in a less hostile environment.
Some Camera News - 7/21/23
This is a selfie from my Konica Minolta Zoom 130c Date, one of two film cameras I inherited from my aunt. I like it, but I wish it was more reliable. It kinda has too many flash modes to cycle through, and I don't trust it's auto. Sometimes you go to take a picture and it just won't fire. As much as I appreciate that it tries to save me from myself, I'd rather take an underexposed picture than spend time reblocking a shot or playing with the button to change shooting mode. Mirrors confuse the autofocus. The date printer is an interesting feature that I would like for it's aesthetic utility except it's not very prominent. I like how convenient it is size wise but I wish it took pictures with less futzing. It's been useful as the second camera. When I'm somewhere with my Minolta, I can have this one loaded with a contrasting stock.
I broke my H35. It was really easy to do. I over extended the mechanism trying to get one more frame and broke something so now the gearing to advance the film winds without winding. My hamartia is expecting more from my cameras than they are capable of giving. Actually, this is how the first one I got off ebay is broken, so now I know how that happened. The repair shop won't repair it, so it's just trash now. So it goes. I managed to get five rolls through it before it crapped out which means one picture for every day of a year I think? Fun.
I'm not too bent out of shape. I'm gonna try shooting the other camera I inherited from my aunt, a Canon Sure Shot Owl Date. Yes, another date printer, she was sentimental. It's very basic. 35mm prime with four shooting modes. It's basically a really big disposable with an autofocus feature. I kinda want that though. I've now burned through a couple cheap plastic crap cameras from this decade, I'll happily shoot on a better built camera from the mid 80s if it means it's harder to break.
I finally shot some stuff with the new 50 for my a7sii and I may never go back.
I broke my H35. It was really easy to do. I over extended the mechanism trying to get one more frame and broke something so now the gearing to advance the film winds without winding. My hamartia is expecting more from my cameras than they are capable of giving. Actually, this is how the first one I got off ebay is broken, so now I know how that happened. The repair shop won't repair it, so it's just trash now. So it goes. I managed to get five rolls through it before it crapped out which means one picture for every day of a year I think? Fun.
I'm not too bent out of shape. I'm gonna try shooting the other camera I inherited from my aunt, a Canon Sure Shot Owl Date. Yes, another date printer, she was sentimental. It's very basic. 35mm prime with four shooting modes. It's basically a really big disposable with an autofocus feature. I kinda want that though. I've now burned through a couple cheap plastic crap cameras from this decade, I'll happily shoot on a better built camera from the mid 80s if it means it's harder to break.
I finally shot some stuff with the new 50 for my a7sii and I may never go back.
We're Now Six Days Out from my Aunt's Funeral - 7/16/23
We're now six days out from my aunt's funeral. That trip is going to be partially paired with a trip to Mt. Lemon because she asked to have some of her ashes scattered there. I'll be glad to go back to that forest, but I wish it was under better circumstances.
This picture was taken on May 28th. Me and my parents and their dogs are posing in front of my Aunt's storage unit after a day of sorting, saving, donating, junking, in front of the final remaining %30 of what was there when we started. There was a certain element of simplicity to the task, the stuff that she really wanted near to her was in her house. The rest of it was the kind of material you'd probably cull if you didn't have rheumatoid arthritis and you were bad at letting go of things.
Something we saved from her house was a box of VHS tapes and DVDs. The DVDs I remember from 2018, she finally got all of her old mini DV tapes digitized. None of them are labeled and they probably aren't in chronological order. There are 28 of them. The tapes are labeled. They go back from 2003 to 1994. My baptism is in there.
My parents sorted through possibly 6000 photographs. I decided my cross to bear was going to be watching all those recordings. So far, I haven't watched any of them. The funeral is in six days. It might be possible. It's likely that none of it will be something worth remembering, but you never know.
I'm pretty sure my high school performance as Tevye has been lost. So it goes.
I didn't know my aunt in her prime. There was a time in her life when she was healthy and capable enough that she took a trip to the Holy Land. She played softball. She helped with medical research. I didn't know that version of her. She was before my time. I most clearly remember watching her die.
The one bit of one of these DVDs I've seen, my mom and I watched with Annell when she was alive. We watched a bit of A Christmas Carol from my dad's theater in 2006ish, and it was a really distressing experience for mom and me. My aunt was washed in nostalgia, we were lost in dysphoria, body weight issues, and the 2008 crash. I think without my aunt watching these with me it'll be easier. I can feel more honestly.
This picture was taken on May 28th. Me and my parents and their dogs are posing in front of my Aunt's storage unit after a day of sorting, saving, donating, junking, in front of the final remaining %30 of what was there when we started. There was a certain element of simplicity to the task, the stuff that she really wanted near to her was in her house. The rest of it was the kind of material you'd probably cull if you didn't have rheumatoid arthritis and you were bad at letting go of things.
Something we saved from her house was a box of VHS tapes and DVDs. The DVDs I remember from 2018, she finally got all of her old mini DV tapes digitized. None of them are labeled and they probably aren't in chronological order. There are 28 of them. The tapes are labeled. They go back from 2003 to 1994. My baptism is in there.
My parents sorted through possibly 6000 photographs. I decided my cross to bear was going to be watching all those recordings. So far, I haven't watched any of them. The funeral is in six days. It might be possible. It's likely that none of it will be something worth remembering, but you never know.
I'm pretty sure my high school performance as Tevye has been lost. So it goes.
I didn't know my aunt in her prime. There was a time in her life when she was healthy and capable enough that she took a trip to the Holy Land. She played softball. She helped with medical research. I didn't know that version of her. She was before my time. I most clearly remember watching her die.
The one bit of one of these DVDs I've seen, my mom and I watched with Annell when she was alive. We watched a bit of A Christmas Carol from my dad's theater in 2006ish, and it was a really distressing experience for mom and me. My aunt was washed in nostalgia, we were lost in dysphoria, body weight issues, and the 2008 crash. I think without my aunt watching these with me it'll be easier. I can feel more honestly.
Thoughts on an Image: Patrick Rivers First Frame - 3/5/23
I've definitely posted this before, but there's something poetic about the 16:9 crop I made for my desktop slideshow that I wanna share with you. I think this image needs to be displayed on the largest format possible. I would have it projected against the moon if it were possible. The form. The arm in the air, crook at the elbow where a chemical imperfection has left a stain: the posture of <Man> and his intellect, Michelangelo's David, David's Death of Socrates, Dr. Strange's final message to Iron Man, cogito ergo sum. And but yet, the cleansing holy fire from above, scrubbing this man of identity (Patrick Rivers), removing the context of the gesture, leaving only the arm as an ur text for any number of syntheses, forever lost, consumed in the fire of beginning. What words of wisdom did he impart to the disembodied sliver of shoulder at frame left? What knowledge is now locked secret by the old gods of time and memory leaving only this shadow behind?
I just opened a fortune cookie with no fortune in it. What the fuck? Am I gonna die tonight?
First Impressions: Kodak Ektar H35 - 12/17/22
I've put a roll of film through my new Kodak Ektar H35. I have some observations.
The experience is not unlike other cameras in this price point. Like most other disposable/cheap plastic cameras, it has a form factor that makes it convenient to just have in your pocket. The spartan design is very intuitive, but also very inflexible. You can't pull focus, you have a fixed lens length, f stop, and shutter speed, it's designed around you using a flash, and all those factors mean there's a distinct aesthetic to the pictures it wants to take and it's best to just be cooperative. It's very easy to get your thumb in the shot. Night photography is at best ineffective. That's stuff I'd say about every disposable I've shot with.
The selling point of the H35 is the half frame mechanism. It takes it's picture in a portrait orientation on the film, splitting a typical frame down the center. You get half the resolution, but you double your shots, extending a 36 shot roll to 72. I don't mind the resolution drop if I'm spending half as much money.
This effects the shooting experience in a couple ways. First, the cheap plastic lens gets substantially worse because the drop in frame size makes the distortion on the edges more extreme. Notice how the trees are very muddy 20 feet from the camera. I also think this isn't necessarily something to fight against; if Mathieu Stern has taught us anything, it's that ridiculous bokeh is often artistically desirable. So, welcome to disposables, ideally your subject is between three and twenty feet away.
The experience is not unlike other cameras in this price point. Like most other disposable/cheap plastic cameras, it has a form factor that makes it convenient to just have in your pocket. The spartan design is very intuitive, but also very inflexible. You can't pull focus, you have a fixed lens length, f stop, and shutter speed, it's designed around you using a flash, and all those factors mean there's a distinct aesthetic to the pictures it wants to take and it's best to just be cooperative. It's very easy to get your thumb in the shot. Night photography is at best ineffective. That's stuff I'd say about every disposable I've shot with.
The selling point of the H35 is the half frame mechanism. It takes it's picture in a portrait orientation on the film, splitting a typical frame down the center. You get half the resolution, but you double your shots, extending a 36 shot roll to 72. I don't mind the resolution drop if I'm spending half as much money.
This effects the shooting experience in a couple ways. First, the cheap plastic lens gets substantially worse because the drop in frame size makes the distortion on the edges more extreme. Notice how the trees are very muddy 20 feet from the camera. I also think this isn't necessarily something to fight against; if Mathieu Stern has taught us anything, it's that ridiculous bokeh is often artistically desirable. So, welcome to disposables, ideally your subject is between three and twenty feet away.
Second, because the camera takes portraits when you're holding it the way you'd hold a normal camera to take a landscape, it forces you to think about orientation and blocking in a way that you don't normally. Landscape is usually the default, ergo it's what your eye is trained for, and I appreciate the little pause I take before every shot to really consider the framing. It's almost a mindfulness exercise.
Apropos of nothing, if you're considering buying this sort of camera at all, I recommend the H35 if only because the loading procedure is much more intuitive than the other cheap cameras I've shot with.
Apropos of nothing, if you're considering buying this sort of camera at all, I recommend the H35 if only because the loading procedure is much more intuitive than the other cheap cameras I've shot with.
To briefly amend this dissertation, I have recently discovered that the Kodak Ektar H35 is the same mechanism as the RETO Ultra Wide&Slim, modified to be a half frame camera and add a flash. The RETO Ultra Wide& Slim is an all-plastic reproduction of the Vivitar Ultra Wide&Slim from the mid 1990s, and I found one of those on sale on Etsy for $10. I haven't shot with either of those cameras, but the best word I can put in for the H35 is the loading mechanism and I know that both the RETO and Vivitar versions of the camera load the same way, ergo I do recommend those two cameras on that merit, though the lack of a flash is a bit creatively constraining.
