A Rediscovered Roll of Film

These shots were taken over a year ago during a film photo meet up we arranged in Calgary. They had been sitting on a half completed roll in one of my cameras, until I finally finished it off and had it processed recently. I love how they turned out.










I suck so bad at manual focus.


Horribly backlit portraits. I'm a shite photographer.

Nikon FG, Nikkor AI-S 50mm f/1.2 on Kodak Portra 400NC.

Quirky Vancouver

While pounding up the Grouse Grind in North Vancouver last weekend, my nose picked up a familiar scent that I had never smelled halfway up a mountain before. We were stopping for a quick water break, and sat down beside a lone hiker who was having her lunch. Except that lunch didn't come in the form of a sandwich, trail mix, granola bar, jerky or any other typical hiking type foods. Rather, she pulled out a set of chopsticks, a square rubbermaid lunch container, and began to chow down on a package of deliciously savoury smelling instant ramen. My mind was bewildered and couldn't comprehend the sight. On the one hand, I suddenly found myself craving instant noodles (I LOVE THEM!), while on the other, I thought it was the funniest thing to see a little Asian lady on a steep hiking trail halfway up a mountain, slurping a bowl of Ichiban noodles.

Anyways, more shots from that roll of Fuji Neopan 400 that I had developed in Vancouver. This batch includes fooding and drinking at three different places - a coffee and wine bar in Inglewood, a Laos/ Cambodian restaurant in Edmonton, and an Indian restaurant not far from my place.

Friends on Film - Fuji Neopan 400

While in Vancouver, I took advantage of the local B&W photofinishing services of The Lab, and finally got a roll of Fuji Neopan 400 developed. This film was over a decade expired, but the results were grainy with good contrast. I love the look and feel of these shots, and will need to look into developing my own B&W film, just so I can shoot some more of this stuff. These were shot in Calgary a few months ago with the Nikon FG and Nikkor 50mm f/1.2. More to come. I know, I make that promise as often as smokers claim to quit, so don't hold your breath.

The Art of Procrastination

I should be packing and prepping for my overnighter to Edmonton tomorrow. So as per regular G.Mach protocol, I've got the TV on, watching Lost in Translation on IFC. I've only seen this film 13 times, but it's got BILL FRICKING MURRAY, so you can't blame me for being glued to the tube. Plus, IFC has decided that sexy singles chat line advertisements every five minutes fit right in with their theme of great independent film. SEXY SINGLES CHAT, YEAH!

Okay, there really is no point to this post. Sorry. Have a look at this photo, and then go do something productive instead.


Shot in a park in Taipei, while we were sheltering from an intermittent drizzle. Nikon FG, on Kodak Portra 160. Colours tweaked in Lightroom. Click it to view large on black.

Get Nerdy/ Get Dirty

Okay cameraphiles, time to get dirty - it's time for some CAMERA PORN! For non-camera enthusiasts, it's about to get really nerdy.

I got my latest camera this week, a Rolleiflex 2.8E TLR equipped with the legendary Carl Zeiss Planar lens. And while I've now got hundreds of rolls of film yearning to be exposed by this rugged twin lensed brute, it's far too fracking cold to heading outside for a photo walk. So instead, I present you with an alphabet soup of camera on camera on camera action... a TTV orgy, if you will. Told you it was going to get dirty/ nerdy.

First: TTV of a TLR, shot through the WLF of an SLR with a dSLR. Say WHAT?! In layman's terms, this threesome is a through-the-viewfinder shot of my Rolleiflex twin lens reflex camera taken through the waist-level-viewfinder of my Kiev 88CM single lens reflex camera, with my Nikon D300 digital single lens reflex camera. And for you Big Gaping Aperture festishists (Marc and Dean!), all three cameras involved in this 3 way are f/2.8 lenses (2 are 80mm, 1 is 17-55mm).




Second: TTV of an SLR and TLR, through the WLF of an SLR with a dSLR. Layman's terms, as above, but it's now more of a menage-a-quatre, as I added in a Nikon FG SLR into the mix of sexy, sexy camera action. Again for the fetishists, that's now 3x f/2.8 lenses playing with an obscene f/1.2 50mm.



As promised in the preface, "I present you with an alphabet soup..."



In case you're wondering, I actually had taken the sexy alphabet soup photo a long time ago, and never figured out how I could make use of it until today.

The Future is Analog pt. 3

As a contrast to my previous image of Vania in her living room, I also shot a 35mm version using a Nikon FG on Lomography Redscale 100 film. This one is 12 overlapping frames. I like the amber tones here... what a contrast to the cool blue temperature of the tungsten balanced film of that one. Again, click to view the large version.

Lifestyles of the Hip and the Famous

So a couple buddies of mine have re-emerged from a multi-year creative hiatus, and launched a new webcomic celebrating Hipsters (a label which I don't even truly understand given its contrary natures of "valuing independent thinking and rejecting mainstream culture" blended with what essentially boils down to a fashion sense that requires you to "dress like an urban outfitters posterboy (or girl... or androgynous looking boy/girl... with an ironic mullet)."

Anyways, philosophical debate on the scope of the term 'hipsters' aside, I did want to point you to their new comic, Inglorious Hipsters. The strip is only a couple weeks into what I hope will be a long run, so the best is still yet to come. But the art style, writing, and creative direction are distinctly Jeremy and Gregg - who I guess you could very well call hipsters themselves (except they lack ironic haircuts because, frankly, they're both of the receding hairline variety). Maybe they can get ironic brush cuts?

So of course, what better way to promote their hipster work, than to say Go read their strip and their bios! And since I recently read that 'shooting with analog cameras' can be a distinguishing feature of hipsters, I wanted to join in the fun with a series of photos of these two artists I shot with a Nikon FG film SLR (oooh hip!).

Gregg




Jeremy

Nikon FG Test Roll - San Francisco

Lugging along my new Nikon FG and Nikkor 50mm f/1.2 combination to San Francisco, I fired off a few test rolls. These few came from a roll of Fuji Provia 100 I ran through it, and I think the shots turned out great. Nice saturated colours, good overall contrast, and surprisingly sharp even at f/1.2. I think this has easily become my new favourite film camera. Oh the adventures we will have together...
























I saw a girl shooting with a Rollei f/2.8, so I couldn't resist snapping a shot of her rig. Analog forever!

Redscale Fail

I received my Nikon FG in the mail this week, and ran a test roll through it this weekend. I redscaled the film before shooting (ie: film was respooled upside down so that the emulsion side is facing away from the lens), and so the results were terrible - lack of tonal range as highlights were just plain red, and shadows were blocky black shapes. This was due to underexposure of the redscaled film (apparently, you need to overexpose by 2 to 3 stops to get a good range of red and amber hues, whereas I only overexposed 1 stop). Anyways, long story short, the redscaled version of these shots were horrible, so I converted them to black and white, which actually gave them an awesome lo-fi vintage look. These photos clearly are not representative of what this camera is capable of, but I really like b&w treatment. The grit and stains on the film are not digital trickery - the lab at Superstore is shit, and they clearly don't know how to process/ handle film, resulting in splotchy negatives that I couldn't be bothered to properly clean before scanning. Click to enlarge and see the grainy, gritty goodness in glorious detail.










3 days of work before we fly to San Francisco!
-G

Update (11-01-2010): View my first successful test roll here.