Wallace Koopmans Artlog

Agfa Vista plus 200 is an inexpensive C41 film (approx $2.50 per roll of 36 exposures) but don’t let the price fool you it’s actually a really good film.  For most of the images the colour was very accurate it only had trouble reproducing some reds particularly the red wildflowers.  I can’t really eliminate my V700 scanner from the equation so it could play a small factor in that and the film is also said to be geared towards natural skin tone reproduction so that also could play a part in the rendering of the reds..  Here are a couple of colour mixing charts that I shot with Agfa Vista plus 200 (seen on the left) and my Pentax K-3 DSLR (on the right).  I also found that the colours had a muted pastel look that sometimes required a little extra saturation during post processing.  If you want image perfection you shouldn’t be shooting film anyway but if you want the look of film and you want it cheap this film is perfect.

I suppose after the great Selfie incident in 2018 when everyone on earth posted a selfie and broke the internet, camera use was greatly curtailed.  That is the only plausible explanation for the lack of cameras in Science Fiction movies set in the future.  Oh there is a lot of surveillance going on but not much photography for the fun of it.  And it’s not just this galaxy either.  There are plenty of references to photography set in our time and the past but I’m struggling to think of any movies I have seen that are set in a future that included a person with a camera.  Is it that when thinking about the future we believe the idea of photography to be passé or perhaps superfluous considering we will all have a camera implant or maybe its that every picture really has been taken at some point.  I’m guessing that will happen pretty soon.

At least Fuji appears to continue to make film for the Mars market in 2084

Of course if you are aware of a film set in the future where photography plays any role I would be interested to know.  After all I here Endor is beautiful this time of year.

When you flit between cameras like a butterfly in a field its easy to forget the great cameras that you’ve already passed.  The Espio Mini is one of those cameras it is fantastic and tiny and never disappoints.  It has the same things going for it as the Olympus Stylus epic such as size and the clamshell lens cover but the slightly wider angle lens I think is a better performer.  If you can embrace the fully automatic nature of these little cameras they offer a worry free photography experience.

Question: What do you get when a camera isn’t fully advancing between frames?

Answer: Its worth a thousand expletives

I often get exactly what I deserve when I test old cameras that no one wants anymore.  There may be a reason someone tossed that camera away but…

If the camera makes a whir I will not be deterred.

If the film will load I won’t be slowed.

I won’t quit even if the camera is shi.……  You get the idea.

I shot a roll of Cinestill 800T in my Minolta X700 mostly of very dark things with bright lights, what can I say I like the halo’s it creates (For an explanation of what and why see this post Niagara at Night with Cinestill).  unfortunately the roll I had may have come from an early run before they say they improved the process or just a faulty roll.  So most of the images on the roll have residual rem-jet coating that makes some of the images appear like you’re looking through a glass of Guinness Stout.

That part is a bummer because some of those images can not be redone but I emailed Cinestill and notified them and they offered to send me replacement rolls for my remaining film in case other rolls are similarly afflicted.  Now you might be thinking well of course that is the right thing to do and I agree but for them to do it so quickly and without further hassle to me is what I consider excellent customer service (Pretty much the opposite experience of all the failed Apple charging cables I’ve had to contend with).   With some editing I am able to minimize the impact of the rem-jet and salvage the images at least for the purpose of sharing but really what matters to me is that Cinestill re-established my confidence in shooting their film and I look forward to shooting even more of it.

Here are some of the better files from the roll  with the faults more visible than others even after editing to minimize them.

It’s that time of year again.  Despite the danger of repeating myself I like to gather together a few images of the fall foliage I see each year. Here they are for 2014 and if you don’t get enough  2013 , 2012, 2011 and autumn sun

Apparently yesterday was World Toy Camera Day (WTCD) or so the internet said and what the internet says goes.  So I loaded a roll of Ektar 100 in my 1960’s Diana medium format ‘toy’ camera.  I went out with the plan to shoot all 16 frames and then develop it the same day, which I did.  I also pushed the film by two stops and processed the film at 104 degrees instead of the 102 prescribed.  It was partially to compensate for the fact that I had already processed more than the recommended number of 35mm rolls of film in the chemistry and the fact that the Dianna has a fixed shutter somewhere between 1/60 and 1/100 second and I sensed that it was causing under exposure for the conditions. The other reason was that I just felt like it and I could.  My Dianna leaks light like a pasta strainer and even though I taped it up ‘a bit’ it still let the sunshine in.  So here is my contiribution to WTCD.

I think the fish eye lens on the Pentax Q is the thing that really makes the little system.  There is no other fit in your pocket camera combination that matches it.  It is just pure photography fun.  My thoughts and images can be seen here

Pentax Q Fish-eye

While I was in Niagara I ended up with film still in my Minox GTE and Ricoh R1, both great little cameras.  These are twelve shots each from those two cameras taken after getting back.

Old cameras like this are never going to produce images that look like those from high-resolution digital cameras and that is okay.  What they do produce is a unique look and a thoughtful photographic experience.  This begins with the exposure, without any light meter it is up to the photographer to use some other tool or experience to determine the proper shutter and aperture.  One check towards slowing down and thinking.  The next is focusing, the camera does have a rangefinder but it isn’t coupled to the lens so after using the rangefinder to determine the distance the photographer then needs to transfer that to the lens.  Two checks towards thinking about what you’re doing.  Finally there is the framing through the square viewfinder, while the viewfinder itself is not particularly great the need to think about the image in terms of a square is and is a third reason to slow down and think.  The last half reason is the limited range of shutter speeds available.   I think it all makes for an enjoyable experience.