Wallace Koopmans Artlog

This is a fantastic camera which is a real pleasure to use.  I’m not sure any other similar camera from the time can rival it for image quality.

Some more Rolleiflex post can be seen here Rolleiflex 2.8 E3 and here Pentax K-3 vs Medium Format Film and Rolleiflex Gallery

Aside from my film and other posts on Niagara Falls I have many other digital images that I would like to share that further illustrate my post Two Niagara Falls.  I am breaking this up into 3 seperate posts of 24 images each this one being the first.  There may be some cross over with my film photography as I often take one of each.

As I reach #5 in my Interaction series I thought it would be a good time to re-cap what I am doing.  The basis of the series of digital paintings done on my iPad is situations of human interaction.  The source of these comes from Google Street view or similar.  Many of these fleeting moments are captured without the subjects being aware making the interaction feel all the more genuine and spontaneous.  Additionally using remote imaging allows me the opertunity to see places and events that I could not otherwise.  The down side is I can only superficially visit the world within the confines of the streets and only those moments at which random chance has placed the subjects and the camera together.

One of the great things about photography is the near limitless subject matter.  Even when presented with those same subjects or locations two photographers are likely to come away with something very different.  There is a new mall in our area and Duncan of DLT photographic  and I went to have a photographic look.  The place has many different materials and surfaces and being new also has a very modern hard-edged look.  Duncan recently posted his images in a blog post High Street (day version) and now I am posting these as a counter point.

Even though this is only  a selection from my images there really are not any images that are that similar.  So despite photographing the same place we were seeing it differently.

The Fuji Zoom Date 1000 is interesting in the world of film point and shoots for its zoom lens a Super EBC Fujinon 3.6x zoom lens; 28 ~ 100mm, f/5.8 ~ 10.5; 6 components, 6 elements and also the rear LCD and menu system.  Although 28-100mm is a nice range to have, the lens is slow and has a lot of vignetting as seen in this image.

The menu is somewhat unique because it has a four-way controller with a central menu button much like you now find on numerous digital cameras, however it has relatively few modes compared to a modern camera but that’s okay because your supposed to take pictures with it not play with the menu.

Ultimately the first try with this camera was not particularly impressive.  The images lacked any of that sort of pop that a few other similar cameras have.  For example the Canon Z90W or the Konica Zup28W but at least it betters the Sigma 28 AF Zoom which for all intents and purposes produces images with no corners.

On my recent visit to Niagara Falls Ontario I really saw two places in an uncumfortable coexistence.  There was the bright lights and tourist shops and then there was gritty part of Niagara that appeared left behind decades ago.

There also seemed to be a nearly inexhaustible supply of empty motels and businesses surrounding the city.  No longer needed for tourists that aren’t there.

To be fair I was there during May not what you would think of as high tourist season but I still think that of those people who were visiting seemed less likely to have arrived in a car and more likely to be staying at one of the larger hotels.  I think there lays the difference from the past and why Niagara Falls is a concentration of restaurants and tourist traps around the one true attraction, the falls themselves.

I will have more photos to share from this trip as I shot both film and more digital images.  I would have loved to have visited the American side of the falls too. I’m sure I would have discovered yet another visual story.

I was fortunate to be included in issue number two of Latent Image magazine a great showcase of photographic talent.  I know, I know so what are my pictures doing in it you ask?  I’m not sure I just take pictures but what I do know is that it is a great magazine from cover to cover.  Here is a snippet of my two pages and yes I am using tarps in these images as a metaphor for the obscuring of the truth.

There is plenty of information available about the Canon AE-1 so I won’t spend too much valuable photography time writing about it but I will say that it leaves something to be desired in terms of ease of use.  My primary complaint being the lack of any feedback in the viewfinder (in manual mode) as to what the camera is set to.   Also the lack of exposure compensation beyond a hard to locate +1.5 EV backlight compensation button make it less versatile than other similar SLR’s from that time even a basic Pentax K1000 using metered manual is easier.

Used in shutter priority mode which is really its native setting it’s fine and the viewfinder is big and bright.  There are many FD lenses available with the 50mm 1.4 being a great example and reason enough to shoot with this camera if you are willing to take the time to adjust to it’s controls.