Wallace Koopmans Artlog

First my own reflections. The impersonal hard reflections of the buildings, one against another couldn’t be a better metaphor for my first impression of Calgary. It seems as though in an effort to clean the city they stripped away more than the detritus, they removed the invisible fabric that allows humans to interact. While a week isn’t a long time it was immediately apparent that no amount of smiling or saying hello was enough to break through the invisible capsule Calgarians seem to have surrounding themselves. Now this is actually somewhat at odds with another part of my experience. As a pedestrian I noticed how courteous the drivers were towards me and each other. No one seemed to be in such a hurry that they would rather run you down than wait a second. As I said this was my first impression and it applies to the downtown where people mostly work and not live so it’s not enough to determine the true nature of the city.  As for the images, there were many opportunities to see one building reflected in another, and seaking them out was an enjoyable visual exercise.

These are some of the digital pictures I took while visiting Calgary Alberta. I was focused on using my film cameras but used my Pentax K-01 and Pentax Q as well.  There is some inevitable cross over between my film shots and digital images as I use both types concurrently.

The Olympus Stylus Epic (mju ii) is my go to pocketable film camera and there isn’t much more to say that hasn’t been said other than to re-iterate what a great camera this is. I used Kodak Ektar 100 film which I also think is a perfect pairing for this camera. Other posts from and about this camera can be seen here Olympus Stylus Epic

I’ve had some pretty bad luck with out of date APS film much of it producing thin negatives that did not scan well, so this time I used the exposure compensation feature of the Minolta Vectis S1 to dial in +1.5 EV of exposure compensation. The film was Kodak Advantix 400 so with the compensation the camera would have selected exposures as if the film was about 140 ISO. I can’t say for sure how much of a difference this made because I didn’t take any shots without the compensation but I did get better results than I have been recently.

More Minolta Vectis S1 here Feb 2013, Nov 2011, Expanded Vision Through Narrower Thinking

Calgary is nothing if not its buildings. Here are digital pictures of some the buildings around downtown Calgary taken over the course of a week during my recent visit.

I have to admit I was a little disappointed at first with the results I got from this film but it may have been more about my expectations than the film itself.   Adox describes it as having ‘Bursting Reds’ so I made sure that I shot a lot of red things.  They also suggest that to get the best results for reds to shoot at 200 ISO while I shot the film at 100 ISO which is what was on the film canister.  So to achieve closer to the result I was after I tweaked the reds in Lightroom as well as some other adjustments. This image demonstrates the difference.

And of course the grain is pretty extreme, as they say no one is going to mistake that for digital.   In the end though I got what I deserved 36 frames with a very different look.