Wallace Koopmans Artlog

The Yashica Samurai is a half frame camera which is great because it allows you to get twice the number of images from a roll of film.  And that matters when the outdated film is rare like this roll of Agfa Ultra 100 a friend Duncan kindly gave me to shoot.  Agfa Ultra was described […]

I was graciously given the Yashica Samurai by a friend who recognized that it would interest me, and it does.  It’s a half frame camera producing 50 negatives from a standard 24 exposure roll of film.  That itself is interesting, it makes you feel less encumbered by the preciousness of the film.  It feels almost like […]

For a few years now I’ve had an affinity for all things half frame. From the quirky Lomo Tim to the 1980’s esthetic of the Yashica Samurai and of course the fun little Ricoh Auto half but it wasn’t until I decided to part with my Nishika N8000 quad lens camera that one of the […]

Every photographer knows that film can be grainy or should and Adox Colour implosion is about as grainy as it gets, like a grain elevator at harvest time.  So how do you take it up a notch?  Shoot half frame that’s how.  I used the Yashica Samurai half frame SLR to reap my 72 frames of granularity.  Some of which can be seen […]

Using a half frame camera gives you 48 pictures from a regular 24 image roll.  It’s very freeing to have all those extra pictures but not crazy like digital.    I was shooting this roll of film to create in camera diptychs and these are just the images that were not in pairs.  Yes I know […]

Taking two pictures that go together is an added challenge that I enjoy.  Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t.  I tried this previously here Diptychs also using the Yashica Samurai because it’s half frame and runs the film vertically like a movie camera. This allows  images to be stacked right on the negative.  This is […]

When you capture images on film they are connected to neighbouring ones by their position on the substrate, where a digital file is on it’s own, easily orphaned or separated.  That’s all a bit overly dramatic what I should say is that it’s fun to take images on film that are meant to exist together and this is […]

With the reaction to the Marc Newson designed Pentax K-01 being in some cases so vehemently negative, you would think that he had created something so anti photography that it marked the end of cameras. It isn’t its just a camera. There have been other instances where camera and design have come together and here […]