Wallace Koopmans Artlog

Adox’s Color implosion film is marketed as having ‘a modified color scheme’  from there website translated to english:

Place your camera to ISO 400/27 °. The color option of your memory film implodes and you get images with very little color and “Toxic Grain”.  This awaits you if you belichtest Color implosion with your Holga.

Now I don’t know what blichtest means but it doesn’t sound good and I don’t like anyone telling me I have to use a Holga.

So the second suggestion which might have been what I was after is.

Place your camera to ISO 200/24 °.  Now everything explodes red, while the others remain in the green-blue color.  “Toxic Grain” is red. 
  If you like share with your laboratory staff that you would like the movie “supercharge plus 1”. “Bursting Red” also in your Holga

Still I don’t want anything bursting in my Holga if I had one, so I went with the third option.

Place your camera to ISO 100/21 °.  Now makes Color implosion for you beautifully surreal 70s summer colors.  The “Toxic Grain” is now yellow and not as concise.

By the way this is what ‘Toxic Grain’  looks like

While I had hoped for the reds to really stand out, they ended up being quite muted, perhaps because of my choice to shoot at 100 ISO. I’ve set a few of those images aside for a future post where I show the difference between the raw scans and the edited files.  For those I boosted the red channel to more closely match my expectations.  But without further ado(x) here are the images I belichtested.

The Konica EE Matic doesn’t require a battery, that’s a good thing because I’m not sure it deserves one.  I guess if your intention is to take pictures that have the look of having been taken with a cheap 1960’s rangefinder nothing beats a cheap 1960’s rangefinder.  It has that in spades.  If it’s a quality image your after then there are better options.  The problem is the lens it has very bad coma distortion which results in the image being stretched the further it is from the center.  This distortion could be reduced by stopping the lens down but as the camera has completely automatic exposure that is not under your control.

On the other hand it has a nice bright viewfinder that also indicates the shutter speed and it won’t release the shutter if there isn’t enough light for a proper exposure, like when you leave the lens cap on, it happens.

I was just finishing some art related errands when I drove past a local Abbotsford historic house and museum called the Trethewey House. What caught my eye was the giant wrench strapped to the back of a tall fellow. I was curious enough to pull over and have a look. Fortunately I almost always have a camera on me, okay I always have a camera on me. By the time I arrived things were winding down at a gathering with Steam Punk related activities but I spoke to a few nice people dressed in fun attire and took a limited number of portraits with my Pentax K-01. I’ve edited them on my coal-fired iPad. I’m pretty sure coal was used at some stage in the manufacturing of my iPad.

Queen Victoria on her Birthday weekend

Note the previously mentioned giant wrench and also he may be on to something, I could carry more cameras with suspenders like that.

I shot another roll throught the Nikon L35AF this time without the silly lens adapters.  Thats better, it’s now as good as all the rest of the 35mm focal length autofocus point and shoots hardly anyone remembers.

Most of the images were taken with the Vivitar 28mm 1:2.0 Close Focus lens.  The extra stop of light you get with this lens compaired to using a Pentax 28mm 1:2.8 might be useful in low light but it’s the ability to focus down to 23cm (roughly 9 inches) is what is the best thing about it.  It is a heavy piece of glass and metal though and outways the Pentax 28mm to the point where its almost too heavy on my Pentax K-01.  Otherwise if you can spare the weight it will deliver unique results.

Everywhere you go downtown Calgary there is the Calgary Tower.  It may not be the tallest building anymore but it sure ends up in a lot of pictures.  I was in Calgary for a week and during my down time I walked around taking photographs. Here are 28 pictures I took in downtown Calgary that include the Tower so that you don’t have to.

If your from Alberta yes I am kidding I like Calgary there just were a few things that surprised me.  Things like the downtown Tim Hortons being closed on Saturday and how the city center was so dominated by glass and concrete, but I will cover that in another post.  Most of these images were taken with my new Pentax K-01 with a few from the Pentax Q, my film is out to the developers.

Released in 2000 the Canon Z90W (Autoboy Epo) has a 28-90mm f4.5-9.9 lens which is  slow at the telephoto end but the quality of the optical system overall is quite good.  Being from 2000 its just new enough to find internet reviews from the time the camera was released.  The best part of this camera is the large mode dial on the back, with 7 different positions, the most interesting to me being ‘Personal’ which lets me configure the flash to be off at all times.  This is done be selecting Personal on the dial and then pressing the mode button then using the zoom buttons to toggle through the available flash choices; Auto,Red eye,Flash on,Flash off,+1.5 exposure comp.,-1.5 exposure comp., and slow sync flash.

Of the point and shoot film cameras with zoom lenses that go down to 28mm this is the best.  Used at the 28mm wide end it compares well with fixed focal length film compacts.

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 there is a fiber that shows up at the edge of all the images, someone should really do something about that.

I’m missing a major part of this camera which renders it a point and shoot in the strictest sence.  I can’t even over ride the flash.  originally this camera had a cover that also functioned as a controller that could be moved from the front of the camera to the rear or as a remote using IR.  It’s not a common camera, in fact mine is the only one I’ve ever seen,  so the prospect of finding one with the cover is low.  Once my limited supply of APS film is gone there may not be much reason to keep this otherwise interesting camera.

This is what APS film looks like if you were wondering, the scanner at the lab jammed and it had to be extricated.