One aspect of photography is nostalgia for the past. We capture a moment so that it is preserved for the future and we manipulate the present to re-capture the past. A contact sheet is an instance of what was once important but no longer has the same relevance. I can quickly sort through thousands of digital photo’s nearly at a glance. In a moment of sentimentality I created a pseudo contact sheet with my scanner. While no longer a viable tool when compared to image database software it is useful when paired with it’s negative.
The Lubitel 2 is an interesting camera, it certainly makes you think about composing your pictures. Primarily because you can’t. It without a doubt has the worst viewfinder I have ever encountered. Others have described it as tunnel vision, I would describe it as frustrating. It’s one thing to have everything reversed as with all TLR cameras but moving the camera can also make the image disappear entirely if you aren’t absolutely directly aligned. There are two focus aids though. One is that the finder can be configured as an eye level frame as seen in the picture of the camera and the other is the small magnifying element that can be flipped out to assist in focusing. While I’m on the subject of focusing, it also is unique. The image is not actually formed on a ground glass but is seen directly from a lens element that has a darkened spot in the center. It is very difficult to focus and requires the use of this magnifying loupe to ensure accuracy.
This is my homage to Kodachrome, which has been discontinued after 74 years. My dad made thousands of beautiful slides with his Pentax H2 and a hand held light meter. Kodachrome was his film of choice and today 50 years later these images still retain wonderful accurate colours. Slides have an undeserved reputation perhaps developed from forced viewings of poorly made images. On the other hand I have very fond memories of sitting as a family watching our lives displayed in giant images while the projectors fan hummed away broken by the distinctive sound of the next slide and the outburst of us children clamoring to be the first to identify the time and place. I too made thousands of Kodachrome slides throughout my teens and twenties only reducing my usage when processing was no longer included in Canada. Now we view our digital pictures and scanned slides on an HD TV and get that same social family interaction. I do miss the hum of the projector though.
The painting is of a roll of K-11 process film with an ASA of 12. The box is stamped process before DEC 1959 X and the cloth bag was provided for mailing back to Kodak for processing. It sits in a deserved place of honour with my camera collection.
At the recent Vancouver camera show I aquired a Fujica 35 SE rangefinder. I had an opportunity yesterday to shoot a roll of film through it and am very impressed by the sharpness of the images. It has a f=4.5cm 1:2.8 Lens. The coupled exposure meter doesn’t appear to be accurate but because it is fully manual I just used my best available exposure meter (guessametering).
I made the animations smaller for slower Internet connections.
The Nishika N8000 was designed for making lenticular prints. The type of print where the image appears different depending on your viewing angle. In order to do this is has 4 30mm lenses spaced across the front that all have shutters that trip at the same time. The outer two lenses are spaced apart about the distance of human eyes and give a stereoscopic view. However what you can do is scan the 35mm negatives in and build the resulting files into an animated GIF.
I have been going past this garage for some time now, and have wanted to take some pictures, so today I took the opportunity. On a regular week day the parking lot would be full of vehicles but that isn’t how I envisioned the image. I’m not quite sure what it is about the signage that drew me to this but it may be because it has the look of so much of what was around when I was a child. Without vehicles perhaps that distortion of time is made possible.
Going beyond the initial intended image I took several others that are of a different character. The image of the signage with selective focus is substantially an exercise in photographic technique while the one of the garage bays is an abstraction simply for it’s compositional aesthetic.
I have been going through some old negatives and scanning them. I’m not sure where the compunction to be an archivist came from but it’s something I seem to need to do. Besides I like looking at pictures I took as a teenager. I took this image somewhere in Oregon in 1989 when I was driving down to California and camping , beyond that I really don’t remember. I suppose that may be the reason I’m organizing the past in order to preserve my memories. After awhile it seems that the memories of many events become nothing more than snapshots anyway. Hopefully I will satisfy my need to go through this old stuff soon and can begin creating anew.
