Been eyeing on this lens for a while. Got a decent one today off Craigslist with filter and hood. Even a few months back I never cared about macro, since I am too bored of the technically-perfect-cliche photos of dragonflies and butterflies and catterpillars. Recently I got hooked to the idea of finding patterns in flowers and printing a couple large ones.
Can’t wait to test the lens this weekend at some garden.
The epic wait is finally over. Almost 3 years of marriage and 12 years of knowing each other and never having the feeling of living together “forever”.
Priti is here now, and first time in her life on a one-way ticket.
A lot of catching up, tons of things to do to make up the lost time together. Taking it one day at a time and trying hard not to get overwhelmed.
Photographs are the best way to remember these euphoric days. My flickr sets of her will continue to grow in the coming weeks.
I knew it had to happen soon. Serious photography is just not possible without coming back to the roots, the deliberate process of using larger format cameras. This day would not have come today if not for the constant inspiration from my friend and mentor photographer Francesco Gallarotti.
I am lucky to have a store like Keeble & Schuchat near me. They are a rental heaven, and I can use a medium format for a song.
So I picked up a Hasselblad 503CW with A12 back (6×6) and 80mm/2.8 Planar lens today morning. They even sacrificed a film roll just to show me how to load and remove film from the back. I am now very impressed by their attitude and courtesy.
First stop, Stanford university. Midday sun and architectures make quite contrasty scenes and I took the advantage of it for the Ilford FP4+ I put in. Every shot was metered by my 5D and taken on the tripod. It was a dramatically different process. Each of the 12 frames counts on a 120 roll. No guesswork, no assumptions. I missed having a light meter. Carrying my camera bag over and above the hassy was a bit painful for the back, not to mention the bogen tripod. I walked around a lot but finishing the roll was far from easy. Stumbled upon a large format photography workshop and even got a chance to look at the ground glass of a wooden LF view camera using a black cloth ! Fantastic. I left stanford after an hour of shooting with a few frames still left on the first roll.
Next destination, San Francisco, of course. But stopped by the golden gate national cemetery, it always looked striking from the 280. Enjoyed the peace and serenity of the place and was able to finish the roll.
San Francisco never ceases to amaze me. At the same time it pisses me every time I go there, for several reasons. The near impossibility to park on a road, the GPS losing the satellite reception often, and the constant hunt for a restroom in the bone chilling wind even in the middle of May !!! Today being a special day I decided to tolerate everything I mentioned above. But like salt on a wound, when I finally parked near Lombard street to shoot the classic photo of the cable car against the backdrop of the bay, I ended up waiting 45 minutes before someone told me the cable car was broken. I barely started the 2nd roll and had a lot of expectations for the day. But the rest of the sunlight got wasted just driving around and finding a space to park. No such luck. Parked near chinatown to eat when the daylight was already dim and I barely had any energy left.
I still have two more bw and one slide roll to finish tomorrow. Looking forward to an early start and a productive day ahead.
Medium format rocks. There is nothing like it. There is a surreal quality in the view through the hassalblad’s waist level finder. It looks 3D yet it helps frame a 2D image much better than a 35mm viewfinder. The square format makes everything look just right. I wonder how I will be able to keep using 35mm film. I am pretty sure I will just switch to MF, atleast for the bw negs. Since I have a 35mm slide projector, I might just keep shooting slides in 35mm.
That’s right. Picked up a nice used semi professional film SLR for 10 bucks. Worth the 90 mile roundtrip to San Francisco on my ST1300. Why 10 bucks for a camera usually available for 100-150 bucks used ? The command dial is broken which is a common issue of that model. It will “click” only in the “lock” position (to switch off the camera) and wont click when changing shooting modes. That means I have to look on the top LCD for confirmation when changing, say from Av to M mode. Not a big deal for me at all. Every frame counts when shooting film and I guess I will notice if anything changes accidentally.
I am having a renewed interest in film, especially bw film, after yesterday’s darkroom experience. I am gonna finish a couple 35mm rolls, and then looking forward to renting out a hasselblad (medium format film SLR) from Keeble & Schuchat.
Interesting times ahead I guess.
Back to the darkroom after 3 years. Time flew but the fun remained the same. Just found out this nice rental darkroom (the darkroom at de-bug) in a random search. My coworker Ken (flickr: wirehead) jumped to this opportunity and we had 3 very productive hours today evening.
We both took the $35 membership option as we know we are gonna spend way more than 7 hours in a month at $5/hour rate.
I am looking forward to getting a cheap used canon film SLR to finish my leftover 35mm bw film and rent out a hasselblad for a weekend. This would be my first medium format experience. Ken brought some MF negatives and the prints blew me away.
And I still have my D70 in the bag. Not that it is obsolete because I have been using it for 3 years, but my recent work has been pushing the image quality to the limits. I have been doing some decent amount of low-light work and the noise at high ISO (800-1600) is not tolerable any more.
I looked around for a true upgrade to a full frame body and Nikon only has it in its $5k D3. While an amazing camera with spotless images at ISO6400, it is certainly not affordable for me. The D300 felt just perfect in my hands, but it is still a crop sensor body. The 2 year old Canon EOS 5D has just what I need: full frame, high performance in low ISO, and a great kit lens, the 24-105/4 L IS USM, all for an attractive price from bhphoto.
Some say switching brands is expensive, because of the existing lenses. I have only two good nikkors, namely the 50/1.8 and 85/1.8 and they will stay for my fm3a anyway. For now, my bag looks perfectly sane, with the D70 as a backup body with 50 on it, while the 5D takes up the main job.
Some productive days ahead I guess.
Being in the still photography domain for over 5 years, I decided it was absolute time to check out the world of motion pictures. I love great movies with a solid story and always wanted to make a short one myself. I have recently watched some movies carefully and researched on the basics of editing. It is time put all the dreams in action, along the lines of both documentaries and short films.
The jump to videography could take longer if not for Alena, a budding actress with boundless enthusiasm in movies. She inspired me so much over a couple sessions of chat that it made the final push for me.
I have been eyeing on the 3ccd prosumer camcorders but decided to first try out a cheaper option. Picked a mint Sony DCR-SR200 40GB HDD camcorder for 370 bucks at half its new price, almost the same I paid on a Hi-8 tape version 2 years back for family.
Time to be a filmmaker.
I do not normally post about other blogs, but I will make an exception for this: http://shaunlunt.typepad.com/shootings/
Flying all alone to Alaska, in a single propeller super cub, with incredible photographs - there is nothing else that can give so much feeling of peace. I am a long distance motorcyclist, and I know how to be jealous of this guy. He is having an experience that is easily the n-th power of what I can get riding a motorcycle in those places. And I have to stick to the land, and only upto what can be remotely called a road.
Way to go Shaun, you are the new God to me.
Yeah, my life somehow found a rhythm after a while. Been distracted by a lot of things, and it took time to organize and let things fall in place. I am back to pursuing my original passions in full steam - riding and photography. Well, I wish I could ride far and do some serious travel photography but I would rather wait till my wife is here. For now I am just making images of people, especially children, the most challenging and rewarding subjects I will ever find. I am also loving the use of Photoshop CS3 on my mac, and a bit of InDesign as well.
Did a shoot yesterday at a beautiful house in Belmont hills. Loved the place.
Another shoot tomorrow at Moss beach, in Half moon bay. Should be a great 80-mile ride.
I finally decided to go with a dedicated domain for my professional photography career. My other site www.joydutta.com will still exist, for this blog and riding related stuff. Bought the domain from nameboy.com, and boy, are they fast ! Within 2 minutes of registration and payment my site went live. I shifted the content from my existing site to the new one in just a minute, thanks to rsync.