The wife and I recently met up again with Desirae, a good friend and blogger who specializes in vintage fashion. We spent some time strolling through Golden Gate Park with Suki in tow, chatting it up and shooting some photos.

Since this was a casual shoot, I decided to experiment a little more than usual. I shot most of these as either single frames or stitched bokeh panoramas using one of my favorite lenses, the Nikon 135mm f/2 DC. A single speedlight and a small reflector kept things light and portable while serving as an additional lighting option as the sun kept ducking behind scattered clouds.

The other digital in the bag was Fuji’s new X100s. With its built-in neutral density filter and ability to sync with flash at ridiculously high shutter speeds, the camera works wonders with small flash in a bright environment. And those files…goodness. Single SB-910, gelled warm and zoomed to 200mm, firing into a small reflector behind me for these two. Taken at f/2, 1/1000:

The gear:
Nikon D800E + Nikkor 135mm f/2 DC
Fuji X100s
Nikon SB-910, Pocketwizard Plus IIIs

Between shooting pack film and and just being busier than ever, my 35mm gear has seen very little use these days. In fact, I’ve had the same roll of black and white in my Leica for like three months! After running through the last few frames this past week, I finally got the roll developed at my local lab.

When you leave a roll of film in the camera for this long, you tend to forget much of what you’ve shot. In a way that’s pretty cool, because when you finally have your first look at the developed film, it’s like rediscovering your very recent past. Tiny glimpses.

Or, just a lot of photos of my wife and my dog =)

Leica M3 + 50mm f/1.4 Summilux | Kodak T-MAX 100

It’s been a while since I revived my now irreparably broken Polaroid Land Camera 450. But that camera lives on in a way, with its Zeiss Ikon finder now mounted to my recently acquired Land Camera 240. For my first pack of color film with the camera, I set up a light in my cousin’s back yard and took a few portraits of Bridget and Suki:

Between the 1967 Land Camera 240 and my all-plastic Colorpack II, I’ve become quite addicted to shooting pack film lately. Here are some frames taken with the latter, which, though lacking in finesse when compared to the 240, is still a blast to shoot with:

One of the cool things about the Colorpack II is that it takes those Blue Dot Flash Cubes. Not a very refined light source, but still a ton of fun:

You know, in today’s very digital world, pulling a developed print out of one of these beautiful cameras feels downright miraculous. I think it’s about time I loaded my freezer up with pack film!

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Polaroid Land Camera 240 | Polaroid Colorpack II | Fuji FP-100C | Fuji FP-3000B

Nearly two years ago I wrote a blog post about my visit to New York’s High Line elevated park. A tweaked version of that post just made it to print in the biannual publication CITYGREEN, appearing in the magazine’s 6th issue entitled Green Spaces For Sustainable Cities. Currently available in paperback only, a digital version of issue 6 will be available in a couple months. Here are a few highlights from my original blog post:

The folks at CITYGREEN were nice enough to shoot me a free copy of issue 6, and it looks great!

These shots of the paperback version represent just a portion of the 8-page spread that appears in the magazine, so check out the actual publication if you want to see the rest. CITYGREEN is loaded with a ton of cool articles about green spaces in urban environments around the world, so it’s a pretty good read. You can also check the blog post my article is based on here.

All the images I posted on the blog and in the CITYGREEN article were taken with my Fuji X100. Represent!

Having two shibas in the house over this past weekend has been a very interesting experience, especially since one of them is a puppy! In spite of the fact that our home is absolutely overrun with shiba fur, we had a pretty good time baby sitting Miru. We capped off the weekend together with a hike this morning:

So long, Miru!

Images: Canon 1D X | 300mm f/2.8L II | Canon Extender 1.4x III

This is Miru. He’s a 7 month old Shiba Inu, and we get to babysit him until Sunday. Ahhhhh, reminds me of the good old times when Suki was a puppy….a bad puppy

Miru is relatively easy to photograph.

Suki and Miru together? Pretty much impossible to photograph.

I’m sure we’ll have some great times together this weekend. This should be a good way to see if we can handle bringing a second Shiba into our home one of these days.

Images: Leica M9 | 35mm f/2 Summicron

My cousin and his wife celebrated their first year of marriage last month during their visit from Colombia. I accompanied them on their last day in San Francisco last week, running some last-minute errands and stopping to grab a few frames every now and then.

So long you two. Happy anniversary  :)

So, seeing as I didn’t even have enough time to finish a single roll on Josh and Vanessa, the rest of this post will have to consist of, uh, more Shiba pictures. Surprise surprise.

Miru (left) is a Shiba puppy who in no way shape or form was able to get Suki to care about his existence. We made them hang out anyway:

All images: Leica M3 + 50mm f/1.4 Summilux | Kodak Ektar 100

One of the cameras I shot along side the RX1 last week was a medium format beauty I borrowed from a friend: the Fuji GF670. The GF670 is a modern, professional grade film camera with a very bright rangefinder, an 80mm lens that folds into the body, and the ability to shoot in either 6×6 or 6×7 using 120 or 220 film. I loaded some expired Provia 400 in the camera and very carefully worked through each frame. Hey, you only get twelve 6×6 shots per roll of 120, so you gotta take your time with this thing!

I think this Fuji would be near the top of my list of medium format cameras to purchase when the time comes. It’s extremely well made, is dead simple to load and operate, and the included Fujinon 80mm is excellent. I had a blast with this thing.

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Fuji GF670 | Kodak Provia 400 (expired)

Logged more time with Sony’s powerhouse of a compact camera this weekend. This thing is a serious imaging machine!

Do I love it? Yes. The image quality is absolutely stunning, as expected, and the camera’s build quality is top notch. But I only borrowed this thing to keep me occupied while I waited for my rangefinder to come out of repair. Once I get my M3 back, I doubt I’ll miss the RX1. =)

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All Images: Sony Cybershot DSC-RX1

Got my hands on a brand spanking new Sony RX1 this evening! Despite the high price and the little time I’ve actually spent with this camera so far, I can already tell the RX1 is going to make some waves. It’s basically a point and shoot, and in practice it operates just like you’d expect a compact camera to operate. The fact that it’s packing a 35mm film-sized sensor, however, is just crazy considering how incredibly small the camera actually is.

 Sony RX1 | ¹/50 sec, f/2, ISO 800

Built into the RX1 is a nice chunk of Zeiss glass, a 35mm f/2 Sonnar. You won’t be swapping lenses with this thing, which actually doesn’t bother me too much since I’ve been shooting with my fixed-lens Fuji x100 for such a long time.  What does bother me is that the RX1 costs more than double what I paid for the x100. Ouch.

Sony RX1 | ¹/80 sec, f/2, ISO 3200

 Sony RX1 | ¹/40 sec, f/2, ISO 6400

I’ll need to wait until Adobe releases RAW support for the RX1′s files before I can post process the camera’s output myself. For now, the images in this post are all camera-processed JPEGs.

These images where shot hand-held at very high ISO. Pretty impressive performance low-light performance, which is not too surprising considering the big fat sensor Sony stuffed into this thing. More impressions to come on the RX1 as I evaluate it over the next week. Stay tuned!

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