A Mistake Worth Repeating

Yet another roll of 127 film that I ran through my 53-year-old Ansco Cadet. I’ve been trying to put together a small portfolio of images taken with the Ansco, but it hasn’t exactly been smooth sailing. I lost the last roll of film I shot with it before I could get the roll developed, and it’s pretty easy to see from the scans above that my latest roll had some issues.

Seems I was unknowingly overlapping exposures this time around. Oops! But even though I was bummed when I first saw the negatives, out of curiosity I decided to scan them anyway while preserving the overlapping frames. I must admit, I kind of like the results. Might be a mistake worth knowingly repeating

The image above shows the three complete scans that were done at the lab, and I added some crops below to show more detail:

Totally digging the multiple Suki frames here.

All Images: Ansco Cadet | Bluefire Murano 160

The M4

Spending a roll with a buddy’s Leica M4 last week solidified my love for rangefinder cameras. Unfortunately, I was nearly out of film when I headed out with the M4, but I was able to dig up one last roll of Lomography XPRO (no, not that XPRO) Chrome, the same stuff I used to shoot the Lomokino Movie Maker. Good enough.

This camera is refreshingly mechanical. No meter, no nothin’ electronic. Tons of fun:

I think I may be in the market for a film Leica M after shooting the M4.

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All Images: Leica M4 + Summarit-M 50mm f/2.5 | XPRO CHROME, E-6 Processing

VSCO 02

A day before my cousin and I shot a recent wedding together, we took a stroll in the neighborhood where he grew up, an area his immediate family still calls home. He’s been away from San Francisco for many years now, so coming back to his old ‘hood without ever seeing its slow transition from “somewhat ghetto everything” to “sustainable green local fancy vegan fair trade organic everything” made the walk an interesting experience, I’m sure.

As you can see, he had a chance to practice chasing Suki down the street while trying to photograph her. Not easy!

The folks over at VSCO recently released version two of their awesome film presets, which I used to process all of these photos. The new presets are the bomb, period. Love the look, love the customization. Love. Love. Love.

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Images: Canon 5D Mark III + 50mm f/1.2L

VSCO: Kodak Portra 160 VC +

Life With The OM-D

I totally love the Olympus OM-D. The Pana-Leica 25mm, Olympus 12 and 45mm M. Zuiko primes, and the body itself all fit in my camera bag with plenty of room to spare, so I can take the entire kit wherever I go.

The OM-D checks a lot of the right boxes. Fast, responsive, quiet, well-built, small, light, good-looking. It’s weather-sealed, has a great tilt and swivel touch screen, an awesome EVF, plenty of physical control points, plenty of amazing lenses to choose from, and the new 5-axis stabilization works so well it’s scary.

Grainy-Filmy look brought to you by VSCO (Kodak Portra 800). Black and whites are out of camera. I’m really looking forward to logging more time with this system.

Olympus OM-D E-M5 | 12mm f/2 | 25mm f/1.4 | 45mm f/1.8

High ISOhmygoodness

A charging baby at night, in a room lit only by low-wattage lamps. Taken with the Nikon D4 and 24-70mm f/2.8, 1/320  at ISO 12800. It’s pretty amazing what cameras can do these days.

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The DIY Spider Lightish Thingo

Olympus OMD E-M5 +  Pana-Leica 25mm f1.4  | 320 sec, f/1.4, ISO 200

I took the portrait above of a colleague of mine, who rolled into work today with a DIY lighting rig he threw together over the weekend. Made of six under-counter fluorescent lights rigged to a speedring, the light creates some pretty unique catchlights in your subject’s eyes, and the relatively low output means you can shoot comfortably at large apertures. Very cool:

Setting this contraption on top of a light stand drew a lot of attention, so there were plenty of subjects to test the rig on:

We’re trying to come up for a name for this thing, and are at totally at a loss. Hmmm….I guess Spider Lightish Thingo will have to do for now.

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All shots taken using the Olympus OM-D E-M5 with either the 25mm f/1.4 Pana-Leica or the M. Zuiko 45mm f/1.8 lens.

Metric

Metric at the Great American Music Hall. Need I say more? My x100 was actually taken from me during the show. They said it was “too professional looking.” So I whipped out the XPRO-1 to take some shots of Emily and crew, and somehow I got away with that. Hmph!

Metric rocks!

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All Images: Fuji XPRO-1 + 35mm f/1.4 XF R and 18mm f/2 XF R