If sifting through Google search results is any indication, I’m wading into fraught territory here. But in looking to acquire more lenses for my Pentax 645, I had to get some basic understanding of focal length equivalency, because my familiarity with what you get, picture-wise, with a lens of x millimeters in focal length is rooted primarily in the 35mm world — and to a lesser degree in Canon’s version of the APS-C world.
Continue reading…April 2019
Rediscovering Film: Part Four
In Parts One, Two, and Three of this series, I talked at length about getting reacquainted with old friends: film cameras. While I’ve not taken the Polaroid out since Part One, I have shot film in my old Duaflex (Part Two), and my Minolta XG 1 (Part Three), and have finally received them back from the lab.
Continue reading…A Learning Experience with My Pentax 645
It may surprise you to see a picture of a package of Duracells as the featured image for this post, considering the title. But as you might well guess, the two are related. I’ll jump to the point: When you camera requires batteries to function, always, always carry extra batteries, because they will fail you when you need them most.
Continue reading…eBay Bargain: Pentax AF280T Flash
I’ve never been much for eBay. Even in its early years, I never trusted the site — or more accurately, I never trusted the people selling stuff there — to accurately represent anything. Rollei repair guy Mark Hensen has a page on his site where he says he’s bought over 500 cameras on eBay over the years, and not a single one has been as promised. My main issue is I never trusted that I was even going to receive what I bought, never mind if it matched the promise. But I was willing to put less than $20 on the line recently for a Pentax flash, and I have to say, it exceeded my expectations.
Continue reading…Essay: On Photography; Film, Digital, Snapshots, Art and Drivers
One thing I’ve done too much in my life is asking the simple question, “Why?” I’m trying to do a lot less of that these days, especially when I consider the ebb and flow of my multipotentialite-driven passions — some of which end-up being quite ephemeral.
But as I’ve begun to re-embrace film photography, I’ve been asking, “Why?” Not questioning the fact I’m doing it, but more to wonder why and how it appeals to me. I think I’ve unearthed some answers.
Continue reading…A Few Decades Later, I Embrace Medium Format
Readers will know I’ve recently rediscovered some old friends, including my Polaroid OneStep, my old Kodak Duaflex II, and finally, the Minolta XG 1 I used in photography class back in high school many years ago. This week, I made a brand new friend: a Pentax 645 medium-format film camera.
Continue reading…Rediscovering Film: Part Three
In Part One and Part Two of this unplanned series of posts, I dusted-off my old Polaroid OneStep and my even older Kodak Duaflex II cameras. Digging through boxes that have remain untouched since moving here over four years ago, I found another camera relic: My old Minolta XG 1, a 35mm SLR, which I bought for photography class when I was in high school after draining a small savings account someone had set-up for me as a kid.
Continue reading…Rediscovering Film: Part Two
In Part One of this series, I talked about Polaroid instant photography, and the walk down memory lane I had finding my Polaroid OneStep from the mid-1990s, loading it with new Polaroid Originals film, and taking some interesting shots. While digging around in pictures and cameras, I also thought of another old camera: my Kodak Duaflex II. The old Kodak, however, was sitting on the lower shelf of a side table in my living room, where’s it’s been little more than a knick-knack for years now. I thought it was time to say hello again.
Continue reading…Rediscovering Film: Part One
Recently, I’ve been going through old stuff — boxes from my late mother’s house, boxes of stuff from childhood I’ve moved from place to place over the years. You reach an age where you start to think, “It’s time to thin this pile of stuff down a bit,” and that’s where I’m at.
Part of the old stuff is photographs. Lots and lots and lots of photographs. And lots of cameras, some of which took some of those many photographs. It got me thinking: When was the last time I actually shot a photograph on… (gasp)… film?
Continue reading…