Photography

These were all shot with my new Canon P&S camera featuring twice the pixels of my D40(for whatever that is worth). I also brought along the $7 dollar mini tripod that I bought on a whim. It was as poorly made as the price indicates, but it let me take pictures that I could not have taken handheld.

The latest trend is to shoot medium format roll film through plastic cameras, the results are interesting, but I couldn’t bring myself to pay forty bucks for a camera that requires tape to around the edges to prevent light leaks. Still, the promise of huge negatives you get from 120 film (as compared to 35mm) really interested me and when I saw a Universal Roamer II on ebay for less than ten bucks I took the plunge and bought it. It is a bit rough around the edges, and at some point in its sixty year plus life span some scraped off the Roamer II sticker, but it has a decent triplet lens (F4.5-16), and shutter speeds from bulb – 300 seconds (giving a bit more exposure latitude than a Holga or Diana). I was quite surprised by the quality of the lens in this test and by the bit of bokeh that I got on some of the portaits in the gallery (shot at around F 5.6). Still I have a couple more pin holes in the bellows to track down. I also picked up an 11 dollar handheld rangefinder that after calibration should give me better focus results without having to pace out the distance.

I was also given a Universal Roamer I, which I can’t wait to try out. It is a lot simpler than the Roamer II with only a single element lens and two shutter settings bulb and 1/50 second (or at least it was around 1/50 a second when it left the factory).

My second roll of B&W film, I choose the high speed film for night time photos in NYC and finished the roll with inside shots at Home and at Olivia’s birthday party. Next up is a roll of Ilford HP5 then a roll of Delta 3200 that I plan to shoot at 1600. I had hoped to shoot both rolls in NYC, but was rained out. The film was developed at Merrifield One Hour Photo and the digital version are from their scans. I am still not getting the results that I want, but reading up on technique and practice should help.

Still working on getting the flash gallery to do what I want it too, until then these are best viewed here.