Mountain Sunset
As I continue to scan some of my old slides to present here in my journal I’ve come to realize that I miss the rich, saturated colors that I could get by deliberately underexposing Ektachrome film. With the right subject matter, a light to moderately underexposed slide looked terrific right out of the camera. No processing software necessary, just shine some light through it and enjoy.
The Long and Winding Road
Going way back in the archives for today’s image. Original exposure shot on Ektachrome slide film 20 years ago.
Reverse Angle
The opposite view of the location pictured in yesterday’s post. Scanned negative from the Pentax ME Super.
20 Years Later
Same camera and lens as was used for the image that was posted here yesterday. This was taken the other day on T-MAX black and white film, twenty years after yesterday’s Ektachrome slide. Also of note, the camera was already 14 years old when I shot yesterday’s photo. I’m real happy that the old gear is holding up well and still producing such nice images. It’s a fun diversion for me to work with the old analog gear. It takes a lot more thought and patience to produce a good image than with modern digital equipment and I feel that it is a good mental exercise for me as well as being artistically rewarding.
She’s a Real Bombshell
The scanner I’ve been using for my work on film is pretty crappy so I invested in a decent one yesterday and actually got around to hooking it up at around 2 in the morning. I just wanted to do a quick test so I threw an old slide in it and made this low-res scan just to see that it worked. I think I will be happy with the scanner when I take time to make some high-res scans. This particular image is scanned from an Ektachrome slide I made in 1993. I was hiking in the desert in area that had been a practice bombing range during WWII and came across this dented-up old bombshell lying in the dirt near an extinct volcanic cinder cone. I made the image with a 24mm lens on my ME Super SLR. I just shot some images last week with the same lens on the same camera body. Now, 20 years after this shot was made I will scan some fresh negatives from the same setup and see what they look like. I can’t wait.
Fun With Film
I make my living with state-of-the-art digital cameras but lately I have felt myself missing the experience of shooting on film with my old mechanical cameras. I still have every camera I’ve ever owned and recently I dusted off a couple of them and put them back into service. I have started to shoot again with a select few of my old favorites. Specifically they are a couple of Polaroid bodies, a 35mm SLR and a medium format TLR. This negative is from the medium format body, specifically a 1966 vintage Mamiya C33 Professional Twin Lens Reflex camera. It’s like having a reunion with a long-lost friend.
