Olympus XA + Slide Film

This will be the second post in a month I've shown images from my Olympus XA. The XA. Before Korea, I shot a lot of slide film (mostly in large format). So although my collection of film has grown, much of it is slide film. Moving from Boston has presented itself with problems of finding a lab to develop my film. I'm currently in between labs, but am leaning towards Citizens.
 

This roll was shot in Florida when I took a trip out there in the beginning of March.

So if you're unfamiliar with Slide film I'll give you a brief explanation why I like it. Typically people shoot negative film to get enlarged and printed. With Slide film, it was originally intended to be put in a carousel and projected onto a wall, and not to be enlarged. Along came digital and changed all that. Now people shoot slide film because the look it gives film. There are a ton of presets in photoshop that people use to make their digital shots emulate slide film. 

That's not for me. I shoot slide film because of the tones it produces, They are rich, and not exactly contrasty, but the tones are rich. 

Polaroid Land Camera+ FP100C

Last week was Polaroid Week, (or 'Roid Week) and I made almost no acceptable images, So instead of being sad, I'm honoring Edwin with this post.
I shot Polaroid and Fuji instant film all through Asia. (well at least in Korea and Japan) While in Korea, I had a mostly functional Polaroid 350. I took hundreds of polaroid prints home with me in a box that i'm yet to scan(Still waiting for them to flatten out). Since Korea, I replaced the bellows and accidentally punched a new hole through it. Thankfully a wonderful friend gifted me a brand new to me polaroid 250

If you're unfamiliar with Instant film, It makes some gorgeous images. I have a soft spot for any type of instant film because of my past affiliation with These Guys. In terms of instant film, Fuji's FP100C is especially special. Typically instant film produces a positive print that you can scan and do what you like with it. But with FP100C, you can also recover the negative itself. Some old polaroid films like Polaroid type 55 and Type 665 could get a positive and a negative. FP100C is a color film with a color negative, almost unheard of in modern film photography. The process to get the negative isn't so cut and dry. You must use a form of bleach to remove the black material on the back of the film. I've recently began using The Brothers Wright's workflow. Here are both some really terrible examples, as well as some pretty awesome ones. Using bleach has a chance of destroying, or shifting the colors of the film, so I am especially drawn to this material. Take a look at most of my previous work on my site here, and you can understand some other examples.

Starting with one of the first photos I shot, this was the view I had every evening. My apartment sat on the Nakdong River in Busan.

Poor Kitty Post Spay

Night photography is extremely difficult with this film, the reciporicty failure is very high.

If you leave your film out, this type of surface appears and won't go away when you're reclaiming the negative.

A super weird self portrait, the positive looks vaugely like this. There seemed to be too much bleach with this one.

This was from the lot of negatives in the picture above. My negative reclaimation only improved from here.

And finally a nearly flawless negative. Really happy with this new workflow. Now to find more film....

Olympus Stylus Epic Zoom 115

This is another little camera I found at Goodwill not too long ago.First off, it worked without any problems. I put a battery in, and everything was firing properly. Thanks, camera gods. It has a zoom function and panorama function as well. I've never been into panoramic too much.
This camera is a grandchild of the original (much more desired) model, the Epic Stylus or Mju.

These images are all shot on Kodak Gold 400. I was pretty impressed with the quality of Images it produced.

1st take on the 14" of snow

The steps of the John F. Kennedy Museum in Boston, MA

Piermont, NY

The Red Rooster Brewster, NY

View of the homestead

Mamiya Universal

This was one of the first cameras I bought in 2016. After my beloved Mamiya C330 TLR hopped out of my backpack meeting its untimely demise, I had a suitcase full of medium format film and no cameras to use. Instead of selling the film off, I made a decision to purchase one from Japan. There were some issues with it, but I was able to repair pretty quickly.

Since this is one of my main camera setups, I'll most likely be sharing images from this camera in future posts.

New55 (scanned negative) shot in a converted polaroid 545 back

I presently have a love hate relationship with the camera because its heavy but makes gorgeous images.

Fuji NPS 160

Kodak 400 MC. Just outside my doorstep

My cat, 먼지 / Meonji. She passed away from a rare feline disease. This was one of the last images I made of her on my last sheet of New55. 

Kodak 160NC. Jeju Island

Fujimoto Semi Sport

So this is a story of sheer will. This camera came into my collection as I was traveling the streets of Seoul. If you're unaware of the flea market scene in Seoul, Its enormous. I'd regularly frequent the market when I visited. The city attempted to contain this market by moving it inside, yet it was a futile effort. On the weekends, there would be blocks and blocks of people selling vintage everything Every street looked like this or this. A few streets down, I found this little guy. It had a roll of film, (Which I now know was only the backing paper of a roll of fujifilm) from the early 1950's.  

After quick inspection, I thought it was a great find, only later to realize the shutter lever had been snapped off. It took me several months to track down another one of these cameras in disrepair to harvest its parts.

The Fujimoto Semi Sport is a clone/ knock off of the zeiss folding cameras, much like the Kiev 66 is a Knockoff/ clone camera of a Hasseblad. It was nice shooting 6x645 format, since I tend to shoot square format in 120 film.

Here are a few images I shot not too long ago. I went to a park close to me.

Images shot on Fuji NPS 160.

I guess there was some debris left in the camera I didn't clean out... Created a pretty weird, but interesting image.

Canon AutoBoy Tele

This is one of those cameras that have virtually zero value. But for me, finding cameras to sell is only a small component of finding cameras. This model, the Autoboy Tele in Japan and the Canon Sure Shot Tele/ Top Twin in the US. I thought this was a cool little camera.

I began testing it out at a wedding, I found quickly that it operated okay, but the gears that switched from Telephoto to normal were old and cranky, so there would be a loud high pitched screech as when I switched between the two.

It also had a date stamp feature that seems pretty antiquated, but possibly conceptually useful as a tool when making images. The lens reminds me a lot of the cameras I would use when I was a kid.

I shot a lot of different cameras while living abroad. (I lived in South Korea for the year of 2016.) Korea had a good supply of interesting architecture, and cheap cameras.

I guess I've been on a Kodak kick lately. This was also shot on some Kodak Gold 200. I tend to buy film that is expired, and I don't freeze or store my film in any particular manner. Maybe I'll add a photo of my current film stock in the future.

Olympus XA

I found this little camera in Tokyo. I was camera hunting for cameras, and I wasn't finding much things I was realistically interested in. Japan's camera market is amazing for vintage cameras, but they're all in superb condition. I tend to prefer the throw aways. Much like buying a fancy brand new, or perfect condition car; a perfectly pristine camera is typically wasted on me. I began collecting because I wanted to use the tool to make an image, not to sit on a shelf.

Intro: The Olympus XA

I decided to make a purchase in one of these shops into something, that I somewhat stumbled onto. I was looking at busted section of the store, and I was curious what camera this was, from the side it looked like a Minox camera because of the orange button. This camera has become one of my stand by cameras, so it may surface occasionally on this blog.

Anyways, onto the photos. Images Shot on some expired roll of Kodak Gold 200