Mamiya 6 + Curaçao

May 11, 2019 in Medium Format

During the cold winter, We jumped onto a plane to the Caribbean island of Curaçao.
I had recently saved up enough money to sell off my Mamiya Universal for something a bit lighter.
Being a huge fan of the square format, the Mamiya 6 sure has some benefits.

We explored the entire Island in a couple days, on our way up to the one Mountain, we stopped by a small shop. Across the street, there was this sign. Pretty odd for the middle of nowhere.

And in the evenings, we would relax and enjoy the solitude.

More to Come

May 10, 2019 in Medium Format

Finally finishing my Scans from my trip down to the tiny Island of Curacao
Here is an image from an even tiny island, Little Curacao

Mamiya 6 + Kodak 400NC

February 17, 2019 in Medium Format

Here are the first few shots off of my new to me Mamiya 6.

Shot on some expired Kodak 400 NC

Still working on a few bodies of work in the mean time, enjoy a few photos around my neighborhood, and my Loud and cute cat.

Everything is pretty much unedited, pulled straight from my epson scanner.

The Blue Door Studio Marshall, NC. Provia 100 — The Blue Door Studio
Marshall, NC. Provia 100

Lubitel In Marshall

June 02, 2017 in Medium Format

So I'm unable to narrow down a specific camera and film. So, Let me show you where I've been.
Marshall, North Carolina is a sleepy town 30 minutes north of Asheville. This was my first time to the region, and I enjoyed this little place.
I picked up a Lomo Lubitel 166 Universal at a recent camera show. Its far sharper than the others I've used in the past.

Fuji Provia 100

Fuji NPS 160

When I say Marshall is tiny, It is. Downtown Marshall is 1 mile long, and the population of the entire town is less than 1000 people.

Shot from the edge of a local grocery store on Kodak PMZ 1000

The Blue Door is run by Susan, who is working tirelessly to create a working studio space for alt pro, fiber arts, writing, book making etc. While down in North Carolina, I assisted setting up her hopefully soon to be created website.
I now equate the Asheville area to Burlington VT, or Ithaca, NY. It's a pretty progressive region. Its nice to see the paradigm of "The South" to be challenged in locations like these.

I was able to wander around Marshall at night a few times, and tested another roll of Cinestill 800T. I had better success. I was careful at winding my film, and did not have the red static that I had in my first roll. Shooting in the middle of nowhere doesn't have much ambient light which I'm used to living closer to cities. Shooting an 800 speed here helped with cutting down my time to ~2 minutes.

Cinestill 800T

A couple more for good measure.

Velvia 100F

Holga + Kodak Verichrome Pan

May 22, 2017 in Medium Format

Long time no see, now back to the regularly scheduled program...
While in Korea, I found a little camera with a half case, it basically covered the bottom of the camera and protected it, when you were shooting, you'd pull off the top half and be able to shoot with it. I had an idea to take that concept and marry it with a Holga, for almost only aesthetic purposes.

So, I took this idea

And applied it here.

I had my friend Randy over at Holgamods to design and 3d print this half case. There are also a few other upgrades, but I wanted to fancy up my holga. There are a few bugs I'm working out, but for the most part, its a cool little camera.

I'm becoming more flexible on the type of film I shoot. I really love shooting color, and I'm more familiar with color and tones, as opposed to tones of grey and black. I see it color, and I feel like shooting in color just makes sense to me. I've avoided shooting black and white for a while possibly because of the first few rolls I shot and processed in undergrad were so terrible. Having black and white film processed at a lab seemed like a was cheating. But, Its the way of the world, and I'm okay with that for this blog.
I found a weird roll of 120 film in my collection, a roll of Kodak Verichrome Pan. I really love the contrast in the images.
(P.S. I also tweaked a few things in my scanning preferences and are now getting a wider range of tones)

Most of these Images were shot in Tarrytown, NY.

Mamiya Universal

April 18, 2017 in Medium Format

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 — 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.

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. — 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.

Dacora Digna + Cinestill 120 Alpha?!

April 13, 2017 in Medium Format

I don't really remember where I found this camera. After arriving back in the US in january, I was digging through boxes and came upon this camera. I liked it because the lens collapsed into the body of the camera. Also, It's made out of aluminum, so its pretty sturdy. It has similar functionality to the Holga or Diana... Or any toy camera.

A couple weeks ago... well let's back up a bit. Maybe a year ago, I funded a kickstarter. (when I had some extra dinero lying around) It was for the manufacture of medium format cinestill film. I hadn't shot it before, but If you're a company trying to make film, than I'm you're guy. I had a chance to shoot Cinestill50 a few months ago, and after that experience, I was even more pumped to get this kickstarter backed project rewards in hand.

The film tended to have a lot of weird things happen to it, such as static on the film causing some red streaks, which I've never encountered before, along with some other weird things. Since It's the alpha run, there are bugs being worked out. All in all, I'm really happy with this new film on the market.

Fujimoto Semi Sport

April 10, 2017 in Medium Format

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.

8581_Semi015 8581_Semi014 8581_Semi010 8581_Semi009

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

8581_Semi005