Category Archives: Informational

On a Contax High

May 31, 2011 12:38 am ⋅ 2 Comments ⋅

Oh yes I DID just go there…

Oh, how the people on Flickr freaked out about this picture, because they thought I had this camera in too precarious a position…

I’ve found The One.

Maybe you’re thinking, “Amanda, I thought you found The One two years ago? You wrote that camera a love letter and everything!”  That is certainly true, but, now that some time has passed, I know now that my affections for the Hasselblad were only fleeting. I’m not ruling out the possibility that one day I might rekindle that romance, but I’m just sayin… For now though, I have given my heart and soul truly to another: The Contax 645.

I think I love you!

Good ole Dirk pulled through again. He is the best matchmaker I know. He always knows just which cameras I’ll “click” with [yup, enjoy that pun for a moment.] I think I knew as soon as Dirk pulled the Contax out of his camera bag that something special was about to happen. And for the next few weeks, that Contax never left my side.

I don’t know if it’s fair to compare your current sweetheart to your exes, but I can tell you that the Contax fits my lifestyle and shooting habits much better than the Hasselblad. With the Hassy, there is no such thing as spontaneity.  Every shot has to be set up, focused, metered, shutter cocked, then *THWACK* – you can make a photo. The Contax, however, is a perfect marriage between the quality of a medium format negative and the quickness of shooting with an auto focus 35mm cam. And that is coming from someone who really prefers using manual focus cameras!

You see, most auto focus SLR cameras give you the ability to switch between focusing methods. The problem with this is that you usually have to stop what you’re doing in order to switch the camera from auto to manual focus, or vice versa. The Contax 645 is much more clever than that,  as it happens: Say you have the camera set to manual focus, but are having a bit of trouble focusing the lens correctly. There is a little button on the back of the Contax which temporarily puts you in AF mode, focusing the shot for you immediately. The best part is that this button is so easily accessible that you don’t even have to take the camera away from your eye, wasting valuable time, in order to change to auto focus mode. You can decide from shot-to-shot whether you want to focus the lens or if you want the camera to do the work for you. It’s so brilliant!  That’s how I used the Contax during our time together. Talk about spontaneity!

Speaking of spontaneity: There’s also the small matter of the Contax having a built in exposure meter. I don’t want to make the Hasselblad feel bad about itself, but the lack of a meter was one thing that made me unsure of our ability to stick it out together for the long haul. I don’t own a proper hand-held meter, so I had to bring my Olympus XA everywhere I went to meter photos I was making with the Hassy. This is okay for making still life photos, but it’s less fun when you’re photographing people who have to wait on you to do this extra step before snapping their photo. Having an on-board meter is one thing that made me love the 645 oh so much!

I can honestly say that the 645 embodies a lot of qualities I value in a camera. Some of those features are as follows:

  • I often say that a camera who wants to “hang” with me needs to have a rough and tumble disposition – The 645 certainly meets this requirement. It’s MOS DEF solidly built and it is HUGE. I think the technical term for a camera like this is “big, honkin’ camera.”
  • The ability to take photos “on the fly” – Because I tend to do things in a more “documentary” manner, the more quickly I can get the shot, the better. Remember how I told you that I loved the ability to shift seamlessly between manual focus and auto focus? Yeah, that comes in handy for a gal like me.
  • An unusual “look” – Not gonna lie: I am glad a lot of camera I use happen to look so different from the digital cams folks are used to seeing these days. That’s not the reason I use these cameras, it’s just an added benefit. Even people I don’t know can see me with a camera like the Contax, comment on how unusual it is, and open up the opportunity to do some of my aforementioned on the fly portraits.
  • A kick-A lens – The standard lens that comes for the 645 is a friggin 80mm f/2 Carl Zeiss Planar T*. It. Is. So. Amazing. It rocked so hard that it melted my face off. Need proof of this? Take a look at what it did when Mallory and I did some portraits with the Contax and its 80mm Zeiss lens. I think my eyes nearly popped out of my head when I got that film back.

I’ve said all that to say this: I have been wanting to graduate to a medium format SLR for a couple of years now. After I got to spend some time with this Contax 645, I felt as if I had only scratched the surface for what I could do with a camera like that. And unless another camera turns my head in the near future, you can consider there to be a “watch this space” sign hanging over Shoot With Personality – a space which I plan on filling with images made with a Contax 645 of my very own!

Posted in: camera equipment, film photography, informational, shop talk ⋅ Tagged: , , ,

TTV, 35mm, BTW

May 13, 2011 11:10 pm ⋅ Leave a Comment ⋅

TTV = Through the Viewfinder

It seems to be a big trend to use one camera [usually a digital one] to shoot an image as seen through the viewfinder of another camera [usually a medium format SLR or Twin lens camera.] It’s not really my cuppa tea but…

I bring this up because my friend Ashley posted a photo she’d found somewhere on the internet and asked how it was done. Not that she didn’t realize what TTV shooting was, but she was wondering how this was being done with a 35mm camera. Or, in this case, what appeared to be a 35mm.

The photo Ashley had referenced was actually  a TTV shot taken through a Pentacon Six. It’s a medium format SLR that is commonly referred to as looking “like a 35mm camera on steroids.” Without anything in the photo to show the scale of the camera itself, one might not realize they are not looking at your every day 35mm fella but instead are looking at a medium format beast. But I wanted Ashley to know that there are 35mm SLRs in existence which feature a waist-level viewfinder. I happen to have one.

It’s a Praktica VLC3. I got it some years ago from my friend Mike. The camera has interchangeable viewfinders, so you can use either the standard “eye-level” pentaprism finder or you can change that bad boy out and use the waist-level finder. It’s really nifty. In theory. I never really used the waist-level finder on my Praktica because the size of a 35mm image versus the size of a medium format one means that what you’re seeing in its waist-level finder is teeny tiny. For practical purposes, you can’t use the Praktica’s waist-level finder at waist-level.

However, that has never stopped me from occasionally taking off the Praktica’s pentaprism finder and locking in the waist-level one. Because it makes me feel real cooooool whenever I do.

Posted in: camera equipment, informational, shop talk

Forgotten But Not Gone [Photos from the Past]

February 8, 2010 9:25 pm ⋅ 4 Comments ⋅

When I worked at a photo lab, I used to find it funny that some people took photos so infrequently that they’d have both Easter and Christmas photos on the same roll of film when they brought it in for development.

Guess what? I found one of my cameras, loaded with film, that contained photos from *cough* THREE years ago.

During my trip to England in 2006, I went to a camera fair. Essentially, I picked my traveling dates based on the dates of the camera fair in a town called Wolverhampton. I don’t reeeeeeally know why I did that – I definitely didn’t have extra money to spend on cameras! I loved it though, because I got to see a lot of cameras in person which I’d only seen online. I finally did buy a camera, the Agfa Isola I. The dealer knocked of a few quid because it was near the end of the day and he was looking to unload some of his goods.

Before purchasing this Agfa, I had another camera that was quite similar (a knock-off?) called a Dacora Digna (see some photos I took years ago with it here.) Maybe I didn’t need the Agfa, but I’m just a sucker for inexpensive little medium format cameras!

Real quick, here are some cool features of the Agfa Isola I:

•”Telescoping lens”
• The lens folds somewhat flat when not in use, and with a simple twist, pops out so you can take photos.


(I made a cheesy animated GIF to illustrate this action)

• Two exposure settings: Instant exposure (about 1/35 second, according to the manual – wow!), or bulb for long exposures.
• Two aperture settings: info I find says f/11 (“cloudy”) and f/16 (“sunny”)
• Built-in yellow filter (for black and white photography)

And the photos? Drumroll please…

 Any time I happened to remember about this camera and the photos I’d taken on it, I had a definite memory of photographing my friend Kelsey at Food Not Bombs, wearing a striped sweater. Beyond that, I had no idea what might be on that film. So, three years after the fact, I guess I was right about the details of the photo I’d taken of Kelsey! And I apparently also photographed the Cannon Center.

I think it’ll be a decent little camera medium format camera to tote around with me some times, as well of a reminder of a really lovely day I had when I visited England that one time.

 

Posted in: camera equipment, film photography, forgotten frames, informational, shop talk ⋅ Tagged: , , ,

Helllllllllo Lomo!

December 30, 2009 4:07 pm ⋅ 4 Comments ⋅

Ahhhhhh. The much beloved, and the much maligned, Lomo LC-A.

Oh you, Lomo Kompakt Automat.

A Little History About Me and Lomo

Let me give you a little Shoot With Personality history. Before there WAS a Shoot With Personality (well, that is to say, I am Shoot with Personality – but before I had a site called that…) I, as a developing photographer, owned a Lomo LC-A. Or two? Yeah, I guess I broke my first one, and it had some issues anywayz…I got the first one in early 2002? Judging from the photos of my now 8 year old niece sitting in her high chair that were on the first roll, 2002 seems about right. It was awhiiiile ago, but I believe I got mine from a seller in the Ukraine, from ebay. I wouldn’t have paid more than $75 for it, which is about what I paid for the second model I got the next year, also from a Ukrainian ebay listing. The best part of buying packages from the former USSR, btw, is the packaging. You wait a month for it to arrive, then when it does, it’s wrapped in brown paper and tied up with what I assume is string made from yak fur. SO old-world! SO charming!

I don’t even show pictures from those early days around too much, because they were very much a time of “development.” But I recently showed them to a photographer friend, and he saw some merit in my development period… If you care to see some of those older photos – really, some as old as 2001 and 2002- you can see them in my good ole Lomohome on the good ole Lomographic Society site (that “society”, as many things I mention in this blog, is another discussion for another day.)

What’s a Lomo?

I used to have a little description of the LC-A on the Lomo section of the OLD version of the Shoot With Personality site. It said:

What’s a lomo?

When most people talk about a “Lomo”, they are referring to the Lomo LC-A. The Lomo Compact Automat is a relatively small, Russian-made camera. Most people who use an LC-A do so because of the camera’s light-gathering abilities, which make it particularly suited to low-light situation”

I guess that’s a pretty good way to put it. It’s a smallish camera. It’s got zone focusing – meaning you don’t foc us the lens by looking through it or anything, you focus it by estimating the distance from the camera to what you’re photographing, and adjusting the little focusing lever on the side. Yeah, it’s in meters. We imperial system folks have to get used to making the conversions in our mind – thankfully, there are only those few distance settings to choose from, one of which involves ∞ symbol. You don’t need to know how meters and feet translate when the setting is “infinity.” You just slide it to that setting when you could describe what you’re photographing as “FAR AWAY!”

The actual “big deal” about this “little camera” (aren’t I funny?) is the lens – It has some specific characteristics that drew a lot of photographers (and non-photographers alike. Heh.) Vignetting. Distortion at the edges. Vivid colors. Add those to the aforementioned “blurry on purpose” – many of us pridefully argued with photo lab technicians, or looked down our noses at the lab workers for not being evolved as we  were, because they would either not print some of the negatives on our film because they thought the photos were mistakes, or they’d print them and very gravely tell us that something was wrong with our cameras. Ha!

I actually have made a lot of friends across the world, due to owning the LC-A. At the time when I first acquired the LC-A, I frequented a couple of Lomo users sites. And, honestly, I’m sure some of those friends were there as Lomographic Society detractors. I know at least one was…But I did photographic print swaps with Lomo users, and a couple of “double exposure” projects with a guy in Serbia – where he put a roll through his camera, sent it to me, and I put the same roll through my Lomo. And vice versa. It was a spicy little photo community with which to be involved, before the days of Flickr.

The Exit of Lomo from My Life. And the Re-entry…

But, I picked up more photographic skills as time went by. I found other types of camera better suited to my photographic needs. I picked up better pocket-sized, partially automated cameras (Dear Olympus XA: You will have your time in the blogsphere spotlight soon enough. I promise! Love, Amanda) The LC-A was something I felt as if I’d outgrown.

So I grew tired of my LC-A and, more specifically, the “Lomographic movement” a few years back and decided to put it out to pasture. Literally. My friend Kent was going back to Illinois and on tour with a band, so I thought he should have it. Never looked back. Not really. Not until maybe this summer. I wrote Kent and asked if I could borrow the camera back.  I was halfway expecting the camera to not exist any more – after all, it was a ’91 model, I had dropped it so much that part of the plastic of the top plate was long gone, and three years is an awfully long time.

Hi Kent! Taken in 2006, about a month or so before Kent bid Memphis adieu, with the very Lomo LC-A in question.

But, low and behold, the camera still exists! Kent is a gem of a fellow and a real champ, so he of course said I could borrow the camera back. What is more, I have now put a roll of film through it, and the camera WORKS! OH HAPPY DAY! I was reunited with this old friend on a week and a half before Christmas. PERFECT timing for taking photos with a camera that yields such characteristically rich colors and Christmas IS quite a colorful time of year. So guesssss what I did?

You guessed it! You know me too well! I took a lot of pictures of shopwindows decorated for Christmas! And I picked things that I thought looked nice and stereotypically Lomo: a vintage store near my home. Funky, ain’t it?

And more results from this first roll through the LC-A:

So What’s The Conclusion on Lomo?

Ya know what? I’m liking having this camera back in my life. Sure, I have plenty of other cameras, even other pocketable ones. Ones that have nicer lenses and ones that you can actually focus rather than just guessing. But, goshdarnit, I like this LC-A. And, ya know what else? I’m a better photographer than I was when I was initially using the LC-A.  My first couple of years doing photography, I was just going through a process of trial and error, just learning how to be a photographer and developing my photographic style in general. I want my photos to stand on their own, not on the merit of things like vignetting and flashy colors. But, when I look into my purse and see that LC-A, that I used to carry with me everywhere, it’s comforting to look upon. It feels familiar in my hands. And those images it produces make me want to say “Ah, hello, my Russian comrade. I remember you well.”

(I SO wish I could do a Russian accent just about now…)

Posted in: camera equipment, informational, shop talk ⋅ Tagged: , ,