the darkerside to rants

There is something magical about the sunsets on English Bay…..

Before there was digital, there was another way of getting instant gratification in photography: Polaroid.

The company has gone now to the dogs a few years ago, but there are a handful of people who are trying to resurrect at least part of the company, the Impossible Project. They have apparently at least partially succeeded and have announced a press conference on March 22nd 2010. Good for them.

For me the “return” (I put this in quotes as I am not really returning to instant photography, never really did it a lot, though my parents had a Polaroid 660) started last week when I was given an old Polaroid Land 103 camera.

I initially ran into some problems, no not getting film wasn’t the Problem, Fuji still makes it, rather that it needed a new battery and that wasn’t that easy to get, as in, only online.

But no fear and borrowing a soldering iron from a Friend, I managed to “adapt” a more modern battery to it and started snapping.

Walking around with a camera like the Land is… interesting. I am used to people staring, sure, not when I shoot with my Canon EOS 1v, it looks like any modern Canon dSLR, but be it with my Yashica D or my Zeiss Ikon 532/16 (yeah, you can tell that Zeiss had mostly engineers), though occasionally even my Contax G1 gets me roped into discussions, not to mention my Kiev-4. But I am digressing. But the really cool thing for me about the Land was how quickly you see the result and how good it looks.

Focus, frame, shoot, pull first tab, pull second tab, wait 90 seconds. Separate the print from the backing and wait a few moments for it to dry –> Done.

And it looks good too. Most people associate this kind of washout look with Polaroids:

But this was actually done on the iPhone with Camerabag, so not real at all.

The other advantage is: You get a real version of the print, not a small tiny image on a tinier screen that may or may not look later like you think it does. No, what you see is truly what you get.

Is it cheap? Not really, each frame cost me around $2 if I buy the film local, but if more people would shoot instant the cost would obviously go down. How did we ever let it (almost) die?

I have to admit it is somewhat funny to see that the public is separated by a fence from the Olympic flame. Not quite sure who cocked that one up.

But, as I got some special access I can show you what the Olympic Cauldron looks like up, close and personal. Here’s a slideshow.

Obviously this is a fake CGI shot, but it does make me a bit dreamy.

Over the decades “Street Photography” has become a new “category” in photography. It is, essentially, a way to catch a candid moment. Well, that’s how I see it anyway, others perceive street photography as anything that happens outside, faces, moments etc.

I have been a bit “shy” shooting people in the past, mainly because I found it intrusive, though I have gotten a bit better lately.

The challenge, for me, lies doing this without being noticed, there is a “voyeuristic” aspect to it. The photo above is an attempt in this, I am not too happy with it out of a few reasons:

1. It’s not in Focus.
2. It’s too grainy for what I shot.

The first one stems from me trying to use a rangefinder, set to two metre distance and an aperture of f/8 in order to get the shot. I clearly should have set the focus a bit further out and thus have her fully in focus.

There is also some bluriness due to me walking as well and a rather low shutter speed of 1/125th. This I should change as well, rather a wider open aperture and shorter focussing distance.

The second “issue” stems from the development. It came from a test roll I shot on a new film and developed in a way, as I later found out, that wasn’t quite suitable, because of the development in the jobo drum system it turned overly contrasty.

Ah well, live and learn

I love the lo-fi quality of this ad… Almost anachronistic.