Tag: pentax spotmatic
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I have not been shooting a ton over the past few months. Instead I’ve been spending my photography time in the darkroom, working on prints to give away this holiday season. That work has been very rewarding, but I wanted to create some new negatives so I finished shooting a roll of FP4 that’s been…
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I’ve taken a lot of indoor photos with my macro lens, but I’ve never thought of it as my everyday walking-around lens. And I’m not sure why. It may not be as nice or fast as my ‘normal’ 50mm lens, but it’s still a 50mm lens. And it comes with the added bonus of close…
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While my first experience with P30 did not go great, I viewed that as a problem with the photographer and not the film. I was not deterred from trying Ferrania’s new (or recreation of an old) film stock, P33. Side note to film companies, is it so hard to put the speed of the film…
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My third roll of the trip was Ferrania P30, a stock I had not used before. As I keep reminding myself, before shooting a new stock do some basic research on how best to use it. I did not remember to do that this time!
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My second roll of the trip was Kodak XX, the Film Photography Project version. Metered at their suggested 200 ISO and developed in Rodinal (1:60 for 7:00). Which is a first for me. I’ve shot XX before, but have always used the recommended D96 developer.
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In February I took a short trip to Guadalajara, Mexico. And, naturally, I brought a camera and a bunch of film. Unlike last year’s trip to Bogotá, I brought no color film. Guadalajara is very sunny. As a result it has a built environment that provides a lot of shade. So I have a lot…
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I recently grabbed some rolls of Svema 200 and 100, stocks that are new to me. The 200 made its way in to my Spotmatic and was my first roll of 2024. I kept the camera out of the sun while loading and unloading, so I didn’t suffer from the light piping that FPP warns…
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Although our winter this year was very mild the daylight hours were still very short. Global warming and El Niño don’t change the tilt of the earth, after all. As a result I found it hard to get outside and shoot many photos. I did find myself taking a lot of photos inside, though. Mostly…
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As I talked about in Scanner Learnings my approach to scanning changed in the middle of 2023. Which made me think about the rolls of film that I had scanned ‘badly’ early in the year. I decided to rescan some of these to see if there was a huge difference. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on…
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Some more photos from my recent roll of Catlabs Pro 320. A lot of my photography this winter has focused on this small orchid plant in my back room, shot mostly with the SMC 50/f4 Macro lens. With this roll I started experimenting more with backlit photos and using shadows to create pleasing compositions. Metering…
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My final roll of 2023, loaded on the 31st of December, was a return of CatLabs 320. And just as I did with my first roll of CatLabs, I captured a few fetching dog portraits. Both of these use the SMC 50mm/f4 macro lens, which offers a lot of good options for close up portraiture.…
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A slightly shorter post this week as I recover from being sick. Going the opposite way from my experiments in pushing hp5, I pulled this roll by metering and developing it at 200. The HP5 article I mentioned earlier didn’t talk much about pulling so I didn’t really know what to expect. But, as the…
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I shot a lot of Ilford HP5 in 2023. About a dozen rolls of it. And I still have a lot of it in my fridge. My goal in using a stock so frequently is to become familiar with it, and to find a way of shooting and developing it that works for me. Helping…
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Over on Mastadon people are using the #ArtAdventCalendar hashtag to share their art, one piece a day, between December 1 and 24. I decided to treat mine as a year in review and share photos taken this year in chronological order. Over here I wanted to discuss the photos shared in a little more detail.
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Over on Mastadon people are using the #ArtAdventCalendar hashtag to share their art, one piece a day, between December 1 and 24. I decided to treat mine as a year in review and share photos taken this year in chronological order.
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Over on Mastadon people are using the #ArtAdventCalendar hashtag to share their art, one piece a day, between December 1 and 24. I decided to treat mine as a year in review and share photos taken this year in chronological order. Over here I wanted to discuss the photos shared in a little more detail.…
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I grabbed a roll of CatLABS X Film 320 Pro in some random online order or another. Remembering my lesson from the JCH StreetPan I did some reading on the film before loading it in the Spotmatic.
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After learning that my partner and I were heading to Sparta, Wisconsin, a friend of mine suggested we visit the FAST Fiberglass Mold Graveyard just outside of town. It looked like a great place to take photos so I brought the Spotmatic and the Moskva V. It was very cloudy and a little rainy during…
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Recently I purchased a SMC Takumar 105/2.8 lens with the hope of using it in portrait photos. And it works great for that, I’m happy to report. But it also left me wondering how my other lenses and cameras work in portraiture. So I pulled together some good representative examples.
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Another new lens, the very small Takumar 35mm/3.5. I have a 50mm/1.4 that I use a lot. And I have a 24mm/3.5 that I like. This new lens slots right in between those two. A little wider than the 50mm, but with less distortion and distancing than the 24mm. With this lens I think I…
