One Final Hike on the Cinco Tinajas Trail (120 version)
These photos don’t differ much from those on the previous post – taken at the same time at the same location, but with a different camera.
I had to fly to Texas which limited how much gear I could fit into my carry-on. I would never check in my cameras. So I had the Leica M6 with me for 35mm, and for medium format I chose the Fujica GW690 (the Texas Leica, appropriately enough) which took up…
This is my closet studio when I was a student.The camera I used to take the photo was the "POCKET FUJICA 400" that I was using at the time. The film is Pocket film 110. This camera is still active and in my possession :) I used my main camera, a PENTAX K1, and attached a 50mm macro lens to shoot this film and develop it digitally:)
Digging through the archive, film I've developed, scanned and left waiting. It was one of the drives through the countryside my father and I take every December. Here, a spring water pool in a middle of a village. December 2011.
Taken with borrowed Fujica G690BL medium format 6Ă—9 film camera, its EBC Fujinon S 100mm F3.5 lens, on Kodak T-Max 100 Professional film. Developed in Kodak Xtol, 1+1 dilution. Scanned with Canon CanoScan 8800F flatbed scanned, using VueScan.
Camera used:Â Fujica STX-1
Film type:Â Kodak Portra400
Age:Â 30
Where: Queenstown, Glenorchy and Wanaka in southern Aotearoa’s mountain range. New Zealand
When:Â Febriary, 2024
Instagram:Â @Ro___Zana
Connect, collab and create:Â linktr.ee/indisposableconcept
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Big Bend Ranch State Park serves up grand vistas, more subtle than it’s better known counterpart in the National Parks system. The colors are muted, as you might expect of a desert, but still rich and varies within its selected palette.
So a cistern built of yellowish stones really stood out. This was different from the round concrete cisterns you would find at the base of windmills in much of…
Being an “elder millennial” or “Xelennial” or whatever label you want to call someone born in the 80s that got to play the original Oregon Trail, I got to see a lot of technological transitions. Growing up, we had film cameras. Point and shoots, mainly, with some oddballs here and there (remember those cameras that were flat and long?). At some point while I was a teenager I was gifted a used Fuji STX-2 and I became the family photographer. From that point forward I took more photos than was in them. That camera, sadly, is no longer with me. I’ve since moved on to a Canon K2 and then later a Canon Elan7 which I continue to use today (which is actually my second Elan7 after my first one met with a terrible fate).
I went to film school (the motion kind), but never really got a chance to be a “filmmaker”, for whatever that means, so I use photography as a way to exercise that muscle a bit. Aside from sharing some shots on Flickr and a few things on Instagram, I’ve never really shared my photography with anyone other than my partner, so I’ve not really worked on talking about my process or really looked at my photography objectively. Over the next year my hope is I can start being more thoughtful about the photos I take and forcing myself to write about them here might help with that.
This past month I picked up a Fujica ST801. I mainly bought it for the lenses (I’ve been collecting old, mostly soviet M42 mount lenses), but the camera is actually a fantastic little device. The shutter and the film winding lever are wonderfully mechanical. Given it’s a Fuji camera, I thought it appropriate to start off with a roll of Fujifilm Neopan Arcos 100II as my test roll. Part of the “joy” of eBaying cameras and camera equipment is not fully knowing if what you’re going to get is actually as functional as the post made it seem. In this camera’s case, the light meter is subtly messed up, but I don’t know yet if it’s because something’s actually wrong or if it’s because it’s actually meant for silver oxide batteries and I’m using alkaline. As a result, I ended up having to use a light meter app on my phone. I should probably get that fixed.
Here’s a selected few photos from that roll.
Image 1, the Caltrain station
I've never really shot this stock before despite shooting a lot of black and white film. This stock has a lot of dynamic range and not a lot of grain, which I actually really like. I actually really like this composition, though I keep waffling back and forth on whether I should have tried for a deeper depth of field or if I actually like that the foreground is out of focus.
Image 2, more caltrain station
This is a lot closer to the "style" I normally shoot, quote unquote "street photography". I like the person in the shot, and I like the deep hallway. I don't like that I don't have any of the next train signs in focus. Again, this was a pretty challenging lighting situation, and with a broken meter, I just went with a wider open f-stop.
Image 3, cat on a bombed out metermaid vehicle
As I was walking down the street I saw a flock of metermaid vehicles parked behind a fence, which was interesting enough, but as I got closer, I spotted a cat who seemed to be offended that I made eye contact. The vehicle it was sitting on seemed to be having a rough go at it, what with being burned and all, but it made for a fascinating subject. This is another one where I was impressed by the dynamic range of the film. The cat is well lit, but you don't lose all of the detail in the vehicle either. I actually have three pictures of this cat, but this one stands out the most because of the contrast in the shadow area vs the cat. A+, would potentially offend this cat again.
Image 4, fire rescue racing out of firestation
I don't know if "lucky" is the right word, considering emergency vehicles racing off is typically not a good thing, but I happened to grab this shot while walking by a fire station just as they received a radio call. This is probably the one time I regret having black and white instead of color loaded, but I really like the shadows here and the contrast between the shadow and light sides of the building. The vehicle itself seems to just pop as well. I also like that there's some minor halation on the lightbar, which is not something I was particularly expecting to catch on black and white.
Image 5, aka "this roll is 36, but I'm on shot 38"
Part of the joy of mechanical cameras that don't have any sort of DX code reader or automatic winding is you can sometimes squeeze out more frames than you expect from a roll if you are careful while loading. At the end of my walk I hit a taco truck for lunch, and took this photo, not fully expecting it to work. This was the end of the roll. Like a lot of the other shots from this roll, I'm actually really surprised at the detail you get in the darker areas. The tacos were also delicious.
Conclusion
I'm definitely going to shoot with this camera more this year. The fact that it's slighlty broken means I need to stop and consider my shots a lot more than when I'm out with the Elan with all of it's fancy autofocus and working light meter (and exposure compensation, and...). I actually really like this film stock as well. My usual goto for black and white has been Ilford HP5, but it's super grainy. While that's sometimes the feel I want (photos you can chew), it's nice to have an alternative.