You can now buy my photos!

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Mamiya 645 Super

1. It was the Holga.

2. I hadn’t thought about shooting film since finishing Uni, after I no longer had access to the uni darkrooms. Film was expensive and sometimes difficult, and after I bought me a D70 there was just no going back. But in the back of my mind I’d always wanted to play with a medium format camera, but I never found one in the right price range that I really wanted.

3. And then I found this…:

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4. …a Mamiya 645 Super, for 38000 yen. Medium format is usually a fairly expensive proposition; most of it is pro gear, with the pricetag to match, or older cameras become sought-after by collectors, driving prices up. Luckily, these cameras can still be found for reasonable prices, and $400 is a pretty cheap way to play around with medium format.

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5. Unlike the Holga, this is a proper, serious camera. The lenses are great, and this was a pro model so it has a bunch of cool features, like a removable back that can accept anything from Polaroid film to digital systems. Not that I’m ever going near a digital back for this thing, not when the asking price for a Phase One P25 25MP back is somewhere around $25,000. Dude. And now for the obligatory Transformers shot:

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6. As you can see the film cartridge at the back comes off, as does the viewfinder prism (which you can replace with a prism with an auto-exposure function built in), and even the film winding crank (makes way for a handgrip / film advance motor). But, most of all, it’s just fun to play with; I love all the mechanical noises it makes, the way the film crank turns, the snapping of the shutter when it goes off…

7. I can’t wait to get back into the darkroom.

Holga

1. The Girlfriend (who is a different person from the last time I mentioned her) is a keen photographer, in fact, she was a wedding photographer a few years ago. She quit doing that because shooting weddings is a dull, dull gig.

2. But getting back to the point, The Girlfriend is a keen photographer, of the analogue kind. These days she doesn’t shoot regular cameras, she prefers the more esoteric types, and has developed quite the collection of Lomo cameras. They’re pretty good fun, almost completely lacking in controls, it’s the ultimate point and shoot.

3. Anyway, for my birthday she bought me a Holga, a chinese made toy camera that shoots 120 roll film and literally looks and built like a toy:

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4. It’s great fun, and shoots photos like this:

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5. It’s way awesome, the lens only focuses in the middle, everything else is distorted and it vignettes like a fisheye. There are even mods that let you mount a Holga lens on a digital SLR, but the mods require you to hold the lens to the body, and that’s just a bit too crude. The flash is bloody terrible too, but such awesome fun to play with. I’ve got it loaded up with some Kodak TMax B&W film, gonna play with it a bit more to get the hang of it. Makes me want a medium format camera all the more!

New Stuff

1. Lately I’ve not had the opportunity to get seriously geeky about camera gear, or gadgetry in general. But, I’m one step closer to getting my kit together with the purchase of this — an AF-S DX VR Zoom-Nikkor 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G IF-ED (say that three times fast). Which looks like this:

2. I’ve been wanting to cut my kit down to bare essentials ever since I got back from Indonesia — I’m just sick of lugging all that stuff about. Now I’ve got a lens that will pretty much do everything except super-wideangle, which I don’t need most of the time, meaning I won’t need to change lenses much at all. So my kit now consists of:

3. …all of which fits nicely in my new LowePro Nova 3AW shoulder bag, which with the help of a couple of clips attaches itself to the front of my LowePro backpack (which will hold clothes and stuff). This combo will be great for short trips, and would probably do for a couple weeks in the tropics. On a test pack I crammed a pair of jeans, a pair of cargos, a pair of sneakers, a sweatshirt, 4 t-shirts, underwear and socks for a week, toiletries, medication, a small towel and my laptop in it. It’s a bloody black hole I tell ya.

4. So, the only thing left to buy now is a super-wideangle, and I’ve got my eye on either the Nikkor 12-24mm f4, or the Sigma 10-20mm F4.5-5.6. The Nikkor is the better of the two, but the Sigma is wider and half the price. That, and replacing my Canon Ixus 30 with an Olympus 770SW — it’s small and light, better in places where you don’t want to have a huge Nikon thief-magnet, and waterproof to 5m with no special housing — just the ticket the next time I get stuck on a raft in the middle of the sea getting pelted with rain and waves.

5. My first chance to road test the new combo will be in May, where a mate and I will be heading for the bright lights of Tokyo and making our way back on local trains. Think Sydney to Melbourne via local trains. Except more exciting.

The Big Flop and the Big Durian

1. I have been rather lax the last couple of months, and I have no excuse besides laziness. So, a quick update on life matters.

2. Firstly, my long awaited trip to Kansai this month ran wildly off course and unfortunately had to be aborted mid-trip. It was disappointing, but Kansai is only a two hour train trip away, and I’ve been told November is the best time to go; as the country slips into Autumn it dresses itself in a brilliant red, a breathtaking sight. Not sure the finances will cope but a November weekend in Kyoto is a possibility.

3. Secondly, I won’t be coming back to Sydney this NYE after all. Plane tickets were just to expensive to justify the short time back home, so now I and a fellow teacher here will be going to Indonesia instead — climbing Anak Krakatoa, visiting Yogyakarta and the nearby Merapi volcano and getting under the influence for Christmas and New Years in the Big Durian. Molten rocks, millenia old Javanese temples and cheap cheap beer, oh my!

4. I’m working right now to expand my photography portfolio, and am planning on launching a web store in the near future to sell my prints. I think I’ve got some nice images now, and the cost of entry is so low there’s no reason not to try. More on that as it comes.

5. Not much else to report I’m afraid — weekend antics notwithstanding (and I ain’t talkin’ about that). All is well in the night.

My New Portfolio

1. Quick post to say my new photographic portfolio is now live. Check it out!

First of the mentioned improvements

1. I’ve launched the new version of my photography site. It’s more focused on interesting photos, rather than my best photos, and I’m currently working on my portfolio which will be a completely separate site. So, have a look, and check out the about page for more info on that site.

2. Hope you like it.

Whilst on photography…

1. …here’s what some BBC readers had to say in reply to a story about Kodak stopping production of 35mm film cameras. Those clever brits and their advice. Ray Owen tells us “not to be negative about this”, Mark Taylor makes the accusation that “it was framed”, but my favorite, from Andy (no surname): “35mm has fallen to bits”.

Scanner Photography

1. Via Slashdot, the site of a guy who turns flatbed scanners into digital large format cameras, capable (says he) of 100 megapixels. It’s not the pixel count that’s floored me, but the images it produces; I love that surrealist feel to the image, and it’s so…analogue. I’m busting to build one of these myself, if I wasn’t going to be in Japan in 69 days!

The Digital Point-and-Shoot to sell your car for

$35,000 22MP Cambo Wide DS

1. $35,000. U.S.

2. That’s some serious money, but we’re talking about a Schneider Digital 35mm f/5.6 lens with a Phase One P25 digital back, plus some metal bits to hold it together and keep the light out. No exposure meter, no auto focus…hell you don’t even get a view finder. But you do get a sharp-as-tacks lens and a sizable chunk of silicon in the sensor, and bits of wood and metal to hold it together. What more could you want out of $35,000?