On Film, Part 3: The Frames that made my bones

Can anyone out there in the film photography world recall the specific frames that made them fall in love with a particular film stock or film in general? Up until June 2013, I mostly stuck to B&W and only dabbled in color film. If I shot color, it was most likely FujiChrome but E6 was becoming harder and more expensive to have processed in my city, so I just kind of abandoned color all together.

Then a friend sent me a text from the DC Pride Parade telling me to get down there to grab some frames. I thought "Pride" "Parade" "Reveling" - COLOR. So I dug through the freezer and found two rolls of extremely expired Kodak Gold 200 and hit the streets. I arrived right at the onset of golden hour and ripped through the two 24 frame rolls in no time, completely oblivious to the rules and strategies of overexposing expired color negative film. But I didn't care, this was just a fun trip through the final few blocks of the parade:

The results from the lab were hit or miss, with the hits being a huge whiff (WAY underexposed) but the hits, well..these two frames featured above rang my head like a gong and woke me up to the incredible qualities of color negative. Especially expired cheapo films. My digital color work has never been the same and I'm almost always striving for that hyper contrasty, saturated look of well exposed KodakGold.

Does anyone else have frames of theirs in mind that simply made them reconsider everything that came before then? It's amazing how these things stick around in our minds. Below are a few more favorites from the two rolls I shot that afternoon, forever changing my approach to color. 

Gear Rambles: The Olympus 35RC

The Olympus 35RC: Absolute Photographic Perfection. Or pretty much as close as it can get, in my opinion.

The Olympus is a smartphone size 35mm rangefinder, complete with coupled viewfinder, hot shoe, meter, solid metal construction, automatic flash metering, a self timer, dead quiet shutter, and a Zuiko 42mm f/2.8 lens welded to the front. It has every single thing I could really ask for in an everyday shooter, save for a slightly faster lens, but even then the shutter is so smooth that 1/15 can produce "close enough" results.

It's well designed features seem to be placed in such logical areas that even my gorilla hands can manage, and it simply stays out of the way when it comes time to work. The shutter is a mechanical leaf shutter, as opposed to one of those clanky focal plane shutters, so it's discreet and quiet, and syncs all the way to 1/500 when mated to a flash! Cool!

The 35RC comes with a built in, automatically winding film counter and uses a modern quick loading system for new rolls of film. I can change film whilst multiple drinks deep!

The annoyingly slim aperture ring is in the classic Zuiko position, right between the rear of the lens and camera body, so it can be pretty tough to adjust on the fly. A bit more girth in the aperture ring department is really the only item on my list of wants and I manage just fine 'as is.' If you want to use a flash, the lens is coupled to a Guide Number based flashmatic system, so you tell the camera how powerful of a flash you are using and the 35RC will automatically set the aperture of a given exposure according to how far you have focused the lens. Subject is 10 feet away? Cool, the 35RC will automatically select the necessary aperture needed to make a proper exposure out of the light produced by your flash.

You're pretty much set as soon as you learn the power of your flash and figure out how to focus the lens (a short twist of the lens barrel). I have no idea why camera companies decided to make on-camera manual flash photography more difficult than this system. Oh, and the 35RC can do this flash power automatic aperture setting thing without a battery. I have had my RC for a few weeks now and I have yet to install a battery. The shutter still fires at all speeds  so I either just guess using the Sunny16 or take a quick meter reading with my hand held Sekonic meter.

The viewfinder even has generic exposure information etched into the glass and a little needle moves to the aperture number you have set when you depress the shutter, so you know what aperture you are using for each picture. Without a battery! Science!

Now, my qualms…that have to do with my exact copy. I bought it on a whim from KEH.com for about $20. It was listed in Ugly condition and I have never gambled on a KEH Ugly before, so I gave it a shot and unfortunately, the lens is covered in scratches and fungus (see top pic). That means pixel peoples will most likely recoil in horror when they zoom into the 35RC photos I've included with this writeup. The images are, really not that sharp or predictably rendered. All bets are off when the sun enters the equation. Highlights? Goners. Mid-tones swirl around in some transitional clam chowder. Results left to the Tri-X gods to determine on some unknown evaluation and absorption process.

But that's just my copy. And I'm keeping it for special purposes when the ethereal results from  it's fungified and unpredictable lens could come in handy. The Bastille Day celebration photos that have been sprinkled throughout this review are a perfect example of such an occasion. I am already on the lookout for a clean copy of the 35RC and then I will be done with purchasing 35mm cameras forever. (YEA…..RIGHT)

DC to Philly, aka #DCpassyunk is in the Books

The first road trip of the summer, aka #DCpassyunk, my is in the books and on my scorecard it was a resounding success. A group of us rented a house in the Passyunk neighborhood of South Philly (near Gino's Steaks, kind of) and set out on our photographic and food related explorations throughout the city. Let me say right here that Philadelphia's food and people are both absolutely amazing. And we barely scratched the surface. Chris Chen acted as our resident food connoisseur and guided us to some epic meals.

Photographically speaking, we could all work as a group or explore a theme or area on our own. The early reports come Sunday afternoon indicated that everyone managed to work on something for themselves while still enjoying the camaraderie of the greater group. 

Planning the day's itinerary

A group mentality can backfire though, like when three of us telepathically understood that "this old woman in Chinatown with a gigantic umbrella is definitely going to lead to a photo" and we all descended upon her at once. It wasn't planned, but we all saw it and went for it. Thank God umbrellas can also double as a shield. 

I didn't arrive with any specific areas of focus in mind so I decided to check out Philadelphia for what it was and photograph whatever presented itself. Love Park was sought out though and I managed to hang with a few guys filming a skate scene. In total, I went through about 9 rolls of Tri-X and I'm in the process of developing and scanning those negatives, but I did shoot some random b-roll stuff throughout the weekend on my Olympus EP1. These are just interesting buildings, bits of nice light and compositions that I noticed along the way but didn't want to spend a frame of film on. The additives, if you will. 

I should have a couple more follow up posts with the film stuff in the coming weeks. 

Next up; Atlantic City!