Sara J. Flemming

Try, try again!

MY 2nd roll of the Kodak BW400CN (run through the Vivitar Ultra Wide & Slim) came out pretty well, I think. (:

If you shoot film, it’s going to happen: you’re going to get back a set of blank negatives.

After seeing the results Tom got with some Kodak BW400CN (bw film with C-41 processing, woo), I picked up a couple of rolls to try it out.

I put the first roll through the Pentax w/ the 50mm. Sadly: the entire roll was blown-out. Frustrating not least because I’d just put a new battery in for the light meter. Grr. Also annoying because they tossed the blank negatives before I could get a shot of ‘em for you. Boo.

Still, I persevere! The 2nd roll is in my Vivitar Ultra Wide & Slim, I’ll let you know how it works out. (:

Okay, Year of Film is an exaggeration, I don’t really think I’ll stop using film after 2009, but it sounds fun, so it stays. (:

Status of the resolutions:

• So far I’ve only used the F5 more than once, but I’m working on it!
  (I blew through a roll of film one day at lunch to punch through that weird digital kid-fear of “saving” photos for film. All that ever got me was…a roll of film left in a camera for over 2 years [it was the Holga and 90% of the roll was blown, bummer]. I’m past that nonsense, now. Just shoot!)
• I have not in fact bought any new gear, just film!

In fact, this weekend both the F5 and my SX-70 are going to get a pretty serious work out in Austin for the Polaroid Breakfast.

Wait, what? The F5…? Yeah, I’m feeling froggy, so I’m going to jump into my abbreviated SXSW trip with just film (and the iPhone, of course). Should be fun! Right? …right?

I’ll let you know how it turns out next week. (No, really, I promise not to wait a month before I post again. Honest!)

If you’ve got an iPhone, do yourself a favour and embrace the camera. Would it be nice if you could focus closer? Definitely. Would it be awesome if you could record video (without a 3rd party app)? Totally. But so what? It’s a blast just the way it is and even in low light, if you can hold relatively still, you can get pretty good shots out of it.

Note: in 2008, I took just under 1,500 photos with my iPhone…

There are a ton of photography-related apps in the App Store, but these are the 2 I use most.

CameraBag $.99US
This is the first app I recommend to friends who get an iPhone. CameraBag has a collection of well-named and familiar filters for you to run your iPhone shots through. Helga and Lolo (so named, I’m guessing because of copyright/trademark issues) are my 2 faves, but there are 9 total.

My recommendation: shoot with the regular camera app, then use CameraBag to apply the filters; shooting directly in CameraBag tends to crash the app on my phone. I also suggest: first, turn on the option to save the original photo (the CameraBag’d version is saved to your Camera Roll); and second, don’t go for the max output size (at 1200px, the processing is super slow on the first-gen iPhone and again: tends to crash the app on my own phone, boo!).

A couple of my favourite CameraBag shots:

Pano $2.99US
I love taking panoramas. For years, I’ve relied on Canon’s PhotoStitch app for all my stitching needs (with CS3, Adobe really closed the gap; however, it’s a pretty serious resource hog), but until I found Pano in the App Store, I wasn’t sure how I’d accomplish them with the iPhone.

Pano takes care of all the tricky stuff, you just have to decide how many shots you want in the panorama (landscape or portrait). Its handiest feature is showing 20% of the previous shot when you line up to take the next one. It’s a good idea to overlap anyway (I find it helps reduce obvious seams), but the hinting is great.

The only real gripe I have with Pano is this: when you’re done making one, there’s no “take a new pano” button. You just have to hit the Home button and relaunch Pano.

My favourite pano so far:

Walt Disney Concert Hall from across Grand Ave.

My favourite Super Bowl ad this year had some of the best photography I’ve seen in a long while.

Previously, my fave was Volkswagen’s Jetta “Big Day” with J. Ralph’s “One Million Miles Away” as the soundtrack. Great photography, a familiar story, and relatively mellow as far as Super Bowl commercials go. (You’ll find a much higher quality version at DVLabs; but watch out, it loops!)

Pacific Wheel »

There must be some sort of rule or law out there that says anytime a geek can change the wallpaper on a given screen: they will. And who am I to argue (or pretend that I don’t do it)? To that end, some wallpapers for your iPhone from me to you.

There are 5 to start with and I expect to update the collection at the beginning of every month but I probably won’t do a new entry every time. Instead, there’s a handy link in the header up there and it’ll get a snappy little update when new goodies are ready.

Enjoy! (And don’t steal or redistribute, etc etc.)

I don’t remember ever making resolutions, but there’s no time like the present to start, so let’s go!

This year, I want to:

• Use each of my film cameras at least twice.
• Not buy any new gear.

That second one’s a doozy, but I’ll get to that in a minute. Over the years, a handful of film cameras have made their way into my grubby paws and I don’t use them as often as I should. 3 were gifts (Nikon F5, Holga, Pentax K1000) and 3 I  plundered for on eBay (Vivtar Ultra Wide & Slim, Ansco Panorama, Canon Canonet QL17). I found a couple rolls of 120 film during the move and with Glazers nearby, I can get all the 35mm my heart desires, so I have no excuses.

Granted… the processing of all that film could get pricey. Heh.

Moving on. No new gear?! I know. I’ll still rent and borrow, but that’s it. No new lenses or fringe cameras (like the little Fuji Instax I got 2 months ago…), none of it. (Film doesn’t count. :P) Of course, this is going to be difficult to stick to if I come across a kick-ass deal on something I’ve been wanting, but if that happens…maybe I’ll have to get rid of something else. Net zero, as it were.

So, there you have it, not a huge list, but a list that’ll be good for me and I promise to keep you updated on my progress at least once a quarter. (:

Did you make any photography resolutions for this year?

I don’t think it’s a secret that my Polaroid SX-70 is one of my favourite cameras.  The design of the camera, the gratification of instant film, its distinctive kachunk-whirrrr, having to slow way way down to shoot something (shooting from the hip isn’t something I’d mess with now that shots out of the SX-70 are roughly $1.50 each (: )… I love it.

The coolest film of the SX-70 that you will ever see is this one from Charles & Ray Eames.

If you liked that one, you really should watch this one about how the Eames’ fiberglass chairs are made. The music, that ’70s educational film style, is Buddy Collette’s and when combined with the images it’s all somewhat meditative.

And if you liked both of those, do yourself a favour and check out the rest of the Eames’ films at Netflix, the Eames Office, or Amazon!

More SX-70 links just because:

• Oh, Snap - Jason Santa Maria discovering the SX-70 and all its wonder in a fantastically designed entry.
• How I put an ND filter over a film pack for my SX-70 - my own little instructional video minus super cool music; you’ll also see how I load a pack of 600 film (not meant for the SX-70 originally) into the camera.
• Grant Hamilton’s Polaroid Portfolio - Grant’s abstracts are straight up some of the coolest things I’ve ever seen out of a Polaroid. So good.
• Camerapedia’s SX-70 page

First: we are now rocking WordPress. MovableType was driving me a little crazy, I don’t like all the nested templates and blah blah, it doesn’t matter. Hello, WordPress! And the super plain ready-made template! And new feed!

Second: I’m finally getting my stuff moved into my apartment tomorrow. I am beyond excited and by Sunday plan to be beyond tired and ready to get a Christmas tree. There will be photos (well, more photos).

Third: I should be sleeping, not tinkering with my blog and indulging in hulu — oh judge if you want! I like it. so there.

Fourth: …no, that was it, actually.

For about 5 months, I’ve felt more or less “eh” about photography.

Well, no, not photography, about disinterest in my own photography. I didn’t stop shooting altogether (as my flickr stream can attest), but I did slow way down. A few times I’ve gone weeks without once unloading the card in my camera.

A couple of months into this…drought, I decided it was a slump. What else could it be? For 3 years or so, I shot every day! And shot a lot every day! Posting to flickr or some incarnation of my site pretty frequently and now this? I wasn’t using digital, 35mm film, not even my Polaroid cameras were pulled out to play much.

What the deuce?

Nothing snapped me out of it, not even a move 1200 miles north (okay, I’ve only been here a month, but come on, I thought by now I’d be shutter-happy again) and I’ve been pretty frustrated. I play tricks and try to set myself assignments to spark something, but none of it works!

Finally, I started to think: maybe it’s not a slump.

Maybe I just shoot differently, now; maybe I like taking a more time to decide what to shoot; maybe being forced into manual focusing last spring had a bigger impact than I thought; maybe I just like rocking the prime (and wide) lenses more, forcing myself to move around to  compose.

I’ve decided it’s the latter: a new approach to shooting. Not least because if I continue to stress about it being a slump, I might never come out of it and that’s just silly! So, I’ll keep working on composition and metering and the like and just see where that gets me. (: