2021: 49 Fear and Loathing on Ebay

December 11, 2021

The life of a film photographer is sometimes an emotional minefield. The thrill of the “shoot and wait to see” process is often offset by soul crushing disappointment. Cameras are mis-loaded, film is exposed improperly, chemicals are exhausted… dust and scratches and fog, oh my. Add to the rollercoaster ride of emotions the pursuit of a working film camera. Sifting through Craigslist, thrift stores, yard sales and Ebay is a common pastime for film geeks. I experienced a bit of the bad end of the pursuit recently, and I’m still kinda pissed about it.

Why did I need to buy a 110 film camera? The bane of my existence in 7th grade, a shitty format that now seems so quaint and enticing. Fuck you, nostalgia. Lomography are like camera and film drug dealers to me. They are the only place to buy new 110 film cartridges. I bought a few rolls recently, not even owning a camera to shoot them with. So I jump on to Ebay, and hunt down a sporty, sexy old Minolta SLR zoom 110 camera. Yeah… a Rolls Royce of the tiny format. The camera looked good, was sold “as-is” but at a decent price. I rolled the dice. Of course, the anticipation of tracking a package from UPS is part of the thrill of buying something online. A 50 year old camera inching closer to my grubby hands. Of course, it arrived days after it was scheduled to be delivered. Of course, I opened the package immediately and popped batteries in and pressed the shutter. A weak, painfully slow reaction happened inside the camera…eventually I heard a faint click. No warning lights, no view to be seen through the viewfinder. Then…nothing. Nothing. In short, a lemon. A paperweight.

I decided since it wasn’t working anyway, I’d try to take it apart and fix it. Small, Phillips head screws held the body together. Simple to open up and poke around. Except that I am not at all mechanically inclined. My ten thumbs quickly dismantled the camera with no fucking way for me to even think of fixing it; never mind trying to put it all back together. In a fit of frustration, I threw the camera on the ground, where it burst into multiple pieces. I swept up the debris and threw it all in the dumpster. Case closed.

This is not the first time I threw money out the window on a non-functioning camera. My success rate is slightly over 50%, if I’m being honest. This one stung more than others though. Why? Was it that I bought into the hype over a format that was inferior when it first came out, swapping image quality for ease of loading and shooting? I scoffed when I heard Lomo was coming out with 110 film. And yet…and yet. So what do you do when you get burned by defeat? Do you walk home with your tail between your legs? Do you go home and cuddle with your Canon 6D, 23 megapixel lover who won’t break your heart? Or do you double down and fight against all odds to snatch victory from the jaws of 50 year old, dormant technology?

My new Minolta 110 slr zoom camera arrives in about a week.

Ice studies from an alley in Downtown Albuquerque

2021: 8 ........ Get Closer

February 20, 2021

Winter came down hard on the US this week, and New Mexico was no exception. Thankfully, we never lost power or water or internet… count your blessings, right? The snow cancelled my weekly sojourn to the bosque on Thursday, depriving me and my fellow photographer our time to talk process, to vent about sundry frustrations, and to make some photographs. Luckily, snow doesn’t stick around too long in these parts, our dry climate and abundant sunshine melting away most snowfall by midday.

I wandered Downtown Albuquerque on Friday for a few hours, expecting it to be fairly quiet, thanks to ongoing pandemic restrictions. The plus side of course was plenty of parking. Gear alert: I put extension tubes in between my lens and camera, allowing me to play a bit with extreme close up photography. Technical issues and approaches are not usually a big concern of mine. The end justifies the means, ultimately. I don’t care what tricks it takes to make an interesting image…most of the time. And I gather that with the exception of a few peers and inquisitive photo dweebs, most viewers don’t really care how you made your photograph.

This set up forced me to focus on small details, bending and kneeling and getting in within a few inches of my subject matter. Added bonus to this approach was the fact that I was doing this in a fairly barren back alley in the middle of the city. Not too worried about being smacked in the back of the head while setting up a shot…or getting run over by a distracted delivery driver, but you never know what’s lurking behind that dumpster. To my point, while I was hunched over a frozen pothole filled with ice and water, a random dude rolled up on his bicycle, with a full bottle of St. Germain in his hand. He asked for help unscrewing the cap, as it apparently had gotten gummed up from dried liquor and was impossible to open. I guess that’s why it ended up in the back alley, and then in his hands.

Anyway, the exploration taught me a few things. First off, there’s nothing wrong with playing with different approaches in my image making. I generally don’t likely “macro” photography. I find it a bit of a gimmick, and the whole idea of seeing a miniature world up close feels slightly cliche and predictable to me. But the process did force me to challenge those biases, and fight the urge to give up. I certainly wasn’t expecting to do a series of ice crystal studies behind a barber shop in downtown Albuquerque, but that’s where I landed. No harm, no foul. It was a fun diversion, and I’m not against the idea of pushing this approach further. “If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough,” Robert Capa famously said. It’s been repeated ad nauseam. I guess it took a detour in my usual approach to discover the truth to it, after all. A lesson learned.

Gear Review: Damaged Canon FD Lens

December 13, 2020

Calling all gear heads, especially Canon fanboys, this review is for you. If you’re a photo geek and have spent any time on eBay, you know that “old glass” is experiencing renewed attention. Spikes in pricing are nothing new, especially in the film photography world, but with the advent of cheaply made, easily acquired lens adapters, it is now possible to get just about any old lens to work on your fancy pants digital camera. These old lenses are valued for their “look",” and if you want to read between the lines of the spin doctors, you could deduce that this means any unique quality that one cannot find on today’s optical offerings. I love the character of old lenses as much as the next dweeb, and have had wonderful results mounting some stellar Leica glass onto my Canon 6D. That’s right, I said Leica, so sue me.

In the interest of proving that you don’t need a bundle of cash to have fun with old lenses, I will focus this review on what is currently my “go to” lens, a Canon FD 50mm f1.8 lens. Pretty sure this was the standard lens that came with a Canon AE-1 when you bought one from Andre Agassi’s older brother, back in the day. My copy was obtained from a friend who found the camera and lens in the back of their closet. Maybe I could use it, they thought. Though I already had an AE-1 of my own, I graciously took it off their hands anyway. Figuring I might be able to play with the extra lens without any real consequences, I wondered to myself…”what would happen if…?” What if I dropped the lens on the ground? What if I smashed the lens with a hammer? If I scratched the front and back elements with course sandpaper? Yes, purists, I did all of these. And then bought a cheap adapter from Amazon to attach the abused lens to my digital camera. Viola! Unpredictable results. Unrepeatable photos. I dare you to try to recreate the photos I’ve been making with this gem. Follow my method, but know, your results may vary.

On to the real world usage. The lens has an aperture range from a wide open, bokeh wet dream of 1.8, all the way to f/16. However, I never use it on any setting other than wide open. It provides creamy, shallow depth of field, with a sweet spot of focus that would make a Lensbaby cry for its mommy. It also creates fuzzy areas of blasted out highlights that make shooting into the sun a hazed out misadventure. I usually shoot with a rubber lens hood to bring down the intrusive effects of the flared out haze from light sources. Even I have my limits for how much visual schmutz I can deal with. And even though I am a self-appointed film evangelist, I appreciate the ability to shoot with this lens on my digital camera, considering I have about ten frames of deletable photos for every one keeper. I find that setting the lens at the minimum focus point and then leaning in and out until something is in focus seems to work well. Not exactly “spray and pray” more like “creep and peep.”

As far as resulting images are concerned, please keep in mind that the raw images will most likely require some post-production work in Lightroom (my software of choice, not a paid endorsement…yet…ahem…) Especially to wrench some contrast out of the raw captures. No, that’s not cheating. Use your tools, be it a hammer or the clarity slider. I find nature subjects render best using this lens, but I bet you could probably do some cool night street shooting, especially with your ISO setting cranked up to 25600, or whatever the ungodly low light setting is nowadays.

I hope you are inspired to take a hammer to one of your extra lenses and give this approach a try. Or snag the cheapest lens you can find one eBay and give it a go. What have you got to lose, except reliability, predictability, perfection, and taking boring photos that look like everyone else’s?