2021: 49 Fear and Loathing on Ebay
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.
Secret weapon no more.
Gear Review: Damaged Canon FD Lens
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?
Gear Review: Quad-Cam Film Camera
Here’s a gift for all the gear junkies out there. I’m jamming out another camera review!
Hey all you Sony ABc200x shooters! Calling all the Fujifilm fanboys! No, I’m not gonna sway you towards a Ricoh Daido GR5000, or micro 2/3 or 3/4 or 16/18th crop sensor, digital paperweight. I’m talking about a film camera. Not the YouTube, flavor of the month, medium format 6x7, or one of those Hasselblad panos that will cost you your first child. I’m not even drinking the Lomography kool-aid today (though to be fair, that cult saved my life, in the early 00’s, before it was cool to hate on Lomo…) but I digress. I’m going to wax poetic about the craptastic, plastic, 35mm film camera, known to me as the “Quad-Cam.” Damn, they even have one of these gems in the Cooper Hewitt / Smithsonian Design Museum, so you know it’s legit.
I wish I could tell you the technical specs of this wonder of post-modern technology, but the model I own did not come with much details. So instead, I’ll share some info I cribbed from an eBay post (apologies to whomever this is lifted from…)
The camera takes four consecutive pictures on a 24x36mm negative as the shutter spins round like clockwork. With fixed focus and shutter speed (about one second in total, so 1/4 second for each shot) and aperture. Pictures with four images taken after one another can be great fun. It works especially well with frantically moving people or sports. The shutter is a small plastic rotating disc placed behind the lenses. This disc has one small opening and in combination with the four light chambers, it gives four exposures. The Camera has four 26mm f/11 lenses and that everything from 1.2m to infinity is in focus. The shutter speed is set at 1/100s with .22 second intervals between each frame. The film advance is a thumb wheel cog. When loaded with film this also cocks the shutter. The camera has a small frame counter in the bottom that is automatically reset when you open the back. Pictures are composed through a folding frame finder on top.
Yada, yada, yada… all this info kind of goes out the window when you shoot with this camera. The only thing you have control over is 1) choice of film; and 2) where you point this thing. I found (PRO TIP) that ASA 100 film seems to work best, at least in this gorgeous New Mexico daylight. You might want to use ASA 200 or 400 if you live in a less-bright environment. My roll of ASA 400 was horribly overexposed. The sequence of exposures moves pretty quickly, so I would suggest moving the camera while you shoot, if you are shooting a non-moving subject… at least you’ll get four slightly different images on each frame of film. If you are shooting moving subjects, try not to move at all, and let the camera spin its magic. I really wish there was more control over the speed of the four exposures.
So, on to the results. There is something I really like about the grouping of four images on one standard 35mm frame. The image quality is surprisingly better than expected, from a shitty, fixed focus, plastic lens. I got some really nice results shooting directly towards the sun, where a nice blast of lens flare crept into a fe frames. I also enjoyed the reckless abandon of not even trying to frame up my shots. Just point and shoot, like God intended. I also like being able to hack the camera, by placing a finger or two over some of the lenses, resulting in a frame that has one or two images missing from the frame. Scan a few of these frames in a row and you have a geometric study in randomness.
My conclusions, and you may not agree… spend the 5 to 10 bucks on eBay and snag one of these cameras and try it out. Chances are it will probably break sooner than later, but in the meantime, it will free you up of any ideas of control and predictability. It will most likely disappoint you more often than not. It may also blindside you with wonder and surprise… and magical, fleeting joy. Just like life.
Lomography’s plastic mighty mite
Gear Review: Diana Mini 35mm camera (or... how I had a mini stroke)
If any of you out there know me, you know I am not a “gear” guy. Yes, I own cameras, lots of cameras, too many cameras, really. But for me they are always a means to an end. I get more satisfaction shooting with the Pentax K1000 that I bought in a thrift store for 13 bucks than I do when I use my Canon 6D. So I guess it’s due to a (pun alert) mini stroke that I’m even doing a proper gear review. Of course, I’m doing it with tongue firmly in cheek, and it all should be taken with a grain of (Sicilian) sea salt.
So the camera I’m about to discuss is the plastic terror from Lomography, the Diana Mini. This little brat takes 35mm film, and looks like the old Diana 120 got left in the clothes dryer for too long and shrank. This thing is tiny, small enough to fit in the weird chest pocket on my Austrian Army jacket. It has minimal aperture control, guesstimated focussing, and well, well, well… a choice between a half-frame 35mm option, or an odd, but lovable square crop. Like a mini Diana should have, amiright? Throw in a roll of 200 or 400 ASA film and hope for the best.
What you lose in control and predictability, you gain in wonderful surprises. Not gonna sell you the Lomo party line of dreaminess here. I like things blurry, soft and grainy… but that’s not a dream for me, that’s more like reality for a film shooter. This camera delivers it in spades. It also delivers a certain degree of frustration, more so than the usual plastic camera experiences I’ve had with a Holga, or other crappy Lomo-esque 35mm cameras.
I’ve struggled with loading film into this camera. Sometimes it just goes in and winds easily, sometimes the advance gears destroy the sprockets and the film jams. I try to be delicate when I load it, but sometimes it just works, and other times it doesn’t. Roll of the dice at best. When it does load correctly, I really have a lot of fun shooting with it. When it doesn’t cooperate, I’ve come close to throwing it in the garbage.
Pros of the Diana Mini are obviously the fact that it takes the more affordable 35mm film. I also love the fact that it shoots in the square format of its big sister. The half frame setting I haven’t used at all, as I leave that task to my wonderful Olympus Pen-EE S, but I might end up playing with that, maybe in combination with the full frame setting, seeing if I can get some overlapping images. The camera seems to like black and white film a bit more than color, as I think there is a bit more exposure latitude there, but what the hell, I’ve got a ton of expired film in the freezer, why not go out and just have some fun with this toy?
Verdict: If you see one for a decent price on Ebay, take the plunge. If you’re not completely satisfied with your purchase… welcome to my world.
Some sample images below.
A grid of images from Fourth of July Canyon, in New Mexico. Shot on Lomo XPro 200 film.
Black and white seems to be the charmer, and sprocket scans are even more lovely to look at.