Street Photography with Olympus XA1

A week or so ago I bought a 100-foot long bulk roll of Kentmere ISO 400 black and white film (made by Ilford) and started shooting bw film that I also develop at home (or in the lab). I take this little camera with me (Olympus XA1, 35mm fixed lens f/2.8) and shoot whatever looks interesting. The nice thing is - people don't feel intimidated by this tiny camera.

The whole idea is shoot randomly, find something interesting and then try to recreate it again later. With better framing.

Restoring a Roamer II Folding Camera

This was my pet project for the past 2 weeks. Here are three photos: one before and two after. More at: http://panic.berkeley.edu/~ghe/DIY_Camera_Restoration/

Shooting with a Cellphone

I have a generic Tmobile phone with a crappy 2Mp camera but sometimes this is all I have on me. Of course your iPhones and Droids can do better. One is of Toyotaka and Pim talking about polymerase in the 6th floor of Stanley. Another one is from the Istanbul airport in late October.

A Walk in the Golden Gate Park at Sunset

There was little light at this point, so I guessed 1/30th of a sec exposure at f/5.6 (iso 400 BW film). The negative was a bit underexposed, but it came out ok.

Hipster Central

From a trip to SF this weekend. San Francisco hipsters are much nicer than Berkeley hipsters. Just my opinion.

Late Afternoon on a Friday in October

Shot with Horizont russian camera from the '80s on generic pharmacy film.

Another 120 Film Photograph

This is one of my favorite shots on Fuji Velvia. Shot in 2007 with a Moskva 2 folding MF camera early in the morning in the Eastern Sierra Mountains (~late October). You might think that I juiced up the colors in Photoshop, but it's not true. In fact I had to take down the saturation of the scan to make it look more natural. Velvia colors can sometimes be too much.

New film scanner

I couldn't live like this (without a decent film scanner) anymore and got a new Canon 9000F. I am very very impressed with the colors that it gives when scanning color negatives (those are notoriously difficult to work with). Resolution is enough, and the fact that it accepts 120 film is the icing on the cake. Here's an old photo of Alice from Technique shot with a Mamiya MF film camera (80mm f/2.8 lens most likely). There's still some dust visible because the scanner can't do dust/scratch removal from BW silve-based film.

Panoramic Camera Revisited

I have become obsessed with panoramic cameras recently (caught the bug in 2006, then lost it, then caught it again). Here's a recent panorama shot on the Berkeley campus with a 1980's Horizont Russian swing lens panoramic camera. It's not a great photo or anything, I just like that there's a lot of stuff happening in the frame.