vinyl love
fashion meets vinylio club meets the pentax 67.
fashion meets vinylio club meets the pentax 67.
makeup: Emmanouil Apostolakis for Makeup Forever hair: Roula Marinopoulou models: Nelly B, Elena, Apostolis, Isidoros (Fashion Cult) fashion director: Konstantinos Koutsomichos designer: RATT (Rita Attala)
a couple of weeks ago I was asked by the wonderful miss tina sardelas to photograph her fashion video shoot at vinylio club. I told her I would only be shooting with my analog cameras, and she liked the idea. I wanted to use my latest baby, the pentax 67, but I also brought the faithful bronica sq-a along.
I loaded up the pentax with the new kodak portra 400 and fitted it with the takumar 105mm/f2.4, a truly great portrait lens. the club was quite dark (well, it's supposed to be this way) and I had to put the pentax on a tripod, shoot at really slow speeds (1/15-1/60) and wide open apertures, and rely on the film's wide latitude. I shot a total of 24 frames (two and a half rolls) with the pentax, before switching to the bronica.
pentax 67 | 105mm/2.4 | kodak portra 400 6x7
pentax 67 | 105mm/2.4 | kodak portra 400 6x7
pentax 67 | 105mm/2.4 | kodak portra 400 6x7
pentax 67 | 105mm/2.4 | kodak portra 400 6x7
pentax 67 | 105mm/2.4 | kodak portra 400 6x7
pentax 67 | 105mm/2.4 | kodak portra 400 6x7
pentax 67 | 55mm/4 | kodak portra 400 6x7
using the pentax 67 was a joy, as I have grown accustomed to the 6x7 format for portraiture (very close to the 4x5 of large format cameras), but the slow speeds and the need to use the camera on a tripod (it really is not a camera you want to handhold at speeds below 1/125) were tiresome, so after Ι did a number of pre-imagined shots, I switched to the bronica and kodak tri-x 400. black and white meant that I could stop worrying about color rendition and combination, and kodak tri-x meant that I could push it a bit and achieve 1/60-1/125, which are handholdable speeds with the bronica sq-a. with the tripod gone, I was able to move freely, get tighter framing and different angles. two rolls of film went through the bronica although, to be honest, I had grown weary and repetitive by the first roll.
bronica sq-a | 80mm/f2.8 | kodak tri-x 400
bronica sq-a | 80mm/f2.8 | kodak tri-x 400
bronica sq-a | 80mm/f2.8 | kodak tri-x 400
bronica sq-a | 80mm/f2.8 | kodak tri-x 400
bronica sq-a | 80mm/f2.8 | kodak tri-x 400
bronica sq-a | 80mm/f2.8 | kodak tri-x 400
some of the presented images (both from the pentax and the bronica) are quite alike but I didn't want to throw any of them away. in total I shot 48 frames in a space of a couple of hours. the bronica sq-a I have grown to love and knew what it would deliver, but the pentax 67 is a new acquaintance to me, and I was quite pleased with its handling and the resulting images. the takumar 105mm/f2.4 lived up to its reputation: it is a magnificent portrait lens, small, normal-to-kinda-wide focal length, fast, not too sharp but not too soft either. instant love.
the big unknown
out in the big scary unknown, with the olympus xa and cross-processed fuji sensia 400.
people don't want their lives fixed. nobody wants their problems solved. their dramas. their distractions. their stories resolved. their messes cleaned up. because what would they have left? just the big scary unknown. [olympus xa | fuji sensia 400 xpro | january/february 2013 | quotes by chuck palahniuk's survivor]
you think maybe if you just work harder and faster, you can hold off the chaos, but then one day you're changing a patio lightbulb with a 5-year life span and realize how you'll only be changing this light maybe ten more times before you'll be dead.
reality means you live until you die. the real truth is nobody wants reality.
and the sky is blue and righteous in every direction. the sun is total and burning and just right there, and today is a beautiful day. testing, testing, one, two-
aqua pix on land
more shots with the lomo aqua pix, all taken on land.
more shots with the lomo aqua pix, all taken on land. this camera is designed for underwater use and its focus point is set at 1m or something, therefore focused photos are practically out of the question. even when underwater, it is nearly impossible to get a properly focused photo, as I observed in my first outing with the camera. it's no nikonos, but it is a fun camera to use, and dirt cheap (5$ off ebay). the film/developer combination contributes to the grittiness of the resulting images. after four different rolls, I have to say that rollei retro 400s (supposedly the same formula as the old agfa apx 400) does not like my favourite developer, diafine. I thought diafine was the ultimate solution, but I've been getting really foggy results with some films, namely the rollei retro 400s, the fuji neopan 100ss and also the fuji neopan 400. I'm not 100% sure of this, but I know I'll keep diafine away from these films.
[lomo aqua pix underwater camera | rollei retro 400s | october 2012]
an imagined world
wind & rain, clouds & sun.
you can’t put up with anything less than lovely. you spend your life running, avoiding, escaping. that quest for something pretty. a cheat. a cliché. [minolta xd-7 | 28mm | fuji superia 400 | december 2012 | quotes by chuck palahniuk's diary]
and the more she could imagine this island, the less she liked the real world. the more she could imagine the people, the less she liked any real people. it got until she didn’t belong anywhere. it got so nobody was good enough, refined enough, real enough. nothing was as real as her imagined world.
a stroll on the seaside
a sunday stroll at floisvos with the new fuji x-e1.
a sunday stroll on the seaside with the new fuji x-e1.it was quite a windy day at floisvos. I originally set out to shoot film but the wind got on my nerves. all images are digital (obviously), wide-angle, mostly f/22, hyperfocal distance.
roaming
roaming in black and white, looking for clouds, rain, wind, silence.
"an agent is a system that is situated in some environmentand is capable of flexible, autonomous action in that environment in order to meet its design objectives." "agent based modelling of calcium handling in cardiac cells", MSc dissertation, theodoros markou, university of sheffield, 2004/05 [mesogeia | various cameras | various fuji b/w films | november/december 2012]
