The Lawtographer

Mar 28 2013

Project OneRollFifty2 Final Thoughts

Well there it is. Finished. I wanted to get into film and boy did I. A little over a year ago, I hadn’t photographed a frame of film since I was a boy. 6 cameras, 52 rolls, approximately 1500 frames, and countless invested hours have jumped me into the film game rather quickly.

Now that the project is over, I find myself really fighting with whether to bring my digital or a film camera when heading out the door.

If you would like to view all the posts for this project, you can do so here.

This was such a rewarding project and turned out being much more difficult that I originally thought it would be. I felt like I needed something big to book-end this project. I have recently been getting into using my DSLR for video and decided I would make a video chronicling my thoughts on the project and showing off some of my favorite images.

The video, similar to the project itself, ended up taking more time that expected. Honestly this is mostly in part from suggestions from fellow photographer and friend Mike Folden. Mike gave me several pointers along the way of producing this video. Each suggestion was well received but resulted in more work to the video. Now after several drafts, I believe I have a nicely finished project that really closes the door on this project nicely.

Alright, enough reading right? Let’s get to the video. I would love to know what you think of the video in the comments below (or on YouTube). Thank you everyone who has followed this project over the last year. Sincerely, thank you. You’re comments and likes are what kept the drive alive to finish.

Tagged Project OneRollFifty2, video, year long project video

Mar 14 2013

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Project OneRollFifty2

Project OneRollFifty2 – Week 52

It is done. First a disclaimer though; it is now March of the following year of the project and I’m just now blogging the final roll, however, I have had this roll shot, developed, scanned, and ready for over two months. My attention toward this project has been elsewhere for that past couple of months. I’ve been creating a special little book-ending…thing….for this project that I hope to be able to unveil to you all within a week or so.

Anyway, back to this week’s roll. I wanted to shoot the last roll with my new favorite camera, the Yashica twin lens reflex. I’ve said it before but I love the images from this camera and the medium format film. This roll is another from around downtown Seattle.

Tagged mat 124G, mat124g, onerollfifty2, photo, photography, photos, Project OneRollFifty2, seattle, yashica

Feb 01 2013

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Project OneRollFifty2

Project OneRollFifty2 – Week 51

And just like that, here we are with the second to last week of this 52 week project.

This week features my third roll of film shot with my new Yashica Mat-124G TLR camera using the always awesome Kodak Portra 400 film. Like many previous weeks, this features images from our Seattle Center but I think the square format yields a completely different perspective.

The first two pictures ended up being double exposures because my Yashica does suffer from the film advance problem that some Yashica’s have. I’d read somewhere that if you turn the camera on it’s side (so the film crank is facing down) it helps it not to stick. After the first couple of shots in this roll, I remembered that and every single shot I did that on advanced perfectly. There must be something to that.

Other Yashica Mat owners out there, does your film advance get stuck?

foggy space needle taken using a Yashica Mat-124G and Kodak Portra

This is actually the Seattle Space Needle on a very misty day taken at the base

Panda Lab in Seattle taken using a Yashica Mat-124G and Kodak Portra

My film processing lab in Seattle, Panda Lab.

Tagged film, kodak, mat, mat 124G, mat124g, onerollfifty2, outdoors, photography, photos, photos around seattle center, photos of seattle center, Project OneRollFifty2, seattle, seattle center, space needle, yashica, yashica mat-124g, yashica mat124g

Jan 31 2013

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Project OneRollFifty2

Project OneRollFifty2 – Week 50

Week 50! 2 more weeks and I’ll have completed my 52 week goal (albeit will have taken just OVER 52 actual weeks, but we’ll forget about that part).

This week was interesting. I decided to use my father-in-law’s “donated” Minolta SRT-101 camera with some expired film he also “donated” to the cause. This turned out being some Kodak Gold 400 film…expiration 1999!!! HAHA, 13 year past expiration. Needless to say, I was very interested with how the images would come out while at the same time not getting my hopes up too much in case the film didn’t hold up so well over that long of a time.

Well it’s a good thing I didn’t get my hopes up because many of the images didn’t come out at all while others were so heavily grainy that you almost couldn’t make out what the image was of. You can see this on a couple of the images below. The funny part is that a couple of the frames seemed to come out just fine even though maybe the frame before and after it were completely unusable. Weird.

The images below did get a little fixing up in Lightroom 4 to make them somewhat presentable.

Let me know what you think. What was the oldest expired film you’ve ever shot with?

Tagged expired film, film, images from a minolta SRT-101 camera, kodak, kodak gold, minolta, minolta srt-101, onerollfifty2, outdoors, photographing with expired film, photography, photos, Project OneRollFifty2, seattle, shooting with expired film, space needle

Jan 26 2013

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Project OneRollFifty2

Project OneRollFifty2 – Week 49

This week ended up being another roll of regular ol’ 35mm Kodak Gold. I feel spoiled now from shooting with 6×6 medium format film and then looking at the tiny and insignificant 35mm haha. Just jokes of course. These were taken with a Mamiya/Sekor 1000 DTL SLR camera.

This week features some shots around Seattle including the legendary Dick’s Restaurant, the Space Needle flying the gargantuan Seahawks 12th Man flag above it (this was taken before they were defeated in the last seconds by the Atlanta Falcons ), and general “city” images. There’s also some featuring Lilah and my parents as well as the pug Stanley.

Tagged 12th man, dicks restaurant, film, kodak, mamiya sekor 1000 dtl, mamiya/sekor 1000 dtl, onerollfifty2, outdoors, photography, photos, Project OneRollFifty2, pugs, seattle, space needle

Jan 25 2013

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Project OneRollFifty2

Project OneRollFifty2 – Week 48

Here is the second roll from my new Yachica Mat-124G twin lens reflex film camera. Again, this is a roll of Kodak Portra 400 and mainly features images from a very foggy Picnic Point in Lynnwood and shots from around Seattle from Martin Luther King Jr. day when we took Lilah into the city for the first time.

Still loving the Yashica although as someone on Reddit pointed out, there is quite a bit of dust on the lens that I need to clean off. I still want to shoot another couple of rolls before I decide whether to send it in to Mark Hama for a thorough CLA.

Tagged film, foggy beach, image from a yashica mat-124g, kodak, kodak portra images, lynnwood, onerollfifty2, outdoors, photography, portra, Project OneRollFifty2, seattle, the space needle from kerry park, welcome to belltown, yashica

Jan 24 2013

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Project OneRollFifty2

Project OneRollFifty2 – Week 47

As we’re closing in on the end of this year long project, I’ve found myself wanting to try medium format film more and more. After doing a ton of research, I landed on trying to find an affordable and completely functional Yashica Mat 124G twin lens reflex camera. My search took about 2-3 weeks of perusing Craigslist and eBay.

I eventually found one that was local for $140 and after buying a battery from Vintage Batteries and some Kodak Portra 400 film, I was off shooting my first roll of 120 film.

Today I received my developed film back, searched for about an hour looking for the 120 film adapter for my scanner, and scanning them into the computer. After viewing the images, I love the format. I love the extra detail in each image. I love the square format. I’ve used it for about a week now (a lot of it being in Seattle super thick fog we’ve had lately) and I’ve already had a couple of people stop and ask me about it since TLR’s are not a common sight to people.

Here she is