it’s that time of the year again…
berlin, moabit, 2016
a statue, a scooter and a shower… all in amsterdam, august 2014
i’m really happy about how this shot of a kreuzberg house entrance turned out.
exposed on long expired kodak elitechrome 400 slide film i got from a colleague with my girlfriend’s almost classic nikon f55. so many new old things for me…
a nice piece of urban intervention found in friedrichshain. shot with the olympus om2n on long expired ilford fp4 iso125.
since my weekend trip to vienna two weeks ago was quite photographically inclined, i had taken my olympus 35rc with me. i was quite confident that i had sealed the light leak that in the camera but obviously i’m not even close (i’m showing the pictures nevertheless). if anybody has good advice how to find and fix the leak i’d be very interested to hear about that.
along with the olympus came my polaroid ee100 that i rarely use actually. but as we had booked the Urban Vienna Polaroid Tour with the friendly guys from PolaWalk it was a good opportunity to use the ee100 again. if you happen to be in vienna, have some spare time and are interested in polaroid photography i can heartily recommend taking a tour with Gilbert (and probably Thomas, too ;)). Gilbert is the guy with the red anorak btw.
the ee100 does have its own share of flaws and because i’m not really using it often enough i don’t know how to work around them. i took seven pictures, two of them came out just black, one is an okayish portrait and the other ones are shown here. i definitely have to practise ;)
i like the ee100 a lot but i have a bit of shutter triggering anxiety when it comes to analogue photography that i might have to overcome. i see pictures everywhere when i’m using the digital camera but when it comes to analogue i kind of procrastinate…
winter seems to be over here in berlin…
seen and captured in friedrichshain, berlin on a sunny day (already in january) with the olympus 35rc.
everything is from the past when photographed with an analog camera on 400 iso film.
interior of sheriff teddy bar in friedrichshain, berlin. i had to crop the picture because of a severe light leak of the camera that did not fit into the picture. hence the square format.
captured last weekend with the pentacon six medium format camera and my brand new old flektogon 50mm wide angle lens. i guess i have to get used to think wide angle in square format.
in case you’re interested: the car is an opel ascona (c generation) from the 80s.
made in january 2014 with the olympus 35rc on rossmann iso400 film. if you happen to like this post head right over to alex strehl’s blog 35mm shots and check it out.
shot last week with my father’s olympus 35rc in friedrichshain (again). i took the 35rc to berlin last christmas. it’s a beautiful little rangefinder camera with a great zuiko lens and fun to use, but i still have to find the source of that light leak ;)
man in the mirror – of my olympus om-2n that is.
you see the lens mount of the camera and the mirror that mirrors what is behind the view finder (yes, the mirror works both ways ;)) the bright area in the middle of the mirror is the reflection of the split image focusing screen.
thanks a lot to b. who made this picture possible.
a vespa in friedrichshain. shot with my om-2n and the om zuiko 100mm this spring.
the things in focus are not necessarily the most important.
made in friedrichshain (revaler spitze) with my pentacon six. this camera amazes me.
i had pictured him differently…
shot with my olympus om-2 and the om zuiko 100mm lens on paradies 200 film on one of the first springy days of this year (before winter returned with his puffy snowy fist).
disclaimer: of course chamisso’s bust is in hibernation here. if you are interested in a look under the covers check wikipedia. he sports a quite cool heavy metal haircut.
i’m usually not very much into cars but i could not resist this very nice yellow opel gt 1900. accidentally two other yellow cars appeared and could be purposely included then.
shot with the olympus om-2 and the om-zuiko 100mm@f4 on paradies 200 film in berlin mitte last weekend (on the same roll of film as the half bike (red))
seen in friedrichshain, berlin. shot with the olympus om-2 and probably the om zuiko 50mm on paradies 200 film about a year ago. i only had the film developed this week ;)
another shot from my second roll in medium format. made with my seagull tlr in berlin neukölln.
but a nice winter weekend…* [this post contains a few more pictures than one]
i took out the seagull tlr last weekend for my second roll of middle-format film and this time i was more prepared than the first time.
i used a tripod for example.
my poor tripod wasn’t really up to the task carrying the quite heavy seagull but it did an amazingly good job eventually. so i now can confirm, i can get sharp pictures from this camera and i’m just incapable of doing this handheld obviously.
i try to meter with my trusty olympus e-pl1 and use it for the making-of pictures of course.
jeff barnes (still a bit underexposed)
jeff barnes (making of)
i have also improved on my digitizing process, but there is still a bit of headroom left in the complete workflow i guess. i got an acrylic plate, put the negatives on them and fired a flash from behind the plate. the result looked a lot like this:
i then inverted these shots, cropped the individual negatives and converted them to (filtered) black and white in lightroom.
here are some more pictures from my second roll.
the poor manfred…
seagull under pyramid
as you can see i’m still unsure regarding the relation of what i see in the viewfinder and where it turns out on the negative. i’d say i put the pyramid right into the middle of it but the negative says otherwise.
chrysler classic
cc (making of)
and finally a shot of the climbing frame that i did not manage to get focussed properly the first time.
and now i have a kodak portra 400 film in my pocket and i’ll see what i can do with it…
and as you can see, there are still eight pictures left of this roll to be shown, e.g. a lovely (but accidental) multiexposure.
*for the ornithologists and idiomaticists: i can tell a seagull from a swallow… ;)
before (at least i thought so)
after(?)
expectations were high…
i got a chinese seagull 4B-1 twin lens reflex camera as a birthday present! yay! i have to admit this is really quite a tough thing to handle. about 1 kg in weight, quite clunky in my hands but it looks really cool and feels quite well built. the shutter is almost silent (i wasn’t really sure that it worked correctly).
i haven’t been able to get one sharp shot from that camera yet, though. here are two pictures from my first roll of medium film. as you can see, i forgot to remove the frame from inside the camera that allows to take pictures in 6×4,5 format (instead of the more common (and actually intended) 6×6 square format).
moreover you can see there is quite a lot of headroom in at least:
in (4) i opted for handheld macro shots in front of a white computer monitor… (see the picture below) i think i could do much better e.g. by more closely following paulo ricca’s great tutorial. regarding (3) i’m quite clueless now, because i thought the first picture of the viewfinder showed the preview of the respective shot below… and this does not really make sense to me now. (2) is somewhat tricky. i was quite sure i nailed focus at least in say 5 of the 14 shots i got from the roll. but that does not seem to be the case. probably i should have used a tripod… maybe i shouldn’t have shot wide open. i have to try this out again obviously. and finally (1) we had so bad weather conditions here for at least three weeks after i got the film for the camera that one day i was tired of waiting and went out in light drizzle to the playground 50 metres away, finished the roll and went back home. there will be more and better opportunities throughout this year, i’m sure. i have two rolls b&w film left and then i think i’ll go and try colour.
quick and dirty digitizing
.documenting.the.obvious 
