Considering our recent weather a bit of winter photography is not really out of place…

A couple of foggy days without wind and low temperatures, created a beautiful layer of frost early in the year, making Edmonton into a winter wonderland. I was very lucky to be able to escape for couple of hours to Rundle Park, and to take full advantage of the situation ;D. It was so beautiful, especially when rising sun caused the foggy sky to turn an unusual color.  Such days make me like winter just a bit more ;D

Kasia

Now for something completely different… While Kasia is busy shooting and sharing her wonderful images, of landscapes and nature, I took a bit of tangent.

Film and Medium Format

I was always interested in making images in medium format, either 6×6 or 6×7.  I always liked the look of images created in this format.  I wasn’t interested in film, and as some of you listen to my podcast, Shutter Time with Sid and Mac, I always make fun of people who still shoot film.  I call them Masochists. Well I have become one.  Am I being hypocritical?  In my regard shooting film is a means to an end.  I wanted the medium format look, but not at the 30k prices of digital.  So the only solution was to find an old medium format camera and film.  I have found and beautifully preserved Mamiya RB67, and my photography skewed.  

Passion?

Some people who shoot with film, have a passionate relationship with the medium and the old mechanical cameras.  I, on the other hand, couldn’t be bothered.  I don’t really care how the shutter sounds, or the levers work, or the whole process of pouring chemicalsand swishing everything about, just so 20 min later I can see the negatives.  I care about the last result, where I throw the negative on the scanner, and see the image on the screen.  I’m after the image, not the process of getting to it.  I’m not passionate about film, or old gear.  I had more than my share of failures because of old crappy gear, that was crappy 40 years ago, and it is still crappy today, no matter how much it is praised by hipster-nation.  I’m passionate about the end result.  The image. 

Mamiya RB67

This is a beast of a camera.  Heavy, with so many little things that need to be done before you expose a bit of celluloid, that people who allow themselves to shoot, with it are really Masochists.  The week I got it I thought it would be a good idea to try doing a simple model session with just this camera.  Brought 3 rolls of 120 b&w film and went to town.  I did have my little Fuji X100s with me, but I did not stray from the hipsterish path of masochistic delight 🙂  The results I present to you.  Enjoy!

The sweet 16… brings back memories… This time it makes memories.  I’m talking about the new Fujinon 16mm f1.4 lens of course.  I’ve read reviews of that lens before it was available, from many great photographers like Tomasz Trzebiatowski from Fuji Love, or Matt Brandon and his views of Kenya.  There are plenty of others.  This convinced me.  This lens is absolutely wonderful.  I love shooting wide open, and having an electronic shutter of 1/32000 on the Fuji X-T1 makes it very possible to create images in day time and with the lens wide open at f1.4.

I decided to try it out on my blooming apple tree.  It was in perfect light, and …. completely covered with bees.  I have an aversion to flying, buzzing things, but I wanted to see how the bokeh looked like and how wide and how close I can get.  With skin crawling, and suppressing my want to drop the camera, and bolt while screaming like a girl (sexist comment 🙂 ) I stood my ground.  This Fujinon 16mm f1.4 lens, has a very close minimum focus at 15cm, which for me is murder when trying to photograph flying bees.  The results are quite spectacular though.  Bokeh is soft and creamy, just how I like it.  The subject separation is great, giving me a nice wide environment to place the subject in.

Build quality is solid, with nice clicks of the aperture ring.  Much better than the Fujinon 14mm f2.8, which on my copy are quite loose.  It’s a still quite small and light and with focusing and depth-of-field scales it makes it easy to focus manually.  It definitely found it’s way to my bag….  Oh oh, almost forgot, It’s absolutely perfect for hip street shooting 🙂

Recently I had a chance to swap some of my old Pentax lenses for a very interesting lens.  It makes a mirror-less Fuji X-T1 camera into a mirrored one.  This is a Sigma 600mm f8 mirror lens.

The principle of this type of lens is quite simple.  It works as a reflector, with a big mirror at the back of the lens focusing at another mirror in the front (that little black circle in the middle) and into the camera.  This design allows the lens to be very compact compared to an equivalent standard lens. 

Lets talk first about the advantages of this.  It’s 600mm, and on a crop sensor it gives you a very nice 900mm field of view.  It’s well build, with with smooth focus ring. Minimum focus is about 2m, which is quite close.  Sigma has printed 1:3 Macro at that position 🙂 .  The lens is quite light, and can be used handheld, plus it is cheap.  This one cost $175cdn.  Not bad….

Now lets talk about bad… The aperture is constant f8.  This means that with out a tripod and lots of light the lens is almost unusable.  I had to switch to manual shutter of 1/1000 to be able to shoot handheld, and let the camera choose ISO.  Many times the ISO would be around 1600-3200 or even higher.  Fuji deals with noise very well, and I did not mind it.  The depth of field is very shallow, which in turn makes proper focus a little challenging.  Again Fuji comes to the rescue, with it’s arsenal of manual focus aids.  I found that digital split image focus worked best. 

As you can see in the above image the highlights are a little different than we are used to.  Some like it, some don’t.  To me it looks different and interesting. 

Overall, it is an interesting lens to use.  It’s challenging and I found it fun to use.  It’s easy to hold, and even though it is a mirror, it fits the mirror-less camera world quite well.  Here are some images I took with it.

It must be awfully boring for Mother Nature in winter. Nothing to grow, nothing to make bloom or fruit.. I guess it’s no wonder she spends her time creating snowflakes and playing with ice crystals. So, before winter is gone (it does feel like spring out there today) I would like to share some of the Nature’s works of art. Enjoy!

Kasia