RB67 needs professional help
I’ll use the space for my X-H2 or some jerky or a TBD 645 I find in a shop.
I’m leaving on a 3 week road trip tomorrow (don’t rob my house, there are still people in it) and since I haven’t been happy with the results, I wanted to run another test roll through my Mamiya RB67 to determine whether to bring it on the trip or not.
I taped up all the seams to prevent light leaks, put a hood on it, shot half the roll with an ND filter and half without. The results are just bad. There is a weird flaring issue through the center of the frame, and (after some discussion on Glass, thanks Carlos and Anton) what appears to be a sticky shutter. Maybe the shutter, which is a leaf shutter in the lens, is causing all the issues, maybe not. I don’t have time to test further. So Arby is staying home.
Here’s the entire roll. I actually love the result of the last frame, but the rest are mostly unusable. Even if they were all accidentally great is some way, I need my equipment to work predictably, so it’s going in the shop when I get back.
Black and white, the colors of springtime
When the Sun’s behind a cloud, get creative.
Here are some SOOC (“straight out of camera,” for the uninitiated) B&W photos taken on today’s walk. I’ve been dipping my toe in monochrome once in a while, but usually with my X100VI not the GFX 50s ii with Mitty (Mitakon 65mm f1.4 lens, for the uninitiated). The results are predictably lovely.
Up High St and around the corner
Film or digital? You decide. (Obviously it’s digital since it looks like film and why else would I even ask.)
I’ve worked remotely (from home) for 15 years now. I will never work in an office again. My home setup is ideal and I love it. Plus, offices were a huge distraction for me and my work suffered.
But… I need excuses to go into Portland to take photos. Coffee shops are loud, typically have terrible wifi, and you’re obligated to buy stuff. However, my company pays for coworking spaces.
So I tried a coworking space for the first time yesterday and it was pretty nice! I found a comfortable couch, knocked out a bunch of work, hopped on a call in a closet, and ended the day in the center of the Old Port. People were in and out constantly, but unlike my last experiences in an office, it was quiet and no one was popping into my cubicle to ask a question or yelling “your mom!” across the room (yes).
This particular day I was rushing to meet my son for drinks after work, so I didn’t take any photos on the walk to my car. But I did grab the photos below on the walk to the coworking place and I’m excited about the opportunities this arrangement offers for capturing city life in the future.
If I had Half a Grain…
The Sixes.
I renamed my website. The new name is meant to reflect my growing love of film photography—and that I’m also primarily shooting digital photos. So… Half a Grain. Get it?
I also hope to launch my YouTube channel very soon, under the same name. Watch for that. I also have new projects in the works and will be posting them in the Work section of the site soon.
The Sixes.
A red Jag on the M6
Steve McQueen drove one of these.
I couldn’t tell what it was from Jennifer’s iPhone photo, but I hurried back across Belfast to shoot the probably-cool red car before the owner discovered there was a photographer prowling the area and bolted. Though, from what I’ve heard about E-Types, it’d be 50/50 whether the thing started.
I made it. I walked around the thing, squatting with my M6 and encouraging other men passing by to grunt and mumble, oh, sure, I guess I’ll get a photo, too.
“What is it? Is it a P—?”
“It’s a Jag, right?” I said. I walked around the back and pretended to read off the boot. “Yeah, a Jag.”
“Is that a film camera? Mirrorless?”
“I’ve got one of each,” I blushed, holding up the X100VI dangling on my other side.
“Neat.” Small talk quota fulfilled, the men caught back up with their families, likely headed for ice cream.
The car was gone later when I walked back down the hill.
Another spring
SAD no more.
My undiagnosed SAD (not to be confused with my epic case of GAS), makes me unreasonably exuberant when things start to grow and I finally feel warm. This morning I noticed growth I hadn’t noticed yesterday, so I wondered [sic] the area and took some photos. Enjoy.
The snow flattened everything
Spring is here, someone said.
A Spring Nor’easter shook our state this week. Walking down our road, I was amazed at how thoroughly everything was flattened. I ended up shaking the snow off of almost 50 trees crossing the road to get them to pop up out of the snow. Several others had to be cut off and removed. The wetlands that borders our road was flattened. Usually birds nest in that overgrowth.
On the day of the storm, when it finally died down and I felt safe walking without getting pummeled by falling branches, I only had my iPhone with me. Oddly the birds were still chirping as I cleared trees off the road. Life goes on.
Here is that set of unedited iPhone photos—in reverse order of waning daylight, followed by the GFX photos I took the next day after we were able to clear the trees. Usually in the wide shot with the power lines, there are trees and bushes that block my view of the distant treeline. They’re all bent to the ground. Hopefully some will recover and the birds will continue to thrive.
This is not what I bought this camera for
For the search engines: Fujifilm X100VI. TikTok. Poseurs. Film simulations. Don’t buy this camera without reading this. You need this camera. Five days in Spain with the X100VI. Leica Q3 vs Fujifilm X100VI vs iPhone for some reason. Back to snarky post excerpts next time.
Or, “This is not the purpose for which I bought this camera.” I gave up on prepositions a long time ago. Good luck using them correctly without coming off a bit poncy. “Whoa, didn’t realize I was talking to the King of England.” I digress. And apparently use “poncy” in sentences now.
I mentioned in my last post that I returned my latest X100 camera (X100T) when I preordered the new Fujifilm X100VI to use for street photography. But then I skipped the line when one of my favorite members of the Glass photography community Markus Busch sent me a message that he wasn’t getting along with his X100VI and would I like it. I hesitated. His was the silver version—which I prefer—but I’d preordered the black version to get maximum subtlety when trying to capture candid street photos. While deciding, a day out using my chonky GFX to grab candid shots made me realize that most people on busy sidewalks don’t really notice any camera, especially if you’re not holding it up to your face.
So I had Markus send the camera, then I got sick.
When the camera arrived—lovingly wrapped in Swiss newspaper that will look great beside all the Japanese newspaper my stuff normally comes in—I was as thrilled as I could summon the energy to be. The next day, still feeling quite ill, I snapped a weak joke attempt for my 365 photo, then went back to resting.
Today, I’m feeling almost human again. I still won’t be walking the streets until at least this weekend, but I wanted to get a few shots around the yard. And oh yeah, in the midst of all this, we had the heaviest spring snow I’ve ever seen, which made it impossible for regular cars to get in and out of our driveway. It was a rough weekend.
Anyway, these photos are great (as far as the camera’s performance is concerned). They’re the type of shots I’d normally use my GFX for (damn ending preposition again). This is not at all what I bought the X100VI for (I give up). But if it were the only camera I owned, I’d be perfectly happy shooting it in all situations.
Side note: I haven’t canceled my B&H preorder yet. Probably will. Could sell it on eBay to recoup some cost. Those people aren’t making as much as you’d think, fees alone are $300+. Nobody decries the buyers willing to pay that much. There is no inflated market without impatient buyers. Is being opportunistic worse than being impatient and entitled? I don’t know. It all feels icky. Maybe I’ll just sell it off eBay to someone else who can’t get one, for regular price. Pay it forward. Although canceling the preorder is effectively the same thing, another poor soul moves up the list. My recovering-but-still-weak brain likes the ease of that option. We’ll see. Let me know in the comments what I should do.
I never realized I’d love street photography this much
Include humans in your photos, they said. They were right.
While I love combining a good walk with taking photos, I’m fairly introverted (I even have the t-shirt), so I rarely feature humans in my photos. But what if there were a genre of photography where the point was to capture candid human moments surreptitiously? That I could do. I’ve been training for watching from the fringes my whole life.
I’ve often walked around cities and focused on photos of buildings, cars, the steam coming out of a grate, dumpsters, traffic cones—you get it. While I’m proud of many of these images, the real story is how humans fit into those spaces. So I’ve been practicing capturing moments—as defined by something actually happening in the photo, which usually requires animation of some kind, which in a city usually involves people.
Technically speaking, this—shooting from chest level with my camera on a strap, looking like I was holding my camera but not actually shooting—took some trial and error. I hadn’t used zone focusing before, so it took a bit to dial this in. To get a reasonable depth of field meant I needed to balance the shutter speed with a stopped down aperture (my first day out was almost all motion blurred images). I’m starting get a feel for the right settings, and developing a better shooting technique where I pause—sometimes just a stutter step—to take photos rather than trying to shoot on the move.
The first day I tried this was in New York with a used Fujifilm X100T I’d just picked up from B&H that day. Even though most of my photos that first day were unusable, I was hooked. This is a genre with near unlimited subject possibilities (there are only so many leaves to shoot during my normal walks on our rural dirt road). And it’s a genre that can be practiced in any city or village, wherever people live out their lives.
My second day in NYC was better. Then I came home and walked in Portland, and some of those were good. I went to Boston last weekend expecting to walk there, but the weather was so beautiful, every single person was on the sidewalk and every single parking spot was filled. I ended up shooting no photos at all. Next time I’ll plan that one better (take the train).
When the Fujifilm X100VI became available, I preordered it and returned the X100T, so I’ve been without that perfect little street camera model for a few weeks. The other day in Portland I tried my GFX with its kit lens fixed at 45mm (35mm full frame) to match the focal length of an X100. I set it to manual focus and manual exposure, zone focused to a reasonable distance, and tried my hand with that big, slow, obtrusive beast. The results were not bad! For several reasons (heavy, awkward to creatively/subtlely aim, sometimes slow to fire, loud shutter, weird flaring), that is not how I’d prefer to do street photography, but it works in a pinch. So I captured drunken St Patrick’s Day revelers in glorious medium format, and I’m not sure a single person noticed my camera. Given a more sober day of the year or a less tourist-y area of town (more cameras in general), I’m guessing the GFX would draw more attention.
I have no idea if/when I’ll get my preordered X100VI, but thanks to the brilliant community on Glass, I believe I’ll have a different unit soon. More on that later (hi, Markus!).
There is much talk about the ethics of this genre of photography. I’ll let smarter people hash that out, but my opinion is that if you are of an age of consent and inhabiting a public space, you will be seen—whether in person or via photograph. I don’t post photos of children, and I won’t show the faces of folks who are unhoused or otherwise struggling (exception in this set, there are clearly some drunken folks. Irish celebration will do that.). And there are photos that I may exclude just because they subjectively don’t feel right. Generally speaking, though, I’ll let the law rule here—if it’s viewable in a public space, it’s a potential subject.
Here are some of my favorites from outings in Portland, Maine, and New York, New York.
Getting back out there
One foot in front of the other.
I used to walk up and down our dirt road at least once a day. The vast majority of my first 365 project’s photos were taken on these walks. Lately, though, I haven’t been summoning the energy to go out in the cold—and I haven’t found inspiration on the brown winter road.
The last couple days have been sunny and relatively warm and I’ve taken advantage of it. Here are some photos from two days of walks on our late-winter-but-maybe-spring-is-coming? road.
(I don’t always point out which gear I used for a shot, but these are all taken with my favorite combo, the Fujifilm GFX 50s ii + Mitakon 65mm f1.4.)
Forgettable photos taken too late on a previously foggy morning
On working with what you’ve got not what you want.
The thing about photography as a hobby is that the primary goal is not the photo. The photo is important. It’s the thing that keeps you motivated. If you never took photos you were proud of, you’d quickly lose interest.
The primary goal of photography as a hobby is the practice of photography. It’s learning to see things others don’t see. It’s grabbing the camera and pointing it at things, wondering if you can make something of it. It’s walking. It’s feeling the place where you are. It’s often disappointment. It’s the thrill of knowing before you even release the shutter that this one is going to be good. It’s about looking back and seeing how your photos have improved over time, about being a little surprised and proud that yeah, I took that.
I was pleased to hear Daniel from Glass reiterate (ironically) the thought that often goes through my head when viewing some peoples’ photos: if you can only get photos you’re happy to share by traveling to exotic locations where it’s fairly easy to close your eyes, point the camera, and come away with “bangers,” you’re not really growing as a photographer. But if you can walk out your front door—or hell, stay inside—and immediately see half a dozen options that might be something, you’re exercising the creative muscles necessary to grow.
When you travel, of course take your camera. Shoot a mountain or a lighthouse or a space station or something—whoever you share your photos with will love that shit. But don’t wait for a trip or the weekend or an occasion. Practice as often as you can, even if the conditions seem wrong or you missed the best light.
Sick burn
Or why you don’t DIY electrical.
Some excitement in the local grocery store strip mall parking lot over the weekend when a BMW caught fire, scorching itself entirely and peeling the paint off the Mercedes parked next to it (no one was hurt).
Rumor has it that the owner (from New Hampshire, obvs) had hooked up their own massive speaker in the trunk and that somehow caused the fire. The trunk does seem to be the source of the fire, but I prefer to think that the tunes they played were just that hot. Their only crime was playing the sickest beats without a fire extinguisher on hand.
Regardless of the real cause, let’s just assume this is a powerful reminder that you should hire a professional to do electric work—or that technology is just not ready for the kind of fiery jams celebrated in the Granite State.
My favorite part of this is how both drivers folded in their driver’s side mirror. You know, to avoid damage.
Rescued from the archive cull
Look both ways before deleting everything.
Traditionally speaking, I delete nothing. I have close to 200,000 saved emails (all read!). And I have every photo I’ve every taken.
Recently I decided I should delete unused photos en masse to free up room on my hard drives. I have been pretty good about rating keepers in Lightroom Classic as at least ★☆☆☆☆, so creating a smart collection to show me the rest was pretty straightforward.
Given my reluctance to offload anything digital on the off chance I may need it some day, I scrolled back through 30,000+ photos from the last year or so to make sure I was okay losing them forever. And of course, there were several that I had missed. I gave them a quick edit, exported, then tagged them ★☆☆☆☆ so they left the To Delete smart collection.
THIS IS WHY I DON’T DELETE ANYTHING.
Really, the lesson here is to take a little bit more time after importing. If I’m good about hitting that ‘1’ on the keyboard if there’s the slightest chance the photo might be usable, I can feel pretty confident about either deleting the rest right away—or at least giving that ongoing To Delete collection a quick look once in a while before clearing it out.
Here’s that set of rescued photos. (I’m not done reviewing yet, so there’s a good chance this post has a part two.)
In this house, we celebrate X100VI day
For those who observe.
After more than a year of checking B&H near daily to see if the Fujifilm X100V was available yet, today I caught a glimpse of something new as I was closing the search results page in frustration. “Coming soon” it said. And folks, it was the next camera in the X100 line, the Fujifilm X100VI. I hit that preorder button faster than the onset of regret after Taco Bell. Then I figured out how to pay for it.
(Wait, shouldn’t this camera series be called the XC and this one is the XCVI? As I’m reading it, this camera is the Fujifilm 96. Nice…?)
To celebrate the occasion of me actually being able to order a camera before the eBay swarm descends, I posted some X100F shots on Glass. And made this blog post. And I intend to consume all the previously embargoed X100VI content on YouTube.
But for now, here are some of my favorites from the archive from years with the X100 series.
The other side of the strip mall
Introducing my new ongoing project, Gorgeous Garbage.
After The Incident, I didn’t want to push my luck when taking my daughter to the gym. So the next time I decided to explore the other side of the strip mall to see what treasures it possessed. Eventually I wandered around behind the building.
And reader, I hit the mother lode of dumpsters. Like tons. My photos of those glorious rust buckets have helped seed a new ongoing project called Gorgeous Garbage. I collect a lot of trash photos—like someone else I know—and have wanted to compile them into a project for while.
Below are some of the other keepers from that shoot that didn’t (necessarily) fit into the trash content dynamic. All in all a good outing.
Confrontation in a Luddite town
Understand your rights before you trample mine.
Update: André forwarded me a post from a photographer who has encountered similar situations (one at a gym!). Check it out.
I’ve written before about taking every opportunity to shoot photos, like while waiting on a family member. Lately my daughter has been going to the gym, and since she’s on a learner’s permit, I tag along. While I wait, I shoot photos around the strip mall where the gym is. Some of those were featured in this post.
Today while walking around that parking lot taking the photos included below, I saw a big guy standing some ways off staring at me. Then I heard yelling. The volume increased. “What are you doing?”
I ignored it for a while because there was no reason it would’ve been directed at me. But it continued. I turned around and noticed the big guy had been joined by another, angry-looking guy who was now clearly yelling directly at me. “What are you doing over there?”
I cautiously walked toward the men, since I wasn’t going to carry on a conversation at that distance or at that volume.
“Taking photos.”
“Of what?”
“Anything. Everything. Things that are interesting to me.”
“What’s interesting in a parking lot?” The second man somehow sounded angrier than when he started yelling. He eyed my camera. He looked ready to rip it from my hands to see what was on it. Good luck with that, buddy. A GFX with Mitakon makes a good defensive weapon.
“What isn’t interesting in a parking lot?” I pointed and described a few things I’d just photographed. “That blue wall. The smoke coming out of that pipe. That old machinery.” I didn’t point out any dumpsters since I didn’t want to completely break these well-intentioned men.
This went back and forth for a while. I got a little more heated, even pulled out a classic: “Last time I checked, this was a free country.” I hate that expression, but I needed to speak their language.
The angry one was personally offended that I was walking around—“with my Fujifilm camera” (he noticed! aww)—taking photos inside (without the “of the… inside”) people’s cars. And that’s illegal! (It’s not.) And an invasion of privacy! (If it’s visible in a public place, it’s not private.) Also, I wasn’t even doing that.
It turns out that someone saw me from the gym windows one of the previous times I’d been there. They reported that I’d been taking photos of the inside of peoples’ cars. The closest example of that (I checked my library) was of a flower pot someone hanged from their rearview mirror (it was interesting, though the photo wasn’t a keeper). If I hung a planter with an actual plant in it from my car’s rearview mirror, I’d want people to notice it. The same applies to vanity plates, flame jobs, and every single antique automobile.
So… one person one time saw my lens pointed at the window of a car and now I’m angrily confronted in a parking lot. Don’t ever change, small town Maine.
The angry one wore himself out and went back inside and I was left talking to the more reasonable big guy (I think he works at the gym). He was still stuck on the photos inside peoples’ cars thing, but he did admit that I had the right to take photos of pretty much anything.
“It is a free country, but not for long. It’s going communist.”
Sigh. Don’t tease.
“If you take photos of the inside of peoples’ cars, someone in the gym might capture you doing that on their phone and you could be in real trouble.”
Sensing an opening, I decided to help the next photographer unlucky enough to land in this town and pushed back.
“I hope nobody takes my photo, that would be an invasion of privacy.” (It wouldn’t be.)
I took the last photo below (of the wonky speed limit sign, with a car’s “inside” visible) as the big guy and I walked apart-but-parallel back toward the gym. I assume that got me on a list. My daughter may need to change gyms.
To be real for a moment, though. This confrontation shook me. I go out of my way to choose subjects that no one will have a problem with, after this happened. Even peoples’ faces—perfectly legal to photograph in public places without consent—only appear in my work tangentially. If I want a human element, I shoot from the side or back of the person—or from far away. That goes against everything well-known street photographers advise for making the best work. But this is a hobby and I have a family. I’m not taking chances.
Apparently in our fucked up society, where drivers of giant pickup trucks moan about bicyclists, rich politicians whine about poor migrants, and beefy bros harass photographers in parking lots (but say nothing about the countless security cameras in the same lot, some likely piped into their own place of business), even my relative cowardice is not enough to allow me to practice my craft in peace. Some people simply don’t understand the desire to capture beauty in the mundane—a staple of some of the best photographic work.
So stay safe, but know your rights. Because no matter what you do, people are people.
January days
It’s the journey, not the sitting at home on your ass.
Stop signs. Mail trucks. Old tractors. Is there any photographic cliché I won’t photograph? Unsure.
This might not be the most unique subject material, but on these cold days, any creative outing at all is a win.
Keep getting out there. The practice is what matters.
Flood warning affects your immediate area
[turns off notifications]
Two posts in one day?! Please don’t call the best practice police.
My CARROT weather app seems to send more and more flood warnings lately and finally one of them actually affected me. We had a big rain storm last night, on top of the 12 inches of snow we had 2 days ago. The rain stopped this morning, but the temperature is high, so snow continues to melt. Suffice to say, there’s some flooding.
Our road is currently un-passable by small cars/children. Based on wading into the water, there appears to be about 6 inches on one side, 8 or 10 inches on the other. I decided to make lemonade and took some photos while I was investigating the damage.
Let me tell you, that boot shot was not easy to get with that heavy Mitakon + GFX combo. Fortunately I didn’t drop anything in the water.
I love big sensors
Insane crop still better than a phone.
Just a quick note about how convenient big sensors can be. I was able to crop to this:
From this:
And it’s completely usable for online sharing.
Also, turkeys are majestic af. Though based on how far away I was when they took flight, they’re a little chicken.