Posts

Aero Ektar Magic

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Kodak Aero Ektar 178mm f/2.5 was a world war 2 era lens adopted to work with Graflex Speed Graphic 4x5 Camera with a focal plane shutter. I have seen this lens being used with Sinar Shutter & other third party shutters with other 4x5 cameras. Although I own a Sinar shutter, I like shooting this with Speed Graphic because it makes a beautiful, portable pair. The lens needs to be adopted to work with Speeds, the main component of this process is getting the lensboard to fit. Jo Lommen  makes lensboards to fit a couple of Speed versions, which is I what I use my Aero Ektar with. This combination when shot wide open is a bokeh machine. It creates such a dreamy look, it makes the pictures look 3 dimensional almost. Hopefully I get use this combo more in my photography.

Some of My Last Kodachrome Pictures

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I am not a big 35mm fan but Kodachrome was something else (I only could my hands on 135 format).It was an excellent film to use Hexanon 57mm f/1.2 + Konica T3 combo. These days I mostly shoot and develop E-6 slides. RIP Kodachrome.

Large Format Love

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I absolutely love shooting large format cameras. The process of shooting one takes me to the basics of photography. No auto exposure, no metering, no auto focus..nothing. Actually it's just a black box with the lens on one end and film on the other. The view that appears on the ground glass is inverted. As a photographer one is forced to think and make all the decisions involved in the picture making process. So at the end of it you feel like, you are in charge (which is great for control freaks like me!). Because I process all the film that I shoot on my own, I have complete control over the creative process from shooting to development to scan/print stage. This gives a lot of flexibility and room for experimentation. Personally for me one major factor that sets the large format cameras apart from others is the camera movements. The front and rear standards of the camera allow shift, tilt, swing, rise and fall (Hopefully I can blog about camera movements in future). The large neg

Return to Film Photography

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When most people transitioned from film to digital, I returned to shooting film. Like most photographers I started photography with film and was comfortable with 35mm photography. I did get a digital camera when those became affordable and eventually landed in dSLR land. After shooting digital for a few years, I was beginning to get the feeling that I was burning out with my photography. I wanted to do something different, away from pixel world. I got an excellent deal on a medium format camera and bought it. It was a Mamiya RZ67 ProII (pictured below). I loved the big negatives the medium format camera produces. It was a world of a difference from my 35mm days. After looking at some 6x7 slides, I was convinced that film photography is what I need to pursue again mainly in bigger formats. Since then I have acquired several cameras... Hasselblad, Rolleiflex, Sinar F2, Speed Graphic 4x5 and even a Holga.

Reviving a Dead Blog

Okay so my blog was mostly dead. I was cleaning up my bookmarks in Safari, found the old link to the blog and thought I'd try to revive it. I don't know how frequently can I blog but sure will make an attempt to update it. It was weird reading what had written four years ago and compare it with my current photography philosophy.  Certainly a lot of things have changed, I got back to film and have been mostly shooting medium and large formats. I will add more posts about those. Also in general I have figured what I like shooting and what makes me happy in photography. So watch for it!