After scouring Ebay for a couple weeks, I eventually found a Rolleiflex Automat MX-EVS with a Carl Zeiss Tessar 75mm f/3.5 lens. It was in pretty amazing condition. This particular model was made between 1952 and 1956, and was the first model to couple the shutter speed and aperture dial according to Exposure Value (hence EVS). Rolleiflex's in particular are built like tanks, and are a thing of mechanical beauty. The way everything perfectly fits together and the smooth, solid movements of the knobs and switches are just spectacular.
Read MoreAncient Film /
Last time, I was explaining how I became the proud owner of a darkroom setup, and how I came to receive all my awesome loot. Part of that package was a Watson bulk film loader. For those of you who don't know, rather than buying a bunch of individual rolls, you can purchase a 100ft spool of film and, with reusable film canisters, roll your own film. There's a slight economic benefit to this - at Bluemoon Camera and Machine, a 100ft roll of Ilford HP5+ is $67.50. When you roll it yourself, you get can around 20 rolls or so, which makes it $3.37 a roll vs $6.10 individually. Anyway, the Watson roller provides a light proof compartment, as well as a light trap so you can safely roll your film.
Read MoreDarkroom Finds /
For quite some time now, I have been toying with the idea of setting up a darkroom in my bathroom. Developing and printing gives you that extra latitude to control your exposures, be it from pushing/pulling in development or dodging and burning. It also gives you an added economic benefit. Not so long ago, I purchased a roll of Fuji Provia 400x at the tune of around $17 for the roll. 35mm Kodak Portra goes at almost $10. And this does not include the cost of developing and scanning (around $9-$15, with the high end for E-6 and B+W). As you can probably tell, it adds up quickly, and I really wanted to find a way to minimize these costs.
Read MoreThe Launch and the First Blog Post /
Finally, after being on my to-do list for months, I created a website for photography! And it's up and running! I believe under the influence of New Years eve celebration spirits, I made a resolution to create a new website. The second day into the new year, I can already mark one off the list. Thank you SquareSpace for making the process easy, yet with a beautiful end-result. I definitely recommend their service for your website creation needs. www.squarespace.com
Next, I haven't authored a blog post since my Xanga account... (Remember Xanga? This was probably senior year of high school for me...I wonder if they are still in business). But, now that I am older and wiser, I will spare you of my whiny teenage angst. In this blog, I hope to include updates of new photos, adventures, photo projects, and new (new to me anyway) and exciting photography equipment. So I hope you add this to your RSS feed, Google reader, or whatever you use to keep track of people.
That is all for this post. Thanks for reading!
Next post will be about my new darkroom equipment, which i promise will be far more interesting.