Return of the Espio Returns (2): fully automated

As mentioned previously (here, here, and here), the Pentax Espio 35-70 AF Zoom is a fully automatic camera. I’ve cursed some of its automation in those earlier articles, but if you make some peace with it, accept (and understand its limitations) and just shoot, you can make some pictures with it.

In fact, I think one of my favorite pictures of 2015, and maybe one of my best ever, came out of this camera, out of just letting the camera do its thing and paying attention to making pictures… Continue reading “Return of the Espio Returns (2): fully automated”

Return of the Espio Returns (1): Kentmere 100 @ 320

If you recall, a couple of weeks ago, I experimented a bit with scratching the a couple of bits of paint off of the film canister to change the DX codes and fool the Espio into thinking it was shooting 320 speed film, rather than the 100 that the Kentmere was originally coded at. I didn’t have any need for 320 speed film, and in fact I had a roll of HP5+ that I could’ve shot with no problem, but after pushing the Kentmere 400 to 1600, I wondered how the 100 would do and just wanted to experiment a bit.

Well, the experiment worked! Alhamdulillah! Continue reading “Return of the Espio Returns (1): Kentmere 100 @ 320”

Converting Negatives the Easy Way!

While struggling to get through a backlog of negatives, and only due to the will and mercy of Allah azza wa jall, I remembered a discussion about color correction with the levels panel and decided to give it a try. After only 5 or 6 minutes, I realized that this a much better method than the one I used before and I made this quick video in hopes that it would help someone.

https://youtu.be/mxPql5ED2v0

Thanks for watching!

Photobooks of the year? – Dave Heath – ‘Multitude, Solitude’ / Ivars Gravlejs – ‘Early Works’

I’m a bit of a sucker for the photo book of the year lists… When some photographer or critic that I admire picks a book of the year, I’m likely to be entering my Paypal password before I even realize it, and I end up with something that may or may not be my cup of tea, whether or not I have any idea what my cup of tea is or isn’t. I’m starting to get an inkling of what I like, and I’m starting to have some opinions of things too, and they’re not merely based on what some critic or photographer claimed in some blog post or podcast that quietly slipped into the ether along with everything else (and along with this blog post, which likely won’t even make a blip on any imaginary radar anywhere).

In sha’Allah I’m going to try to limit my impulse photobook purchases in 2016. They get expensive after awhile, and I needs me some film, a backup (or primary) film body and a proper macro lens long before I need another photobook that I might or might not even look at again. And so, since these unboxing videos might come a bit more infrequently in 2016, I’ll get the year started off right and give some comments and thoughts to these two: Multitude, Solitude: the photographs of Dave Heath and Early Works by Ivars Gravlejs.

Continue reading “Photobooks of the year? – Dave Heath – ‘Multitude, Solitude’ / Ivars Gravlejs – ‘Early Works’”

Square Print face-off: Artifact Uprising vs. Parebo

I’ve had a nebulous desire to start printing some of my photographs for several years, but haven’t really had the funds or the impetus to do much of anything about it. Sure, I jumped on a couple of groupons and printed a couple of books for gifts, but good printing can get expensive and a good printer, while reasonable enough, comes with the additional—and often insane—cost of ink. So when VSCO offered users 25 “free” prints from its Artifact Uprising subsidiary (just pay shipping), I jumped at the chance to see some of my more recent pictures in print. I quickly found 5 pictures with some tenuous relationship to one another, put them on my phone, ran them through the SquareReady app (sadly, and somewhat strangely, square prints require square images: it seems like it would be easy for apps to letterbox rectangular images, but nope), and then loaded them into the Artifact Uprising app. It was a bit tricky to figure out how to get 5 of each—the app is really designed for you to add 25 different square pictures—but once I found the FAQ and figured out how to follow its instructions, it was pretty easy.

My plan was to write about the experience and give a set of prints to whoever wanted them, but then Parebo Press—part of the Photojojo empire—offered the same thing: 25 “free” prints, just pay shipping. I didn’t read the description carefully (or at all, really) and jumped on the deal, thinking that the Parebo prints would be similar to those from Artifact Uprising and hoping to give away an edition of 10, rather than the 5 I planned on initially.

The process with Parebo was similar: download the app, load images onto the phone, select images, find it difficult to select multiples of the same image, read the FAQ, try again, and then order—and the prints arrived rather quickly, but that’s where the similarities end. Continue reading “Square Print face-off: Artifact Uprising vs. Parebo”

Kentmere 100 @320?

After the fun I had pushing the K400 to 1600, I wanted to try pushing the 100 to 400, but the Espio is a fully automatic camera: it has no manual ISO dial and instead reads the DX codes on the film canisister and sets the ISO automatically.

According to various sources, it’s supposed to be easy to just scratch off the paint and fool your automatic camera, and thankfully, Wikipedia lists the DX codes, so…

Say “Bismillah” and go for it! Continue reading “Kentmere 100 @320?”