cerealjoe | Entries tagged with pix:perso

You guys! You guys! First two photos from the Smena Symbol! The whole roll is monumental in how many shots I have managed to overexpose and not get a good focus is but they're all epic. Good old Lomo! Not to show any disrespect to Dianas and Holgas out there, but Smena, yeah, they're epic.

This first ever Smena shot was actually taken by my father after I asked him to load the film in. See how excited I was about this camera?

(Smena Symbol. Fuji 200.)

And let's add another one, my dad, majorly overexposed on Rue de la République.

Look at how awkward they are and yet how they have something in them still.

Please say hello to a new addition to the family, the Zeiss Ikon Contessamat SBE. A rangefinder from 1963 and this is the first photo I took with it.

(Zeiss. Kodak 200. I love my ego.)

I am rather happy with the way the photos came out overall considering that the iris is stuck in f22. Yes, f22! It was quite hard getting my head around that as I'm usually stopping at f8. Taking photos with this camera showed me just how much I still relied on the "automatic" aperture/shutter speed calculations on the Chinon and Zenit. Here, although there is a primitive calculator that shows you when technically you're out of bounds, everything was manual. Great way to learn to work with a small aperture and to test the stability of my hands. The amount of photos which aren't too blurry is incredible even though the shutter speeds mostly went from 1/30 to 1/2. Modern cameras don't even let you use those kinds of speeds without two stabilisers...

But seriously, 1963. They don't make these kinds of things these days, do they? There really is something to be said about old school Zeiss and one day I'll convince myself that I really should spend all that money on an old school Leica, one day!

It's no secret that I have a thing for cameras that weigh as much as a brick and where the most "automatic" thing is the lightmeter "calculator" (aka a selenium photocell linked to an arrow and a bunch of circles you can move to "calculate" the settings and then set them manually on the camera), which at the time those cameras were made was a thing of beauty. It's also no secret that I fall in love with random cameras just by seeing them once and not letting them go up until I get my hands on them. And so the camera virus has struck again. This time I've been lusting after the Olympus Trip 35 because how cool is a camera that David Bailey promoted and that has a selenium photocell! Then I fell on a Smena and some part of my brain put two and two together and figured out that it was the camera my dad had told me about previously, he had one and it's the one he used when he couldn't take the Zenit with him. I actually learnt that he had two of them and the first one (8M) had a funky mechanism where you had to remember to take multiple steps before you could shoot and then he had another one where you didn't really have to (Symbol). Oh Soviet cameras, why must you hold such a huge spot in my heart!

Now I don't know which one I want, I suppose I could get both but will I really have the time to play with both? One thing at a time perhaps. I think I'll start with the Smena. We'll see. Some girls have problems with vintage shoes and clothes, I guess vintage cameras are kind up that alley too, in a way.

Till then there are also Japanese bricks like the Chinon (with some Kodak 200)! The Chinon even uses a battery... totally advanced stuff! You push a lever and it turns on a lightmeter which then makes a little arrow move and it's up to you to find a good shutter speed and aperture, based on what "look" you want, to get the little arrow to be in the middle (unless you want under or overexposed stuff, sometimes it's good too).

This is why I like these (almost) fully manual cameras, I've learnt from them so much more than I could have ever learnt from something more evolved. And look at the brilliant stuff they still produce!

( +3 - overlooking the city )

So one day you think you've got the world figured out and the next you go out for a run and take a tumble headfirst while going downhill on a rocky foresty road. Love you too world, love you too!

In the end the part that looks the worst is my left knee but actually it's my right side that took most of the fall, scraped knee, elbow, hand, thigh and hip there and a bit of a sore almost-pulled muscles.

But hey, no worries, I got back up, walked for a kilometer or a tad more and then ran the final 1.5km home and made it with a really good pace! Also I discovered that MyTracks on Android rocks, I can even get the altitude all drawn up and everything, alas I have yet to figure out how to change the axis titles and values, the minimum altitude was 118m and the maximum was 209m with a total altitude change ran of 179m over 4.5km before the tumble. It's all the more interesting that most of the races around here require being able to handle pretty rough changes in altitude.

Don't know if I'll ditch the NikeGPS+ app completely though, I'm kind of used to the lady's voice telling me how many kilometers I've ran and the time.

Day 01 // 02 // 03 // 04 // 05 // 06 // 07 // 08 // 09 // 10 // 11 // 12 // 13 // 14: my day, in great detail.

I think an "A Day In My Life" post is justified for this, so here is my Saturday, March 26th, 2011. After the analog ADIMLs, all I can say is that a digital one is a lot more time consuming, or at least seems so. With film you have one shot, with digital I had about three shots for about each photo featured and a couple more photos were completely thrown out.

Please do come in!

( +45 - as evenly spread as possible )

Sorry peeps who are also following the ADIML/DAD communities, you'll see this one repeated!

Day 01 // 02 // 03 // 04 // 05 // 06 // 07 // 08 // 09 // 10 // 11 // 12: a photo of me taken recently.

Halloes!

(Zenit. Kodak 200.)

Day 01 // 02 // 03 // 04 // 05 // 06 // 07 // 08 // 09 // 10: a silly photo of me.

Are there silly photos of me out there. Probably. But this is the interwebs and I will not willingly post silly photos of myself... although probably there are a couple of silly ones on my FB.

So here is me wearing my favourite blue hoodie, with the hood up because of mistral, as seen through my father's tiny greenhouse at the very top of the garden. Silly enough for me.

( +2 - trees make much better reflections and late night sun too )

As I've said before, sometimes research is more than frustrating. Sometimes you have to write a paper and you just don't feel like writing it, and yet you must. It brings you back to all those days back in school when those damned papers had to be written and guess what? No typed papers allowed, everything by hand. (yeah, that was a shock for me when I came to France for lycée... after years of typing up papers in middle school, bam, write everything by hand)

But the good thing is that I'm not in school anymore and that I do get to spend a tad more time on those papers. Today I reread a paragraph I wrote yesterday (why yes, sometimes you can only manage one good sentence in a day) and it is perfect. I love this feeling, I love rereading my work sometimes and thinking that, if I could, I would marry it on the spot. It makes up for all those days when I just want to bang my head against the closest wall because everything that I spew out is garbage.

Ah. The highlight of my day... and now on to some leopard print. I like how at one point someone must have thought it was a good idea.

( +2 - from the Chinon/Agfa200 combo )

Moi. Chinon CX. Kodak 200.

The new camera makes multiple exposures child's play. I can now easily pretend I am a ghost or that I have an evil twin.

Another one of those major strike days. Everyone's been back in the office for three weeks and this is already the second one... kind of gives you an idea of what the upcoming year will be like. I still remember how many times my dad had to drive us to school back in my high school days, at one point there was a bus strike for almost two weeks and then after the strike ended they went back on strike because they wanted to get paid for the original strike days. Pffff... Anywho, as I said before, people can say whatever they want about how the president is dumb, I'm not going to comment on that, but at least he got one thing right: we now have minimum service assured in terms of public transport during strikes. It might sound silly but in reality it's a huge step forward to becoming a more civilised country.

On another note, I just read an article a friend linked on FB and it was about mums who have "loser mum syndrome" where they feel like they're the worst mums ever because they didn't know that they had to do things like buy an end-of-the-year present for the kindergarten assistant. No seriously, making a mum feel a loser just because she has better things to do than suck up to an assistant in kidergarten? Call me mean/inconsiderate/whatever-you-want but a mum's job is already hard enough (considering that many mums work full time and are still expected to do most chores and take care of the children) that belittling her because she did not know the current fad in sucking up is absolutely stupid. There my two cents. I don't get this whole thing about parents feeling that they need to buy presents for teachers... what happened to just letting the kids do most of the thanking and bringing a traditional apple?

And finally, last set of first test photos from the 20mm f1.7! Woohoo!

( 3x2 more photos - night sky and darkish rooms )

A kid on Christmas morning could not be more excited than I am about this roll of film. It comes from my dad's Zenit-E (Moscow Olympics edition... yes, it's older than I am) and the roll was loaded into the camera six or seven years ago. Long story short, a couple of photos were taken then the camera just sat around for a while, I picked it up about a year ago, did not know much about film photography but took a few shots and then finally the other week I got around to finishing the roll.

That's what's great about film photography, you can discover forgotten treasures! Treasures from almost a decade ago!

Seeing how well the photos came out it really makes me want to buy a better lens for the Olympus. This Zenit-E came with the 58mm f2 lens and damn it's amazing! I've been looking at that the micro 4/3 Panasonic 50mm f2 (or even the 25mm f1.4 one) lens but it weighs by itself over 550g which is a lot more than the camera weighs! I guess I'll just continue playing with the Zenit...

Time for a trip down memory lane... Ah, and since this whole "unloading the camera" did not come without incidents there is a tiny story of how does one unload a camera that hasn't been serviced in year (or ever).

( 3x2 more photos... tiny me and spra-exposed shots )

No really. How awesome is this camera? And how awesome is my dad for having kept it all these years?

Looking at the very few photos that were taking this week-end, it appears that my father and I have different approaches to shooting people doing stuff. I seem to always try to get the action itself and my dad prefers the person rather than the action.

On the left, that's my father picking out nice looking rocks in Vuosaari and on the right, that's me after I went into the sea of bikes to detach it from the where I locked it at the front. If I had been asked to shoot a person unlocking my bike, I would have shot the person inside the sea of bikes (I had to push two bikes to even get to the front of mine and then I had to stand awkwardly sideways to unlock it). The only shots my dad took were of me just standing there. It's a whole different approach. Then again, my parents always complain that there are no clear pictures of me but I think it's kind of boring just posing for photos... and I don't own a good enough digital camera to take proper portraits. Strangely, the few portraits I took with film came amazingly well but I'm not sure my friends would like to have their pictures shared on here. Ah well. In any case, my dad went back to Marseille this past Saturday and Sunday was filled with coughing and sneezing due to allergies. I wonder what's so in bloom right now that even the rain can't make the pollen go away. On a side note, that blue top really isn't flattering in the stomach area. I had to check my stomach to make sure I hadn't gained a few centimeters of fat there... but no, thatnkfully it's just the shirt!

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Page Summary

Holy cow-mother-of-something!
1963 - the Zeiss year.
*sigh*
Meanwhile the adventures continue.
This is what happened yesterday.
Moi - c'est "moi" et c'est aussi "bonjour" en finnois.
Yes?
It must be because I ask the right questions.
Wheee!
Et un autre jour de grève survécu...
Zenit-E Olympic Edition... or how to keep Gali entertained
Number of photos taken this week-end: maybe 5 in total?

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Where is Gali(nette)?

aka The day we caught the train

Entries tagged with pix:perso

Holy cow-mother-of-something!

1963 - the Zeiss year.

sigh

Meanwhile the adventures continue.

This is what happened yesterday.

Moi - c'est "moi" et c'est aussi "bonjour" en finnois.

Yes?

It must be because I ask the right questions.

Wheee!

Et un autre jour de grève survécu...

Zenit-E Olympic Edition... or how to keep Gali entertained

Number of photos taken this week-end: maybe 5 in total?