Snow, point-and-shoots, and film

Shooting some Kentmere on a snowy walk

Olympus XA2 + Kentmere 400

It’s been an absolutely abysmal winter here in NW Montana, although I guess in comparison the rest of the West we’re doing better than a lot of other states. But in the last few days we’ve had some snowfall so me and the wife took the resident monster to the woods for a romp, but before we left we grabbed the XA2 and a roll of Kentmere 400.

The XA2 is fun, I’ve said this before. And Jess absolutely loves it for the incredible simplicity of the shooting experience. I’ve also said all this before. I will say some things I dislike a little bit is the 35mm fixed focal length and lack of control over the shutter speed and aperture. So, you know, most of the things that make the XA2 the XA2. But if you want a little camera you can slide in your pocket that’s capable of delivering pretty usable results in a pretty easy to use point-and-shoot format, it’s hard to go wrong with. I’ve written some more about the camera itself in a blog post here if you’re interested in reading more about that little camera.

It’s good to see some semblance of winter come back. We actually got a day of skiing in up at the Nordic trails up at Big Mountain. I don’t know how long it’ll stick around, probably a couple days. It’s supposed to get back in to the 40’s here soon. But that’s about it for this short little update.

Rangefinder malaise, or Leicas vs Cheap old DSLRs

Wherein I ramble about shooting rangefinders

Leica M262 + Leica 50/2.8

I’ve been using a rangefinder camera for a long time at this point. The vast majority of files in my Lightroom catalog have been shot with either the Leica M262 or on film with the Leica M4-2. I’ve made thousands of photographs with these tools. For the longest time shooting a rangefinder felt like second nature but I’ve noticed lately that I’ve begun to struggle with it. In both of my most recent outings with the M4-2 (see the last post) and this outing with the M262, using the Leicas has felt a little uncanny or at least mildly frustrating.

Shooting a rangefinder is an interesting experience in that when one looks through the viewfinder what one is seeing is basically the world in front of you with frame lines superimposed on top of it. This makes for a shooting experience that feels very loose, and open, for lack of better language. You see something, you look through the viewfinder and put the box around it and snap a photograph, and you move on. Of course you can put more thought and concern in to the framing process but overall the entire thing is a little loose.

That looseness is something that I used to really enjoy because it facilitated a very fluid kind of shooting that allowed one to shoot quickly and in the moment, so to speak. But I’ve found that as I become more and more intentional about the way I’m framing images and thinking about how to compose images I prefer the “sucked-in” experience of an SLR. I think this is part of why I’ve been shooting my old Canon 5D so much, in addition to just loving the output from that camera.

This all feels a little weird, having had such a long relationship with a specific tool that suddenly starts to feel a little uncanny. It’s like your favorite screwdriver that you’ve been using for decades suddenly has a chip in the handle and what once felt like an invisible implement now intrudes in to your awareness because of some now-perceived defect. Of course I’m aware that this is a stupid problem to have. Does it really matter that I’ve started to enjoy shooting an SLR more than a rangefinder? No, of course not. They’re both cameras, they’re both just tools. Who cares, go make fucking photos and stop worrying about it, you know? But nevertheless, I feel the need to talk through it and sort it out in my brain. And it’s an excuse to fill the space on a blog post and put some photos up, so here we are!

Thanks for listening to my rambling nonsense and looking at some pictures!

The Winter of Our Discontent, or January on Kentmere 400

On how black and white film is beautiful

Leica M4-2 + Zeiss 50/2

The other morning I’d pulled out a roll of Kentmere 400 with the intention of loading it in the Zorki and taking it for a walk. And then somewhere along the way that roll of film ended up in the Leica because loading the Zorki seemed like a pain (it is kind of annoying, like loading Barnack Leicas, but it’s also really not that bad). It might also be because I like the option to put the Zeiss or the Leica Elmar on the front of the M4-2 and not have to think about whether or not the Industar on the Zorki is going to pull off the images in the way I’m looking for it to without flaring like mad or introducing weird distortions, etc.. Either way, I ended up taking a walk with the Leica on a late sunny morning.

I shot the film at box speed but overexposed it by about a stop most of the time so it was kind of like shooting it at 200. I developed it at box speed in Ilfotec HC 1+31. I’d been waxing nostalgic about how beautiful black and white film is specifically when it comes to black and white work and the end results here kind of indicate that it’s not purely nostalgia or staring at my catalog of scans for too long. It does just look really nice. There’s a certain subtlety of tones in black and white film that’s really hard to get right on digital black and white for some reason. The sensor on the M262 can pull it off well enough especially when shooting a low contrast old lens like the Elmar 50/2.8. But on a lot of digital cameras it seems to take a lot of finagling to massage the tones to get anywhere close to as beautiful and nuanced as film.

I think it’s also telling that I have 10 rolls of color film in my fridge and when I grabbed some film to shoot a film camera again I grabbed the black and white film… I think it says more about my trepidation about getting everything set up for the C41 development, if I’m honest. I’ll get there eventually, I think… But for now it was nice to shoot some black and white and remember the beauty of good old black and white film.