MC Rokkor 58mm f/1.4

I have three of the older era Minolta(Rokkor) lenses known as the "MC" series that would have been used on the SRT series cameras from the late 60's -early 70's. My most used an favorite is the 55mm f/1.7 which has an amazing swirly "bokeh"(or background blur) which sometimes gives a 3D look(which I've written about before). I decided to shoot a whole roll with my MC 58mm f1.4 for some comparison and to make sure I wasn't missing out on something better. Physically the lens is a little larger and is a little slower to focus. I found the resulting photos to be a tad sharper and the lens has a pleasing bokeh too - but I still prefer the unique look I get with the 55mm f/1.7. I'd have to say I'd only grab this lens if I were trying to avoid the "swirl look" for a specific reason.
The lens was on my Minolta X-700 - the film was Kodak Tri-X 400 which I developed in HC-110(b).

The Galaxy

Laura and I had dinner and a few drinks on the patio of the Galaxy Restaurant in Wadsworth last week. We both had a couple of really great burgers. If you go I'd advise taking the back roads - it was a beautiful drive through the country.

Kodak Elite Chrome 100

I shot a roll of slide film(Kodak Elite Chrome 100) for the first time. I snapped most of the roll in Peninsula. Unfortunately Kodak has discontinued all slide film production - I have a few different rolls I bought when I heard the news though. The slides are beautiful but the scans don't do them justice. My scanner didn't seem to scan them very sharp and I had to spend some time in Photoshop correcting the colors(which kind defeats the purpose of shooting film). I'm hoping to eventually buy some software that has presets for different films to save some time. I really expected that my scanner would do a better job with slides than negatives but I was let down - it did a much better job with Kodak Ektar 100...

Post Holes

Anyone who has dug a fence post hole by hand will appreciate this photo of Dave and the auger. I shot this from the John Deere 6320.

Analog

Last night I read an article in Popular Photography about photo ideas around the house - one of the ideas was making flatbed scans of three-dimensional objects. This morning when I grabbed a roll of film out of my "film-vault" I realized that a bunch of film boxes would make for a cool scan. Many of these are films I haven't shot yet but look forward to using. That's one of my favorite things about analog photography - finding out the different looks of various films. Some of the films I have pictured above aren't even made anymore....

Getting There

Here are a couple photos of some young sweet corn in the Fiedler Long Rows at Szalay's Farm. Every year I claim I will do my best to maintain this blog when farming season goes into to full effect and every year I fail. So its almost worthless for me to make that promise again even though I want too. Anyways - if you don't see me here come visit me in the Valley - we open on Friday!

Brownie and Ilford

Over the weekend I tried out a new combo(and finished it up today) of my Brownie Hawkeye Flash Model and Ilford Delta 100 film. I shot this little Brownie camera once before to do nighttime, long-exposure shots but it was with Kodak TMax 100. The nice thing about the camera is I don't have to re-spool 120 film onto 620 reels as long I use a old 620 reel as the take-up spool. There is one downside, though which is the relatively slow speed of the shutter(1/30 sec.) which means most subject movement will be blurred and a steady hand is required for sharp shots. This was my first time using Delta 100 so I developed it in HC-110(b) according to the development time listed by the manufacturer(6 minutes) and my results were really good. I'm actually pretty thrilled with this film and I might even say I like it better than TMax 100(but to be fair I'll need to run a roll of that through this camera). I was thinking that a Kodak yellow "cloud filter" would be great to bump up the contrast a little bit but I barely even had to juice that in Photoshop with this film.
Am I becoming an Ilford man? That will be determined by the prints....

 

Bluegrass band jamming at the Hartville Flea Market.