recap: south america

after having _NOTHING_ to do last night i started poking through a few old pictures i had un-postprocessed from the last trip to south america. two examples:





i find myself cropping more and more to the 3:4 format. maybe it's time for me to pick up a 645 camera?

session: kristofer

i spent monday in my friends fathers studio. thanks for lending it to us. anyway, my friend (the same) wanted me to shoot him before he got rid of his beard. this was my first time in a real studio; technically it wasn't very difficult, but controlling the light was. i need to get myself a bit of gear and start practicing.



my original idea was to have a soft even light over the face, originating directly from the sides of the face. i DID NOT want to do a portrait 101. this turned out to be harder then expected. in retrospect, maybe i should have put the strobes a bit further away from the face.



update: a few more pictures:

i've uploaded a few more pictures from the session:





in color:

the island

heading down to öland, the small island in the baltic sea where i was born and raised. gonna visit my parents who still live there.

wanna see how it looks? poke through the following set;



and btw, today is my birthday. happy birthday to me.

from russian with light leaks

so, i finally got around to develop the first roll that i passed through the fed. the result? decent sharpness, but some odd light leaks in the middle of the frames;



likely guess is that the cloth-shutter is a bit on the bad side. i'll try to cock the shutter right before taking the picture, and not right after as i usually do. some suggest to paint the cloth with some black paint. but i need to pinpoint the exact leakage before i do that.

anyhow, i brougth it to a concert with nasir jones last night. ran a t-max 400, exposed it at f2.8, 1/125, and pushed to 1200. decent result, but the focus was way off. rangefiners are hard to control in low light situations. some turned out ok:

from russia with love

finally, it arrived;



a fed-2 that i bought on ebay for a few dollars. it was stuck at the post office for a few weeks becuase i gave the wrong address to the seller. my bad. anyhow; the overall condition is nice, but the lens feel a bit shaky. we'll see when i develop the first roll. feels good to have a decent small format camera, even though my ikoflex is rather small, i like to have something i can hold to my face, better for crowded situations. maybe i will bring it to the concert (nasir jones) tonight. i have no 3200 film, but i suppose i could run some 400 film and push it. just for fun.