Fuji GW690ii and Instax Film

One of my favorite things about shooting film is the physicality of it.  Along with the knowledge that your photo exists physically on a medium inside your camera after you take it, there is also the ability to do whatever you want to it and alter any part of the process.  You can put nice film in a crappy camera, and put crappy film in a nice camera.  Hell, you don't even have to be using film.  Or a camera for that matter...  Anyway, this project involved both film and cameras.  

Let me introduce you to my Fuji GW690ii.  It's a medium format camera and it shoots 6x9 cm frames onto 120 size film, which is about as big as you get shooting onto roll film.  I'm holding a frame of it in the first picture.

With all the arguments you get about full frame digital vs. crop, this camera wrecks them both.  This is one of the few things that film still holds over digital -- larger formats.  Most of the history of the film camera involved getting its size down to 35mm.

It's also a bit of a beast.  Here it is next to an 800 page hardcover and a coffee mug.  It has the nickname "Texas Leica" because it focuses by rangefinder like a Leica, but is at least twice the size and weight.

This a photo I took with it a while back in Maine, on Kodak TMax 100.  The 80mm f/3.5 lens is incredibly sharp.

Anyway, that's the camera.  I want to show you what I did with it today.  I noticed that inside the camera, there was a little rim along the film plane that just happens to perfectly fit a frame of Fuji Instax Mini instant film, so I got to thinking...

I ran to the basement and cut a piece of wood and painted it black to hold the film in place and act as a light shield.  I added a piece of wooden chopstick to fit into one of the grooves inside the camera.  I had to to get it to fit as closely as possible to prevent light leaks.  

Then, inside a changing bag, I moved a frame of unexposed film from my Instax to the GW690ii, and put the wood in place over it.  Then I ran to the living room and took a picture of my cat.

Then I ran back to the changing bag to move the undeveloped frame back from the GW690ii to the Instax, and took a dark frame with the Instax so it could spit it out and develop it.  I had to do this because of the way instant film works: the wider border on the white frame is a packet of developer fluid.  When you take a photo, the camera pushes it out and rollers in the exit slot of the camera squeeze the developer evenly across the film plane.

I had to do this twice to get it right because of the off-centered framing (the second picture was actually the first one I took).

And I did this all just because I could.  I mean, sure the GW690ii's optics are light years ahead of the Instax and I get control over exposure and a few extra stops of maximum aperture, but there's no pressing reason to load instant film into places it doesn't belong other than, as I said before, the fun of shooting analog.

I kind of wish I had more pictures to illustrate the process of getting the film from the Instax to the GW690ii and back because there were a few nuances -- there's a thin flap of plastic over the opening in the Instax cartridge where the film comes out, and you have to move that out of the way to get the film back in.  You'll also want to make sure you're loading the film in the right direction while you fumble around inside the changing bag.

This is just more of a "look what I did" post than a tutorial.  I'm not really sure how many people own this specific camera and are interested in doing this themselves, but if there's more demand, I'll do a more detailed play-by-play, including measurements for the wooden back.

Voigtlander Heliar Ultra Wide 15mm f/4.5

I have a trip to Iceland coming up in a few weeks, and intend to come back with at least one giant landscape shot, which you usually want a wider angle lens for.  I do have a 28mm f/1.9 Voigtlander Ultron that you could call "pretty wide", but what if I were to go wider?

You may have noticed that my recent color stuff has been very blue in the shadows.  I think my developer is going off.

So, I got the Voigtlander Heliar 15mm f/4.5.  Yeah, max aperture of f/4.5 is kinda considered slow, but if it were any faster, a lens this wide would have to be much, much bigger, heavier, and more expensive (okay, comparing Zeiss and Voigtlander is like comparing apples and porterhouse steak, but this is just what's on the market).

Anyway, the Heliar comes with an external viewfinder because there's no rangefinder with an internal viewfinder that would ever cover 15mm.

I was super excited to put it to use.  Wide angle means exaggerated perspective lines, wild distortion (not of the barrel/pincushion sort), tons of context, and being able to photograph the entire Flatiron building from across the street...

...and then I quickly realized how tough this thing is to use.  I took it out to the High Line and the Flatiron district for a test run.

On the M3 with no TTL meter, I encountered my first hurdle: exposure.  There is just so much stuff in the frame that you have that many more things to consider exposing for.  Background or foreground?  Land or sky?

These are normal decisions to have to make with any focal length, but if you were to stand in the middle of a city block and point it across the street, you can fit the entire block in the frame, and all of its different lighting situations.  It didn't help that I was shooting Kodak Ektar, which is very contrasty.

Another problem: my finger.

There were two shots where my left index finger was in the frame.  The lens is just so short and wide that if you're fiddling with the focus when you take the picture, it'll catch it in frame.  

Luckily, the lens is so wide that the depth of field is enormous, even at f/4.5.  After a while I learned to just focus it to 10 feet and leave it alone.  Everything from background to foreground would be in focus.

Size comaprison.  Left to right: Voigtlander Heliar 15mm, Voigtlander Ultron 28mm, Leica M3 body

Lastly with the ultra wide angle: blocking out the noise.  There are so many people in the city and so much text and advertisement all over the place that sometimes it's hard to get the point across of what you're taking a picture of.  Unless you're right up in your subject's face (in the Flatiron building pic, I was about 8 feet away from the guy and still got him all the way in frame), or you set up a lot of stuff to frame it in, it will certainly get lost.  

So, this lens has got me kind of scared.  I've shot lenses as wide as 23mm, but I had no idea what I was in for with this.  The field of view feels really unnatural.  

Normally I'm able to imagine framelines before I bring the camera to my eye, but it's pretty much impossible with this lens because for the most part it would be wider than anyone's eye can see, so I have to take time swiveling my eyes around to look at the hundred things I'm about to take a picture of and figure out how to arrange them into a photograph.

I expect things to be much better when we get to Iceland where there are no skyscrapers creating awkward lighting situations.  It is difficult to use this lens in the city, but that's not to say it will just bad photos in the city.  

On the contrary, if you can find those rare opportunities in the city where you can really bring the wide angle under control, you will end up with rare photos.

Voigtlander Vito II

My uncle had a few film cameras he'd found here and there and online and he lent me two of them to see what kind of shape they were in.  One of them is a Voigtlander Vito II, which I ran a test roll of TMax 400@1600 through.

I already have a bunch of gear marked "Voigtlander" but it's from a completely different era.  The Voigtlander name (I'll be lazy about the umlaut) has been around since 1756, founded in Austria as a mathematical instruments company that made astrolabes and quadrants for nautical navigation, and then moving on to optics in the 1800's.

Since then, the brand has been bounced around from Zeiss in 1956, to Rollei in 1972, and finally to Cosina in Japan in 1999.  This model was produced in 1949, and aside from needing a tuneup, it's working pretty okay.

It's a bellows folder camera that takes 35mm film with a 50mm f/3.5 lens.  The lens itself is alright -- it's got the usual old school quirks like the "glow" and the soft corners.

Pretty much everything happens on that front assembly -- you cock the shutter, set the shutter speed and aperture, focus, and shoot on the front of the camera.  The only thing that happens on the back is winding the film with the big knobs on top.

The cool thing is that it folds up and goes right in your pocket.  I wouldn't exactly call it a quickdraw camera, but the operation is actually really easy and one-button.

My Voigtlander Bessa R2A is a rangefinder, but on this camera the viewfinder is basically just a hole through the camera like on the Holga.  You have to "zone focus" it -- you look at the front of the camera, set the focus to a certain distance, and walk about that distance from the subject, and then you take the picture.  Zone focusing basically a fancy way to say, "just eyeball it".  It gets easier when you use smaller apertures like f/8, which is why I'm pushing the TMax.  Also, you get used to counting sidewalk segments and crosswalk lines.

The thing about this particular camera is that the front assembly has a bit of a wobble, so I have to hold it in place while shooting.  Sometimes I forget, and the focus goes off a la tilt-shift.  I'm sure there's just a screw somewhere in there that needs tightening, but I'm not going to tinker with a camera I don't own.

Anyway, it was fun messing around with the Vito II.  Getting to handle all these different types of cameras might seem like a bit of a hassle, but it's all an effort to become gear-independent.  Whether I'm shooting film or digital or wide or telephoto, I'm hoping to find my stylistic thumbprint in the chaos.

Neopan at 1600

Some more Fuji Neopan 400, pushed two stops to 1600.  I shot this a while ago with the Leica M3 and a mix of the 50mm Zeiss Planar and the 28mm Voigtlander Ultron.

Man, this was a while ago.  There was a shot on this roll I had taken during the 2014 World Cup.

 It's truly a shame that Fuji decided to discontinue this film.  When you push it, the contrast really embraced the concept of "black and white".  You would always have positive and negative, and none of the boring grey stuff in the middle.

At the same time though, it really pushed the need for balance.  Think yin and yang.