Tristan

What a trip.

9 months of morning sickness culminated in 21 hours of labor, and now I'm a dad for the rest of my life.  I could wax poetic for days about parenthood and childhood, but this is a photography blog, so let's keep it on the rails.

I had spent some time thinking (among a lot of other things) about what camera I would have on me on the day my son would be born.  Would it be film or digital?  Big or small?  Fast or slow?


My mental image of the whole event was of a frantic mess with alarms going off and surgical tools handed back and forth (it's only kind of like that).  At first I thought it would be between the Sony RX100 and the Fuji X100S.  They're both in-the-moment quick-shot digital cameras with wide lenses and reliable sensors.

But then I thought about it some more.

I went with my dad's Minolta SR-T 303b with its 50mm f/1.4 lens.  The lens is fast but not particularly wide, and film is relatively slow compared to what digital can do these days.  It's the camera that took the photo above.  That's me, not Tristan, some 32 years ago.

I decided I didn't want speed or maneuverability or ease of use.  I wanted continuity.

All of my other film cameras were purchased used, either on eBay or at camera shops.  They all came with scratches and dings -- histories with previous owners that lost their significance when they were put up for sale.

The Minolta, though, my dad bought brand new some time in the seventies.  At the time it was a top of the line model, and a 50mm f/1.4 lens is no joke even by today's standards.  He must have had that same feeling any person would have, walking out from the store with the latest technology having spent a paycheck and a half, barely waiting to get home to get the box open.

It was his up until he handed it to me, not thinking much about giving away an old toy that had been in a box in the basement for over a decade.



And then it was alive again, loaded with new film, photographing his grandson's first day.

I had wanted to bring a rangefinder like the Leica M3 or Voigtlander Bessa because I didn't want to miss a moment to the viewfinder blackout of an SLR.  It certainly did get a little frustrating when I just didn't want to take my eyes off my son.  Also, the noise it made cut through relative quiet of the hospital room.

But that didn't matter because I didn't want an optimal camera.  I wanted an important camera.

It wasn't that big a deal anyway because I barely shot a whole roll while we were at the hospital, from when we got there to when we were discharged.  Most of the time, I could barely be bothered to blink, let alone take a photo.





By the way, the film was Fuji Neopan 400, shot at 1600 and developed in Diafine, which is new to me.  I've decided to give up on Kodak XTOL because while it's great for pushing, I get a little scared while developing each roll because it's notorious for failing without much notice.  Also, I hadn't had time to do film photography for a while, so my batch was getting old, anyway.  Diafine is a pretty carefree developer, and the results were fine for my purposes.



As for the Neopan, I've always enjoyed the way it rendered white things, and I imagined there would be lots of white in the hospital, so I pulled a precious roll from my dwindling stockpile.

It's been two and a half weeks with many, many more to go.  I'm not sure how much of Tristan you will be seeing on this blog.  This was only a fraction of the roll I took; there are a lot of shots on that roll that are too personal to share, and I imagine the trend will continue into the future.  It won't be my intention to turn this into a baby blog, but we'll see, since it wasn't my intention to turn it into a travel blog, either, which is what started happening while I was traveling.

In any case, with my kitchen renovation finished and with Tristan born and healthy, I'm hoping to be able to get back behind the camera to start making some new material with what we have left of the year!