Analog film photography from America's Midwest.
This is my workhorse film camera the Bronica SQa. When I post contact sheets and the images are square they were shot with this camera. It’s one of the cheaper modular medium format slr cameras out there and one of the few available in 6×6. They were the go-to cameras for middle market wedding photographers for decades and many have a lot if miles on them but refuse to die.
I think the image quality is great. I’ve done 16×20 enlargements negatives from
Does film or digital have better resolution? The debate has been raging since the first professional 6 MegaPixel cameras hit the market. Now with 20 or more MegaPixels, digital is still playing catchup. I personally have made 20×30 prints from less than 20MP images with great success, I’ve also been surprised at how well a 35mm negative prints at 16×20. The reason digital is so enlargeable is in its smoothening, edge sharpening, and interpolation. Most all digital cameras have
Today’s camera from the camera collection is a Pilot 6. Originally I was trawling eBay for a Great Wall 6×6 medium format camera. After doing some research I found out that the Great Wall was an upgraded Chinese version of the German Pilot 6. I did some searches for the Pilot 6 and came across this little guy incorrectly listed as a box camera. It’s actually an early SLR. Needless to say I got it for a song and started acquainting myself with this 1937 wonder. It is hands down
Here we have the Canon EPOCA 135. A 35mm camera that was so revolutionary at the time, so bizarre, it won a spot in the New York Museum of Modern Art. Designed to be a one-handed super zoom it’s a 38-135mm point and shoot. The built in zooming flash isn’t half bad. Another interesting feature is the selectable waist level finder. Shooting with this camera onlookers will ask you variants of “Is that a video camera?” No. It’s the film camera design camcorders copied.
Posing women to look their best is a skill and one that Scott Church has developed thoroughly. In this video Church takes the viewer through some great examples of glamor posing using a bed as a setting. He goes through several solid poses that are easy to transition between. In just a few minutes you can consistently get some great, solid shots. These poses are directly applicable to pinup photography. All you would need to do is put in
Here is the pride and joy of my location lighting kit. It’s an Armatar 100.
Back in the 1980s a TV repairman in New Jersey I believe churned these out (Joseph Armato IIRC). It’s essentially a Vivitar 283 with a bare bulb added, the stock battery and flashbulb compartments stuffed with extra capacitors (more power!), the stock base removed and replaced with a HH sync connector and a metal cold shoe with 1/4 20 threads in it.
On this one you can see I replaced the stock (surprisingly
If you live anywhere near one of the Great Lakes and you shoot film, this is THE annual event to be at! Produced by Bill Schwab, it is truly phenomenal. It’s reasonable to expect around 100 attendees most of whom shoot and print film photography. There is also a high concentration of alt process photographers doing wet plate photography (there are also platinum/palladium printers, gum over bichromate, and others).