Hasselblad CF 120mm f4 Makro-Planar

Over a year ago I decided to treat myself to a new lens in the form of the Hasselblad 120mm f/4 Makro-Planar. The COVID pandemic was in the beginning stages, I was learning a new job, and life was just all around a little bit stressful. That’s just a long winded way of saying I felt like I deserved it.

Oddly, the lens ended up sitting on a shelf with very little use. Longer portrait length lenses have never been a big part of my camera gear and even though I brought it with me to a few photo sessions, I didn’t pull it out and use it at all. I suppose I just wasn’t ready to look at the world through a different focal length.

On a recent session however I decided the lens sat unused for long enough and I brought it with me without any other lenses. After looking at the results I feel a little silly for waiting for so long!

The lens is sharp as all heck and there is definitely a very pleasing 3-D effect working with such a long focal length. I made this particular image wide open at f/4 and I think the sharpness from edge to edge of the frame is really obvious. I’ve got to say I’m really impressed and I’m looking forward to using this lens on some future sessions.

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Landscapes of the Oregon Dunes

Life is slowly evolving for me with a lot of new beginnings as the world continues on with a pandemic looming over everything. I started a new job this past week, which will ultimately be a very good thing. In the short term however it means a lot of adjustments in life and it might be a little while until I get a new routine going. Hopefully however, this new job will leave me with more time to do creative things like make more photographs!

So for now I’ll leave this image here on the blog from my trip out to the Oregon Dunes a while back. This image was made with my old trusty Minolta SRT-101 and Kodak Tri-X film. The original negative is very grainy and I was probably using film that was way too fast in terms of ISO for this particular location, but that is ok. I still like the way it turned out.

I’ve mentioned it several times on this blog, but I need to make it a point to get back out to the Oregon Dunes in the very near future. It calls to me sometimes…

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Theresa Manchester on Black and White Film

For my first post of 2020 I present an image I made with Theresa Manchester during a quick photo session on the north end of Portland. I’ve done a lot of work with Theresa over the years and I always value the time we spend being creative together. Our sessions always seem to be an even mixture of firing off frames with the camera and just chatting about every random topic a person can imagine; from camping on the coast, to road trips, to our favorite stores to go grocery shopping.

In other words, it’s like hanging out with your pal while also making lovely photographs.

This image was made with a Mamiya M645 1000s. I’m not using that particular camera much anymore because I tend to favor the Hasselblad a bit more. Still, I spent years working with Mamiya equipment and I highly recommend anyone who is thinking about getting into medium format to give Mamiya cameras a consideration. Mamiya lenses tend to have a nice sophisticated yet gritty quality when paired with Kodak Tri-X film.

The lighting situation for this frame was obviously a bit of a challenge. It was 100% lit from behind the model on a gray and overcast day. To keep as much detail as humanly possible in the shadow areas of the frame I developed this roll in Rodinal at 1:100 for 45 minutes. It came out exactly how I hoped!

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