Black and White Film

Panon Widelux F8 - First Roll

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The Panon Widelux camera is a machine I’ve long been interested in checking out. For those reading this who have never heard of the Widelux, in a nutshell it is a 35mm camera with a rotating front lens that gives a mind blowing 140 degree viewing angle and a negative that is roughly twice the width of a standard 35mm frame. It’s one of those cameras that truly transforms the world around you when you look through the viewfinder. The images are so wide when using the Widelux the photographer has to hold the camera at the top and bottom, not the sides, otherwise you’ll get your own fingers in the frame. I had quite a few bad images on my first test roll because I instinctively gripped the Widelux with my right hand like I would any other camera.

Photographed with a Panon Widelux F8 and Fomapan 100 35mm film.

Famous actor Jeff Bridges is well known in the photographic community for using a Widelux. You can check out his website here and it is worth a look if you’re thinking about buying a Widelux for yourself. He has a lot more experience with the Widelux than I do and his photographs are quite good. He’s also got some great tips and tricks on his website worth considering if you want to buy a Widelux for yourself.

I first encountered the Widelux in my college days when I saw a series of work one of my Professors was working on with the camera. I thought it was insanely cool but I was also hesitant to pick one up for myself for nearly two decades. The Widelux is notorious for being a little unreliable and incredibly difficult to work on. A lot of repair shops won’t even touch the thing.

Photographed with a Panon Widelux F8 and Fomapan 100 35mm film.

The camera I purchased from eBay clearly has a shutter swing that is running on the slow side. Given the cameras age and the amount of gearing it takes for the Widelux to work I’m not totally surprised. I compensated for that when I made the images on my first test roll so the images turned out more or less fine. I had to do some post production work when scanning my negatives because they were clearly a big “overcooked” but nothing I wouldn’t be able to do in an analogue darkroom.

Photographed with a Panon Widelux F8 and Fomapan 100 35mm film.

However, if I’m going to dive into this strange world of Widelux photography I’d rather have a camera that is in tip-top shape. So I’ve immediately sent the camera off for a tune-up and I’m eagerly awaiting its return. I waited nearly two decades to buy a Widelux so I can certainly wait a few more months to have a sample that works perfectly. Hopefully, like most mechanical 35mm cameras, once it goes through a good CLA (Clean, Lubricate, and Adjust) it’ll work nicely for the foreseeable future.

Photographed with a Panon Widelux F8 and Fomapan 35mm film.

The unique “swivel” of the lens allows for some very unique creative opportunities, especially at slow shutter speeds. At 1/15th of a second the lens takes a few seconds to swing from one side to the other. Moving the camera or moving the subject (in the last image on this post, that subject is myself) along with the movement of the lens can be really fun. When I get the camera back from repair I’ll probably do a lot of experimenting with this. It’ll be a unique way to approach figure studies on film.

Even though I’ve only dabbled with the Widelux F8 so far I can already tell I’m going to enjoy this camera a lot.

Polaroid I-2 and a Hasselblad

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I’ve been a long time fan of making photographs with instant film. Anyone who works with instant film stocks knows it can be a frustrating thing to adore. Over the years the creative community has lost a lot of choices. Everything from the original SX-70 film stocks that could be manipulated while the image was exposing, Type 85 and Type 55 positive/negative film, peel apart pack films from both Polaroid and FujiFilm, the list goes on and on and on. Heck, I even once had the opportunity to work with the massive 20x24 Polaroid camera in a San Francisco studio.

It can be a little sad to think about quite honestly.

Photographed with a Polaroid I-2 and Polaroid 600 black and white film.

It’s a rare event when instant film users get thrown a very serious bone and today’s iteration of Polaroid did just that when they recently released the Polaroid I-2 camera. This post isn’t meant as a review of that camera, there is plenty of that elsewhere on the internet, but in a nutshell for the first time in a long while we have a brand new camera we can buy today with a quality lens and some creative control over exposure. In a very short amount of time it has replaced my trusty vintage Polaroid SX-70 as my instant camera of choice. I never thought I’d be saying that in the year 2024 so hey, good things do happen!

Photographed with a Hasselblad 500c/m and Ilford Delta 120 film.

It is a really common practice for me to expose a few Polaroid prints during photo sessions. I’ll often ask the people I’m working with to hold a pose for just a few more seconds so I can take a snapshot of the scene. Sometimes I’ll give those prints away on the spot to the model. Sometimes I’ll keep them as a quick visual diary of the work I’m doing at the time. Very rarely will I share them on the internet. Instant prints don’t quite have the same power and magic when scanned and shared on a digital screen in my opinion. That’s just part of their charm and power and it is one of the many reasons I like them. Not everything needs to be posted on-line after all.

Still, I thought this was a fun comparison. This isn’t meant as a test to determine which image is better. More of just a reflection that different materials and different mediums can have vastly different vibes and emotions from the same scene.

First Photo Session In The Sun

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It felt really good to do my first photo session of the year in full bright sun. I don’t know what it is about this year, but maybe for the first time ever the long gray winter was bringing me down a little bit. So getting some vitamin D on my skin with a camera in tow and working with one of my favorite people, St. Merrique, all equaled a really good day.

Photographed with a Hasselblad 500c/m and Rollei RPX 100 in medium format.

We got started a little later in the morning that I typically would have liked. I’m a little bit of a monster in that sense as I like to get started around 5am whenever possible. What can I say? I like that golden early morning light with dramatic shadows. Not to mention it is far and away easier to avoid people in the early morning hours. In this case we hit the road at 9am and by the time we got out to Rooster Rock to start exposing images the sun was a bit high in the sky and burning brightly. Not in any way what-so-ever the end of the world though. Heck, in many ways the bright overhead light is what made these photographs interesting.

Photographed with a Hasselblad 500c/m and Rollei RPX 100 in medium format.

Whenever I work with Merrique I like to use at least one roll of Rollei RPX 100. Aside from being a model, Merrique is a talented photographer as well and we’ve had long poetic conversations about how beautiful Rollei film is, making it one of our favorite films despite its relatively high costs. It’s only fitting. Developed in Rodinal, Rollei RPX gives a silver rich look with plenty of tonal range that looks completely glorious in print. I added just a touch of contrast with these by adding a light yellow filter to the front of the lens.

I plan on going into the darkroom in the next few weeks and printing these images. I think they’re going to look really great in a classic frame with an off white matte.

Hasselblad 150mm f/4 "Portrait" Lens

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I’ve been using the Hasselblad 500c/m for most of my work the past six or seven years now. As a complete camera system it checks most boxes for me. The camera itself is relatively light (for a medium format camera), the ergonomics feel intuitive, and the the overall system itself is capable of doing just about every subject I have an interest in exploring. Maybe best of all, the available lenses on the “V System” are all rather excellent. All the samples I have tried of every focal length have had a performance level that far exceeds my own skills as a photographer.

Photographed with a Hasselblad 500c/m and Ilford HP5 120 film.

Like most people who buy a Hassselblad 500c/m (or any other camera in the V S System lineup) my copy came with the standard 80mm f/2.8. This is the lens I’ve used for about 85% of the work I’ve done with the camera. It’s one of those lenses that sets the benchmark for all the others. It’s sharp, contrasty, has really nice bokeh, and is so common that picking one up isn’t a huge financial flex. The focal length is considered “normal”, i.e. it has a field of view relatively close to the human eye. If want to work with a Hasselblad, this is probably the place to start and I wouldn’t be surprised if it lived on your camera body most of the time.

That being said, over the years I’ve acquired a few other lenses for my Hasselblad kit. Typically I’ve only pulled out my wallet when I’ve come across good deals that are hard to pass up. There is a lot of used Hasselblad gear floating around out there and with some patience deals can be found. For example, I picked up the 150mm f/4 lens for about $250 from a seller on Facebook who was just looking to dump his gear in favor of the latest and greatest Fuji digital point and shoot. Ok cool, at that price it is worth a try right?

Photographed with a Hasselblad 500c/m and Ilford FP4 120 film.

At 150mm this is a focal length with medium format that is considered a portrait lens. It’s a short tele-photo that makes it easy to fill a frame with someone’s head and shoulders while also getting a good amount of background blur. Normally I like to get a bit more of the environment into my photographs so this lens doesn’t get a huge amount of use, but sometimes its healthy to put a lens on my camera that is a bit outside of my wheelhouse just to see the world from a new perspective. Besides, it can also be nice to photograph a portrait of a person while also standing more than a few feet away from them. A bit of distance between yourself and your subject isn’t a bad thing. I’ve noticed people tend to relax a bit more and have an easier time looking straight at the camera when the lens isn’t right in their face.

Like every other Hasselblad lens that I’ve worked with the performance is well…. nothing short of excellent. It’s incredibly sharp even when wide open at f/4. Heck, it might even be too sharp. Sometimes I like when portraits are a bit soft to hide blemishes and give the overall look of the image more of a lo-fi character. So yeah, take that complaint with a grain of salt. I’m aware of how silly it seems to complain about a lens being too sharp. I could always soften this up with a filter if I really wanted to.

Santa Cruz Is Still My Happy Place

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It’s no secret that I got my start with photography in and around the Santa Cruz area in California. I think it is fair to say that sometimes a place can have just as much influence on a person’s artistic expression as anything else. Had I been born in New York or Paris or the wilderness of Australia my photography would be an entirely different thing today. The salty sea air and long stretches of highway hugging the Pacific Ocean were back in my youth an early source of inspiration and they very much still are today. Not much has changed there. It is still a place filled with the sound of sea birds and populated by people looking to ride a wave, write poetry in the sand, or just experience some silence while looking at the great expanding sea.

Photographed with a Sony A7iii.

At the beginning of this past summer I took a trip back to my roots, exploring the coastline up and down California Highway One (California State Highway 1 technically). It felt really good going back there and making images with the eyes I have today, as opposed to the eyes of my much younger self. I definitely see the world much differently now. A little less whimsical, and yet also little more optimistic if that makes any sense at all. I was also very fortunate that one of my favorite collaborators, Vivian Cove, loves the California coast as much as I do. Spending a day hiking among the rocks and cliffs, marching on dry sand, and dodging potential onlookers is a lot more exhausting than one might think.

Photographed with a Mamiya C330 TLR and Ilford Delta 120 film.

I won’t deny I was feeling slightly overwhelmed when these images were made. There is just so much to see and visit there and only so much film I can carry with me. I brought my digital camera with me as well as a backup for when my film stock ran dry but I wanted to capture the bulk of the work I did that day on film. After all, digital cameras didn’t really exist in any sort of quality form back when I was learning the ropes of photography in the California Bay Area studying at UC Santa Cruz and Foothill College. I don’t even think the first DSLR had been produced yet in any sort of form that was affordable to the average person.

Photographed with a Mamiya C330 TLR and Ilford Delta 120 film.

Every so often I contemplate moving back to the Santa Cruz area. It’s a place that has never really left me and continues to influence who I am as a person today. More than likely that will never happen and perhaps that is for the best. After all, it is far healthier to look to the future rather than linger forever in the past. Still, it is fun to visit sometimes and even more fun when I have the opportunity to make photographs while doing so.