Old Houses in the Deserts of Los Angeles

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Several years ago I made a pilgrimage down to Southern California. I’ve always had a love and hate relationship with the larger metro area that people typically just lump into the label of the greater Los Angeles. On the one hand the traffic is monstrous and frustrating in the best of times. The sprawl and the row after row after row of generic apartment buildings and flat six lane roadways just make me sad.

At the same time, despite the massive population in the area, it is shockingly easy to find places where one can be isolated and alone. It is simply a fact that Los Angeles, and by extension, Southern California, is a place of contradictions.

Photographed with a Mamiya C330 TLR and Fomapan 100 medium format film.

I only brought one camera with me on this trip, my Mamiya C330 TLR. I also only brought one type of film with me, Fomapan 100. Predictably, the sun was incredibly bright and harsh the entire trip and I found myself working with the film at ISO 50 nearly the entire time. I’ve always found Fomapan to be a great film to pull down to a lower ISO. Diluting Rodinal just a little bit and developing with some slow agitation tends to yield very low contrast negatives, something I needed to counteract the harsh lighting.

Only an hour or so outside of the greater Los Angeles area there were a lot of abandoned houses, totally falling apart and sitting forgotten under the unforgiving sun. No trees around, no people, not even paved roads leading up to the front doors. It was eerie and quite and made for a great spot to expose this particular frame that has long been my favorite from the trip.

Natural Light With A Hasselblad 500c/m

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I’ve never been completely comfortable working with really harsh natural light. Living in the Pacific Northwest I’m constantly spoiled with nice and even overcast weather. Every photographer knows, especially photographers who work with film, that overcast lighting is incredibly easy to expose. Bright and harsh light on the other hand can be incredibly difficult. Sometimes if feels like you have dark shadows, bright highlights, and absolutely nothing in-between. Losing out on detail in your final exposure is an incredibly easy mistake to make.

Photographed with a Hasselblad 500c/m and Ilford Delta 400 medium format film.

This image is one of those rare cases where I think I made some very harsh lighting work. It was a summer afternoon and the light coming in through my studio window was harsh to say the least. It was so harsh in fact that the entire scene felts sweltering and hot. I wanted to play with the shadows and the light the best I could and I thought it would be fun to let it swirl about the shapes of the model’s figure.

To retain as much detail as possible I exposed a roll of Ilford Delta 400 down to ISO 200 and pulled back my development by about 30%. This tends to work pretty well lowering contrast and keeping detail in both the shadows and the highlights. I also won’t deny I bracketed the heck out of each exposure, working with three frames per pose. One and a half stops over, one spot on, and one and a half stops under. Not surprisingly, the image I liked best was the spot on exposure. I should learn to trust my light metering skills…

Landscapes on Sauvie Island with the Hasselblad 500c/m

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It is very much feeling like warmer weather is just around the corner. I won’t deny I’m excited and thrilled at the prospect of getting outdoors with a few rolls of film and just enjoying a little bit of nature. I haven’t made enough of a point to do that lately and some sunshine will really do me good.

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

I don’t know if this is the result of being cooped up for too long with COVID, spending too much time at work, or just the fact that I’m changing with my old age, but I’ve been feeling more and more like working with landscapes over people. That is quite a shift for me. While I’ve always liked getting outdoors I’ve never thought of myself as a particularly successful landscape photographer. Getting older, I realize one of the huge reasons behind that is the fact that I’ve always been intimidated by other far more famous and well known landscape photographers.

Growing up in California, every photography and art student is bombarded with the ghost of Ansel Adams (among others…) and my technical skill, not to mention levels of patience, will always pale in comparison to him. However, it is really silly to let something like that stop me from trying and from gaining enjoyment working with outdoor spaces.

This image was made late in the afternoon on Sauvie Island just a few short weeks ago. All the trees are bare on the island right now which meant the environment felt incredibly flooded with light. The air was cold for sure, but you’d never know it looking at the images. It was fun to work with, especially as the sun dived lower and lower toward the horizon casting some long shadows across the ground from the largely naked trees.

For film I used a couple of rolls of Rollei RPX 100. I absolutely love the tonal range of RPX 100. There is a very cinematic look to it. It feels like I’m capturing single frames of some 1970’s German New Wave movie. Deep black and bright whites manage to creep into the negative in equal measure. This stock seems like it was born to be paired with Rodinal as well and even when exposing a negative directly toward the sun, as was the case here, I still get nicely exposed frames. It’s an expensive film stock unfortunately, so it will probably never fully replace my tried and true Ilford HP5, but when I’m in the mood to splurge a bit I like working with the Rollie stock.

3 Frames with the Hasselblad SWC

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A little over a year ago I purchased a Hasselblad SWC on a bit of a whim. It’s one of those cameras I’ve always wanted but I wasn’t sure how much I would actually use it and prices for them tend to be on the high end. However one afternoon while browsing around Facebook Marketplace I found a listing for a copy at a price I was willing to pay. It was advertised as a camera that had been well used but was fully functional with clean glass so I jumped at it. COVID was in full swing at the time and I was looking for an excuse to get outside with my camera so ultimately it seemed like fate was falling right at my feet.

Photographed with a Hasselblad SWC and Kodak Tmax 400 medium format film.

For those who aren’t aware of the Hasselblad SWC, it is basically a traditional Hasselblad built around a fixed and very wide angle lens. The 38mm f/4.5 Biogon to be specific. In the world of medium format that is an incredibly wide focal length. Ken Rockwell has a good overview of the system and goes into more detail about it than I need to so if you are interested in reading up on the technical specks I recommend his page dedicated to the subject.

The example that I purchased is technically a Hasselblad SWC/M with the “M” indicating the camera was “Modified” from its original version. Basically it was modified to fit a Polaroid back which I do not own and will never use. Despite a few upgrades to the viewfinder and coating on the lenses, all Hasselblad SWC cameras are more or less the same in operation and performance.

Photographed with a Hasselblad SWC and Kodak Tmax 400 medium format film.

The images in this post are all from my very first test roll with the Hasselblad SWC. Clearly I was fascinated with looking up into the trees on my first outing with the camera. I couldn’t help it. The field of view with the Hasselblad SWC is wide. Almost shockingly wide. When you are a photographer that just enjoys looking through a quality viewfinder working with the SWC for the first time is a thrilling experience. The whole world opens up! In fact it is a more than a little intimidating to figure out what to do with all that information that will inevitably be in your frame.

I’ve used a lot of cameras in my life, but the Hasselblad SWC feels like something entirely different, new, and has opened up a lot of creative possibilities I never even considered before. After exposing only a few frames I quickly found myself asking why I waited so long to purchase one.

Photographed with a Hasselblad SWC and Kodak Tmax 400 medium format film.

I’ve been surprised by the Hasselblad SWC in practice in the sense that it operates a lot like a point and shoot camera. A little bigger and boxer perhaps then most cameras one would use in a point and shoot style You compose your shot through a viewfinder on the top of the camera and focus by guessing the distance. That may sound imprecise and difficult on paper but in the real world it is incredibly easy. The field of view is so wide and the depth of field so long that you have to work pretty hard to get an image out of focus. This is especially true when working outdoors and with a slightly faster film where apertures in the f/8 to f/16 range are the norm. Using the sunny 16 rule for exposure I just point the camera and click and I don’t think all that hard about it. Most of my frames have come out incredible.

The 38mm Biogon is practically distortion free with no vignetting at all. Most extremely wide angle lens I’ve seen and used have darkness and soft corners but not the Biogon. Leave it to Zeiss I suppose to deliver when it comes to lens quality. I’ve posted a few other images on this blog using the SWC with more serious work, but I thought it would be fun to post a few frames from my very first roll. I suppose just looking up at the sky and at nearby tree limps isn’t the most exciting use of the Hasselblad SWC, but hey, you’ve got to test a new camera out on something right?