I don’t know if I’m a writer because I like words, or if I like words because I’m a writer. But regardless of which is the chicken (or is it the egg?), I often obsess over using just the right one.
Sometimes — as revealed in last month’s article — a word has too many definitions to be useful. Other times, a word might have only one definition, but too many connotations.
Take the word, “photographer.” In theory, it should be a perfectly suitable term for that thing I do with cameras. And yet, I loathe it — not because it’s the wrong word, but because of the misconceptions it forms in the minds of others.
Whenever I’m defined as “a photographer,” I’m automatically cast as a person with traits, motives, likes, and cognitive thought patterns that are fundamentally and utterly unlike who I actually am. By definition, a photographer is simply “a person who takes photographs,” which accurately defines me. But in the common perlocutionary vernacular, a photographer is often “someone who is drawn to capture and enhance scenes of conspicuously orthodox beauty,” which is definitely not me.
So whenever someone asks if I’m a photographer, I always answer “no” — for the simple fact that a “yes” inevitably leads to one of three possible follow-up questions:
1) “Have I seen your photos anywhere?” Setting aside the ridiculous notion I have any idea what they might have seen, the ubiquitous presence of that B.C. license plate means I could probably respond in the affirmative — but it’s far too anomalous to count, and would only reinforce their mistaken assumptions.
2) “How much does it cost to photograph a wedding these days?” As if every photographer wants nothing more than to spend their days and nights Photoshopping some hideous family of misfits into a bunch of faux princes and princesses.
3) “You must absolutely be LOVING the a) autumn colours; b) cherry blossoms; c) spectacular sunset; d) beautiful blue skies.” Nope; Uh-uh; Nyet; Negative. Well, maybe I am, but they have absolutely no affect on what I photograph, because they have absolutely nothing to do with anything I wish to convey through photography.
So technically, I don’t have a problem with the word “photographer.” I have a problem with society’s insistence that it means something totally foreign to what I do.
On the very rare occasion when someone asks what I photograph (rather than simply assuming my life revolves around rainbows, waterfalls and headshots), I usually say “metaphors.” You’d be surprised how quickly that ends a conversation. So, no, I ain’t no photographer.
Language was invented to aid communication. But when society chooses to adorn it with unscripted implications, the words lose their intended meaning and communication breaks down.
Consider what is, perhaps, the most noxiously loaded word of all: “artist.” Like “photographer,” the word could theoretically be applied to what I do. One might argue it’s even more suitable than “photographer,” since it’s more inclusive of other aspects of my life, such as writing essays or composing music. Plus, it suggests a certain element of creativity might be involved — a trait seemingly lacking from the imaginations of those who interpret “photographer” as “archivist of insipidly beautiful things.”
However, the word “artist” has become so hijacked by illocutionary pretension that I’ve never once been able to apply it to myself. The very idea of calling myself “an artist” makes me throw up in my mouth. I challenge anyone to read any artist’s statement and not be inclined to pop a breath mint afterwords.
I’m now publishing what would objectively be called a fine art photography magazine, and I have every intention to eventually descend further into the abyss with books and prints. So it’s a little awkward that I won’t call myself either an artist or a photographer. The problem, I suppose, is that society eschews the objective and adopts the subjective. Even though I believe what I’m doing is photography; that the product is indeed art; and that it’s perfectly fine — the amalgamation of those words implies something entirely different in the subjective minds of others.
For decades now, I’ve succeeded only in defining what I’m not, but never what I am. Take a peek through ULTRAsomething’s archives, and you’ll see me donning different hats through the years — hoping one might finally suit me. To date, none have. So for the next little while (and thanks to the publication of ULTRAsomething magazine), whenever someone inquires about that camera in my hand, I’ll reply, “I’m a media mogul.” No doubt this response will inspire its own rash of misconceptions, but like a kid trying out a new dirty word, it’ll be fun to see the response.
ABOUT THESE PHOTOS:Rather than attempting to absorb the existential significance of each individual photo, perhaps it would be more illuminating to understand the ‘artist’ behind them…
ARTIST STATEMENT: “The photos I choose to take likely differ from those you would choose to take. Whether or not you consider this a good thing is entirely up to you.”
REMINDER: If you’ve managed to extract a modicum of enjoyment from the plethora of material contained on this site, please consider making a DONATION to its continuing evolution. As you’ve likely realized, ULTRAsomething is not an aggregator site. Serious time and effort go into developing the original content contained within these virtual walls — even the silly stuff.
Those who enjoy a tactile engagement with photographs are encouraged to visit the ULTRAsomething STORE, where actual objects are available for purchase.
I like to believe I’m sane. Though I’ll admit, with no one around to offer a contrary opinion, my self-diagnosis does lack calibration. Perhaps no one’s around for a reason?
Then again, those who calibrate their sanity based on the opinion of others might be the least sane of all. I think social media has pretty much confirmed the accuracy of this theory.
Popularity has never been my end game — which is why I’ve seen more clowns pile into a Volkswagen Beetle than ULTRAsomething has readers. My ego doesn’t rely on acceptance, but on the answer to one single question: “Am I proud of what I’ve accomplished?”
At least that’s how I used to define it — until I actually bothered to look up the word “pride.” It turns out ‘pride’ is a very loaded word. People can be proud for all sorts of reasons — including really stupid ones. Which, I suppose, explains why ‘pride’ makes the Top-7 list of deadliest sins.
So what is pride? According to Miriam-Webster, pride is 1) Reasonable self-esteem: confidence and satisfaction in oneself; 2) Pleasure that comes from some relationship, association, achievement, or possession that is seen as a source of honour or respect; 3) Exaggerated self-esteem, or conceit.
Let’s unpack that, shall we? In the first definition, pride results from within oneself. In the second definition, pride comes from external validation. And in the third definition, pride is a delusional personality disorder.
What about Oxford’s? According to them, pride is the “feeling of being pleased or satisfied that you get when you or people who are connected with you have done something well or own something that other people admire.”
I gotta hand it to Oxford — they manage to condense Miriam-Webster’s wishy-washiness into a single sentence, implying that pride can be either deep or shallow.
I’m not sure pride reflects a “deadly sin,” so much as “mankind’s inability to define a word so inadequately.”
Egor’s ULTRAdictionary of egorisms defines ‘pride’ as: “Knowing you have made a positive contribution to the world, no matter its size or the acknowledgment.” In direct conflict with the guardians of language, my dictionary contains no alternative definitions, such as “You have a million followers on Instagram, all the latest gadgets, and everyone invites you to the best parties.” In the ULTRAdictionary, you’ll instead find that definition attached to words like “insecure” and “narcissist.”
Which brings us back to the topic of my sanity. In a world where uploaded photos would be seen by more people; where more external validation would come via online engagement; and where I could spend my money to “own something that other people admire,” I instead chose to begin publishing a low-volume print magazine at a guaranteed loss. On the surface it appears to lack sagacity, but when viewed through the lens of ‘pride,’ the rationality appears. Instead of moaning about photography’s descent into smart phone fodder, with its infinite evanescent stream of selfies, “me too” location shots, and computer-enhanced illustrations, I chose to produce an alternative. Is my effort but a drop in the bucket? No. It’s but a drop in the ocean — but it’s a drop that wouldn’t be there if I hadn’t deposited it.
Ultimately, whether one defines pride as ‘sinful’ or ‘saintly’ doesn’t much matter — it’s still gonna kill you. Either it’s the insatiable hunger for excessive external validation that will do you in, or it’s the social isolation of fanatical toil. Which suggests that pride isn’t so much a deadly sin as it is just plain deadly. And since we’re all going to die of something, my demise might as well come in the form of murky, grainy, black & white, metaphor-laden; bound collections of the mundane. Though I must confess: while this does sound like a rather satisfying way to shuffle off this mortal coil, I’d probably be remiss if I didn’t give lust, gluttony and wrath at least a tiny bit of due diligence before I go…
When I first established the publication guidelines for ULTRAsomething Magazine, I decided that it, and the website, would represent two entirely different repositories for new photos. In other words, what’s published in one would not be published in the other, with the obvious exception of any posts that announce the arrival of a new issue. Initially, I thought I might have trouble deciding whether a particular image should be published on the web or the magazine, but this isn’t the case.
The magazine is, in essence, more restrictive than the web. As designed, it supports only two aspect ratios: single page photos are 4×3, while two-page spreads are 3×2. Any image that doesn’t fit these crop lines isn’t going to be in the magazine. Additionally, all pages are full-bleed — so if a photo contains crucial information near the frame’s edge (which may be chopped off in production), then it’ll find its way to the web instead. Similarly, any two-page spread with critical information placed dead-centre in the frame will also be web-bound — otherwise the magazine’s spine might obscure the centre-most content. The limits of CMYK printing mean blacks aren’t really black — so if my photos contain negative space with the gravity of a black hole, they may be better suited for the web. And then there’s the fact that some photos simply compliment a particular essay too perfectly.
So with that out of the way, here are the technical details for the nerds and the generally curious: ‘Phantasm‘ was shot on Fomapan 200, using a Leica M6TTL with a Voigtlander 15mm f/4.5 Super Wide Heliar lens, and developed in HC-110 Dilution H. The dead centre placement of the main subject (me) eliminates it from magazine consideration. ‘Amore‘ was shot on Fomapan 100, using a Pentax MZ-S with a Pentax-M 120mm f/2.8 lens, and developed in HC-110 Dilution H. Once again, the dead centre placement of the lucky hug recipient would end up in the magazine’s spine, so it’s being web-published instead. And if you think the motion blur has anything to do with my choice to exclude it from any future magazines, you obviously haven’t bought a magazine (or read this website for very long). ‘Mixed Messages‘ was shot on Fomapan 100, using a Pentax MZ-S with a 43mm f/1.9 Limited lens, and developed in HC-110 Dilution H. It ended up here because of its obvious relation to the article’s subject matter. ‘Philosopher‘ was shot on Ortho Plus 80, using a Hasselblad Xpan with a 45mm f/4 lens, and developed in HC-110 Dilution H. As a panoramic photo, its aspect ratio immediately eliminates it from magazine consideration. ‘Bottleneck’, like ‘Philosopher’ is simply the wrong aspect ratio for magazine publication, but like ‘Phantasm’ was shot on Fomapan 200, using a Leica M6TTL with a Voigtlander 15mm f/4.5 Super Wide Heliar lens, and developed in HC-110 Dilution H.
REMINDER: If you’ve managed to extract a modicum of enjoyment from the plethora of material contained on this site, please consider making a DONATION to its continuing evolution. As you’ve likely realized, ULTRAsomething is not an aggregator site. Serious time and effort go into developing the original content contained within these virtual walls — even the silly stuff.
Those who enjoy a tactile engagement with photographs are encouraged to visit the ULTRAsomething STORE, where actual objects are available for purchase.
For the past fourteen years, ULTRAsomething has maintained a mostly virtual presence — its photos no more tactile than the code that delivers them to your screen. About a dozen years ago, I self-published a photo book through a print-on-demand service. Its print quality screamed “MAGAZINE!” while its sticker price screamed “ART BOOK!” This disconnect lead me to two simultaneous conclusions. One, was that I would never release another book until I had the means for a luxurious printing. Two, was that as long as I could only afford to produce magazine quality publications, magazines were exactly what I would produce.
Today, twelve years after that first publishing experiment, I still haven’t the means to create the photo book I’d like, but having completed my PhD in procrastination, I’m now publishing the first “brick & mortar” issue of ULTRAsomething magazine.
I hope to produce several such volumes a year. Because each issue will require that I take a rather extensive number of photos in a rather constrained amount of time, chance will play a crucial role in the results. To ensure even less control over the outcome, all photos will bleed off the page — necessitating that each be brutally and unceremoniously cropped to the unwavering dictates of a page’s physical dimensions. Consequently, every issue will result more from purge than plan; more from exorcism than curation.
Every photo in “ULTRAsomething | Exorcism 1” was shot this summer, and without any intent or purpose beyond my desire to gather visual vestiges of my daily life. They are merely accidents of where I happened to be, and what camera I happened to have. In this particular issue, everything was shot on film. Future exorcisms might contain a mix of digital content; or they might juxtapose new and old photos; or even have a more cohesive unifying theme. Predictions are futile — this is improvisational publishing.
The above transcript is the apologia, and is the only text to appear in ULTRAsomething’s premier issue (or “exorcism,” as seems more poetically accurate). It serves to both explain and defend the 60-page publication, and each subsequent exorcism will contain its own apologia.
My intent is for each issue to contain only photos never before published on the website — though any post announcing new exorcisms (such as this one) will obviously contain a few representational shots. Publishing this is crazy enough — publishing it without at least a modicum of marketing would be a step too crazy. Suffice to say, the vast majority of photos will be revealed in print. So if you want to experience them all in full 8.25” x 11” glory (or 16.5” x 11” glory for landscape-oriented shots), then your best bet is to purchase the magazine.
And speaking of purchasing magazines, I’ve hacked together a rather pedantic but effective storefront, accessible from the STORE menu at the top of this page. Billing is currently handled through PayPal (though you don’t need a PayPal account). Eventually, I’ll implement a slicker cart — with the word “eventually” chosen precisely for its indeterminate characteristics. For now, please keep in mind that I’m only one guy, and my name isn’t “Amazon.”
That said, I am like Amazon Prime in one important way: shipping will be free to locations in Canada and the continental USA. Unfortunately, I cannot offer free shipping to customers outside the USA and Canada… well, I could, but I would lose money on every sale. So I would kindly ask all international purchasers to please blame Canada Post, and not me.
As you might expect, I haven’t slept much these past few months — designing the format; shooting/editing photos; building/tweaking the maquette; and establishing an infrastructure for future exorcisms. And all while continuing to hold down a “real” job.
Next month, I’ll have more to say about the magazine, the philosophy behind it, and this new, expanded direction for ULTRAsomething. But for now, why not treat yourself to your very own Christmas exorcism?
ABOUT THE PHOTOS: The photos, shown here, appear in ULTRASOMETHING | EXORCISM 01 , but represent only a small subset of the images contained in the magazine — all of which were shot on film, with each of the following cameras contributing at least one photo to the publication: Black’s Sassy; Contax IIa; Contax G1; Fuji GS645 Pro Wide 60; Konica Autoreflex TC; Konica C35; Konica Hexar AF; Minolta TC-1; Minolta XTsi; Olympus Pen FT; Nikon 28Ti; and Pentax MZ-S. Yes, this is arguably excessive and marginally eccentric. But so is publishing a photo magazine in an Instagram world.
REMINDER: If you’ve managed to extract a modicum of enjoyment from the plethora of material contained on this site, please consider making a DONATION to its continuing evolution. As you’ve likely realized, ULTRAsomething is not an aggregator site. Serious time and effort go into developing the original content contained within these virtual walls — even the silly stuff.
Those who enjoy a tactile engagement with photographs are encouraged to visit the ULTRAsomething STORE, where actual objects are available for purchase.
It’s been a year of ULTRAexperimentation. In addition to my recent Folly Trilogy discussing three different “inappropriate” film cameras, I also wrote about another half-frame camera, and penned a couple of lens-based essays — one digging into fisheyes, and the other exploring the benefits of a particularly decrepit 90mm lens from the 1930s. For a site that purports to be more interested in the psychological aspects of photography than hardware, that’s a whole lotta gear talk.
But with the year rapidly drawing to a close, I can now reveal that those weird gear articles were, in fact, just a carefully considered diversion — meant to buy myself time to engage in this year’s real experiment: to fundamentally alter my very approach to photography.
For the past couple of decades, I would prowl the streets looking for the perfect photograph. Step-by-step, mile-by-mile, I’d scour every inch of this town hoping to bag the big one. My ratio of “shots taken” to “worn out shoes” was spectacularly low. And yet, in spite of all that walking and all that looking, I’ve yet to take a single photo I’d be proud to represent me on my non-existent Wikipedia page. Which, come to think of it, is probably the reason no one’s bothered to make me a Wikipedia page.
Facing each new publishing deadline with an empty cache of perfect photos, I’ve been forced to fill these pages with a hodgepodge of miscellany — snapshots I would shoot mostly as “justification” for having bothered to leave the condo. On their own, none seem worthy of anything beyond a participation ribbon. But, as an assemblage, they would often say “something” — even if I was never able to fully comprehend exactly what it was.
I’ve long believed my own photography’s grandest purpose isn’t to create an image that hangs on the wall, but to create a collection of images that, when bound together, communicate an entire universe of thought and emotion through metaphor and implication. When I do hang an individual photo or two, I suspect it’s due more to convention than consideration. To me, framing a single photograph is like framing a single word from a favourite novel or screenplay — its context is removed or, at best, merely implied through familiarity.
For example, if I hung the word “Rosebud” over the sofa, it would indeed conjure a world of meaning every time I gazed upon it — but that meaning would come, not from the word, but from the context in which it was used within Citizen Kane. The word, itself, is not “perfect.” It’s the concept that’s perfect, and the single word is merely the proxy for an entire collection of other words and scenes. The same thing happens when I engage with some of my favourite photographs from some of my favourite photographers — an individual image becomes more potent, because I know the context from which it came. Seeing one is a gateway toward remembering them all.
Does it strike you as “a little crazy” that someone who views photography this way, would then put so much effort into hunting for that one perfect photo? If so, then congratulations — you’ve reached the same conclusion I have, and you didn’t spend 20 years getting there.
Perusing my oeuvre to date, it’s clear my personal favourites are often the most flawed, least perfect photos imaginable. They came from the monthly “hodgepodge of miscellany,” and not from any grand design. Which lead me to wonder why I’ve been so sparing with my exposures all these years. Since my “best” photos are the ones that best represent a collection, wouldn’t such representational photos become magically “better” if the collection itself became better? And wouldn’t the collection become better if I actually allowed myself the freedom to photograph anything that interested me, rather than self-limiting my exposures so as not to ‘waste time or money’ on shots I knew weren’t “perfect?”
So my fundamental change is to do exactly what I’ve always done, except to disable my brain’s self-censoring circuit while doing so. Granted, on the surface it doesn’t really seem like change at all. But anyone who’s ever tried to rewire their brain knows how difficult that can be. It’s taken me the better part of a year, but after a lifetime of being the stingiest photographer in recorded history, I’m gradually moving into the vicinity of semi-prolific. Not “guy on vacation with a digital camera” prolific; not “mom instagramming the crap out of her baby” prolific; but “guy who spools a roll of film through a camera every five or six days” prolific.
The question, now, is “what should I do with all these photos?” Just because I’m transforming into the photographer I want to be, doesn’t mean I’m transforming into one with a place in the modern world.
One part of me thinks I should just leave them unpublished, languishing on a hard drive until it’s destroyed by solar flares or mechanical failure. There’s something poetically punk rock about that direction. After all, it’s exactly what would happen to these moments had I not photographed them — making my passion a rather apt metaphor for life itself. Another part of me thinks such conceit smacks of bad performance art, and that the photos should absolutely be published — somewhere. Somehow.
But that’s a struggle for another essay. For now, all I really needed was to just take more photos. And on that front, the year has been a resounding success.
ABOUT THE PHOTOS:“Lobby 1” was shot on Fomapan 100 at ISO 100 and developed in HC-110 (Dilution H), using a Pentax MZ-S and a Pentax-M 50mm f/1.4 lens. “Lobby 2” was photographed on Fomapan 400 (pushed to ISO 800) and developed in Rodinal 1:50, using a Fuji GS645S Wide 60 camera. “Fetch” was shot with an OM Digital Solutions 40-150 f/4 Pro lens mounted on an Olympus OM-1 digital camera. “Criminal Intent” was another digital shot — this time using the Ricoh GRIII. “Empress Metaverse” and “Loo View” were shot on Delta 3200 (pulled to ISO 1600), inside a Contax G1 fronted with a Zeiss Planar 45mm f/2 lens, and developed in Rodinal 1:50.
REMINDER: If you’ve managed to extract a modicum of enjoyment from the plethora of material contained on this site, please consider making a DONATION to its continuing evolution. As you’ve likely realized, ULTRAsomething is not an aggregator site. Serious time and effort go into developing the original content contained within these virtual walls — even the silly stuff.
What’s great about trilogies, is that you know precisely how many instalments you’ll need to endure… unless we’re talking about George Lucas, who has obviously deemed the dictionary to be a purveyor of fake news.
Still, just because there are three of something, it doesn’t mean you need to consume them all. Which — Lucas example extended — is exactly what happened with me and the Star Wars “trilogy.” I nodded off during the first film; never saw the second (or third, fourth, fifth, sixth, etc); and have been shunned by my technology coworkers for decades since. So I’d like to thank the small smattering of ULTRAsomething’s larger smattering of readers who’ve soldiered through to this, the final chapter in the Folly Trilogy — a trio of articles discussing “taking photos with cameras that are utterly inconsistent with modern visual tastes or with 21st century photo dissemination techniques.”
The first camera in this trilogy, the Kodak Stereo camera, qualifies as “folly” because its images, while likely to engage with an audience, are kept from doing so thanks to a 200 year dearth of suitable stereo viewing and distribution methodologies.
Unlike the Kodak Stereo camera, the second camera — the Pinsta — produces images that can be easily viewed and distributed through traditional means — but it succumbs to “folly” because I, the photographer, can’t be bothered to spend the inordinate amount of time and effort required to produce a single decent photograph — much less a collection.
The third and final camera in the Folly Trilogy — the Ford MVP — is easy to carry and enjoyable to shoot (unlike the Pinsta); while producing standard 35mm images (unlike either the Kodak or the Pinsta). Unfortunately, the Ford MVP is guilty of looking more like a camera than acting like one. So cheaply made, it makes the build quality of Lomography cameras look like Hasselblads. And its image quality? No reason to change the metaphor, because it also makes the output of a Lomography camera look like a Hasselblad. If you ever wanted to smear a lens with Vaseline to get a dreamy effect, but didn’t have any Vaseline handy, this is the camera to reach for.
Obviously, Ford Motor Company didn’t make this camera, but they did slap their logo on the box — once offering it as incentive for customers to pony up for a new pony car. It’s from the same dubious lineage as the more widely known Time Magazine and Sports Illustrated cameras, which also served to sweeten the perceived value of parting with one’s cash. Unlike those zine cams, which had faceplates imprinted with the words “Time” or “Sports Illustrated”, the Ford is emblazoned with the letters “MVP”. Why? I have no idea, but I’m using it as a motivational tool. Preferable, too, is Ford’s decision to give it a swanky “chrome” body, which definitely out-hips those boring black magazine variants.
I’m guessing the camera dates from around the mid-1980’s, which corresponds precisely with my time at Ford Motor Company — though my job developing Ford’s high-end, acoustically-tuned, premium/branded sound systems left me ignorant of the mechanizations of Ford’s marketing “brains.” This little bit of Egor trivia is precisely why my friend — one of the few people aware of my automotive past — leapt at the chance to connect the dots, and gifted me with a Ford MVP that she stumbled upon in a Portland camera shop.
Belying a body made from Fisher-Price grade plastic, and a rewind crank that falls apart if you turn the camera upside down, the MVP sports a 50mm lens with an actual glass element. It even provides a modicum of exposure control via its pictograph-based aperture dial — its odds of relevancy depending, obviously, on your choice of film speed. Rumour has it the camera’s one and only shutter speed is 1/100s — which I figure is probably correct within an order of magnitude or two.
The MVP is much heftier than I expected, which gives an impression of quality — though one that’s been debunked by various websites, which reveal the presence of a lead weight placed in the bottom of the camera to produce exactly this illusion. I was tempted to disassemble mine to confirm the weight’s actual chemical compound, but given the build quality of the rewind crank, I opted not to risk removing any screws from any plastic.
The bottom of the camera proudly states “Made in Taiwan,” though I have yet to uncover its actual manufacturer, or who was responsible for its development. Not that it really matters, since designing butt-simple film cameras isn’t rocket science; much less automotive engineering.
The better question is “who, in Ford’s marketing department, thought this would make a good promotional item?” Any glee a customer might have felt pulling this from their bag o’ new car swag, would surely dissipate once they drove that new Mustang to the Fotomat™ kiosk and picked up their prints.
One of the main reasons I shoot half frame cameras (besides the fact I’m ‘cheap’), is their murky fidelity — somewhere between a photograph and a charcoal drawing. It’s a look I love, and one vaguely similar to that from the MVP, in spite of the fact it’s not a half-frame camera. However — not content with just a little smudge — the MVP pushes the murk factor into overdrive. It’s as if you took a half frame image; loaded the film on the developing reel without bothering to use a dark bag; processed it in exhausted chemicals; framed it behind a frosted sheet of plastic; and coated the corners with Canola Oil.
I’ll admit, given the curious inclusion of a glass lens, I expected a modicum of fidelity. But once I extracted the first reel from the development tank, those expectations got slapped down by the big clammy hand of reality. The images this camera produces are an abomination — and this is exactly why I love it.
Unfortunately (from a remuneration standpoint) my tastes are “utterly inconsistent with modern visual tastes.” So any camera that delivers such taste (in spades, no less) falls squarely into the trilogy’s definition of folly. Characterful images are contrary to the inclinations of the literally-minded, sharpness-obsessed influencers of today. Most folks want their camera to define the subject, not interpret it. They want to see details, not suggestions. Perhaps, if this was the late 19th century and the dawn of pictorialism, it would be a camera of desire — much like the Kodak Stereo camera would have been a camera of desire in the mid-19th Century. But now? In a time where the vast majority of humans equate idealized, hyper-realism with great photography? The Ford MVP is going to offer the opposite.
Fortunately, folly will always find a home at ULTRAsomething — because every fool needs a paradise.
Final Ratings:
Personal Enjoyment Factor : 7. It would have been an “8,” but I dinged it a point for the mindful vigilance required to keep the camera upright, so the rewind crank remains intact. Viewing its photos is also quite enjoyable if, like me, your tastes reside on the outskirts of sanity. The MVP is like many of my favourite, no-budget, 1970’s drive-in movies — so bad it’s good.
Convenience : 8. Sure, it could be more convenient if, instead of manually setting the exposure via pictograph, the camera set it automatically. Then again, imprecise exposure is part and parcel of the camera’s gestalt, so any auto-exposure feature would need to include an element of randomness… which, come to think of it, would definitely be a camera I’d buy.
Long Term Potential : A safe and natural alternative to antipsychotic medications. As someone who has a tendency to occasionally step into a quagmire of banality and literalism and grow woefully depressed because of it, I need only point this camera at the most tiresome and vapid of subjects, look at the prints, and be instantly pulled from my moronic morass.
ABOUT THE ARTICLE : This is the final instalment in a trilogy of articles exploring cameras that are totally at odds with the expectations and demands of 21st Century life. The first was here, and the second was here.Many of you will be pleased to learn that, were it not for my heartless ability to exclude several worthy contenders (including the Insta360, a sample of which is seen to the right), this “trilogy” could easily have turned into an extended “series.” You’re welcome.
Regarding that Ford JBL Audio Systems tear sheet: Toward the end of my time at the company, there was actually a brief collision between my audio design duties and Ford’s marketing department. This glaringly patriarchal ad, which I assure you I had no hand in creating, ran in all the major stereo and hifi magazines that year. Alas, though my hand wasn’t in the ad, the same can’t be said for my face, which is on the far left, looking so very… um… I’m lost for an adjective here. I was paid $1 for the shoot, which marked both the beginning and the end of my professional modelling career.
REMINDER: If you’ve managed to extract a modicum of enjoyment from the plethora of material contained on this site, please consider making a DONATION to its continuing evolution. As you’ve likely realized, ULTRAsomething is not an aggregator site. Serious time and effort go into developing the original content contained within these virtual walls — even the silly stuff.
If patience is a virtue, then Satan’s in the kitchen, whipping up canapés for my impending “Welcome to Hell” party.
Every couple of days, I venture out — camera in hand — for a quick 8 km walk. On an average day, I’ll push about a dozen frames through a camera — rarely bothering to pause for the 1/60th of a second it takes for the shutter to complete its journey across the film plane. Occasionally, with reservation, I might slow down slightly when I snap a photo. But a full stop? Who has the patience for that? Blurry schmurry. I’ve got things to do.
Related to my impatience — and the reason why Satan’s also enlisted a crack team of demon sous chefs to prepare some delightful amuse-bouche offerings — is my pathological need to be unencumbered. I don’t want useless crap weighing me down or impeding my freedom of motion. No backpacks; no bulging pockets; no bulk; no weight. One look at the preponderance of compact cameras in my cabinet will confirm this. The heaviest, most ponderous cameras I own are probably the Leica rangefinders.
So with this is mind, what’s the silliest camera I could possible buy? A large format camera, you say?
Surely, you don’t think I’m that foolish!
OK. I’ll admit — overcome by a completely unrealistic notion that I would somehow magically become someone I’m not — I did purchase a large format camera earlier this year. But in my defense, it’s “only” a 4×5 (not an 8×10); has a pinhole (rather than a bulky lens); and is made entirely of plastic — placing its weight squarely in line with other cameras in the cabinet. But if you think these caveats somehow exclude me from the rank of “imbecile” on the Levine and Marks 1928 IQ Classification Scale, we need to dive a little deeper.
The camera in question is a “Pinsta” — a modern 4×5 pinhole kickstarter camera, designed to capture images on direct positive paper, rather than on a negative. What distinguishes it from other direct-positive pinhole cameras is the way it doubles as a portable darkroom — enabling you to develop the print right inside the camera. I suppose this is what puts the “insta” in “Pinsta” — at least if you’re the sort who measures time in “eons.” The manufacturer also advertises it as a camera “that fits in your pocket.” Seeing as it makes a twin-lens Rollieflex look svelte, I’m assuming the Pinsta folks must also be in the couture business, and that their new PinstaPocket™ baggy burlap ready-to-wear SackPants™ collection has yet to hit the Paris runways.
So — bearing in mind my Hell-bound tendency toward impatience, and my accompanying pathological insistence on unimpeded mobility — let’s explore, point-by-point, the various conflicts betwixt myself and this camera.
To begin, it’s a large format camera — designed to take exactly one shot before you need to reload it. And loading a large format camera isn’t as simple as popping in a new 35mm cassette, or unspooling a fresh roll of 120 film. Instead, it requires putting both the camera and direct positive paper into a changing bag; zipping it up; opening the camera; unboxing the paper; removing a sheet from the inner light-blocking plastic bag; fumbling around to feel which side is the emulsion side; inserting it in the camera; putting the paper back in the bag/box; reassembling the camera; unzipping the bag and extracting the camera.
After that, the camera needs to be mounted on a tripod, positioned and levelled — a further interminably exasperating act, which is exacerbated by the fact that the Pinsta is not a view camera. In fact, there is no viewfinder at all — no ground glass focussing screen; nothing. In order to know what is and is not in the frame, I need to crouch, squat, and contort my body to look through the camera’s little sight line aids — one pair for each of the four corners of the image.
And if this wasn’t slow enough, consider that the images are not being exposed on film, but on paper — paper that has an ISO of 3. Yes, THREE. Which is pretty drastic, considering I think ISO 100 film is borderline “too slow.” So recording onto a medium that’s 5 stops slower means standing around 32 times longer waiting for it to expose. For those of you thinking, “chill out, dude — 1/2 second isn’t that much longer than 1/60th of a second,” let me remind you that this is a pinhole camera. Which means I’m not shooting at f/8, I’m shooting at f/zillion (give or take — I haven’t bothered to do the math).
The simple “Sunny 16 rule” isn’t quite as simple when you’re dealing with these sorts of film speeds and aperture openings. So I need to spend a bit of time staring at the scene — peering into the shadows; gazing at the sky; and assessing the overall dynamic range — all in an effort to make a total wild-ass guess as to how long the exposure should be. Usually, on a typical overcast Vancouver day, it’ll take several minutes for enough light particles to march single file through the tiny opening to expose the paper.
Once I make my wild-ass guess, I enter it into my iPhone’s timer app, open the Pinsta’s shutter, and stand around for the next several minutes — waiting for the paper to record an image, and wondering why I don’t just take a shot with that very same iPhone, and move along.
Also, as someone who likes to practice the fine art of invisibility whilst taking photos, I can assure you this is not an invisible act — the changing bag on the ground; the tripod’s footprint; all that crouching and squatting and scrutinizing of some big goofy black box — people will notice you. They mill about, looking quizzically at the process, yet they remain oblivious to the fact that an actual photo is being taken — passing in front of the “lens”, or even parking themselves there in an effort to work out what I’m doing and why I’m now just standing around doing nothing but looking bored.
When the alarm goes off and I close the shutter, a full fifteen minutes will have passed between the time I decided to take a photo and actually took it. Alas, the process doesn’t end there. After all, I can’t take another photo until I’ve developed and removed the film I just shot.
This is where things get particularly interesting, since I’m now required to extract three large syringes from a giant backpack — one filled with developer; one filled with fixer; and the third filled with water for washing — and inject them, one-after-the-other into the body of the camera.
Needless to say — in the middle of an urban location with an epidemic of open drug use — anyone juggling syringes full of brown liquid does not exactly garner positive attention. At this stage, I know I need to move quickly before the cops arrive — but it’s hard to be quick when you’re developing a print.
The contents of the first syringe get injected into the camera and the whole box gets swirled around for a minute or two, making sure fresh developer constantly flows over the print. The syringe protrudes from the camera the whole time — waiting for me to suck the liquid back out of the box and horrify anyone still in the vicinity.
Next I inject the fixer, which requires about 5 minutes of swirling and swishing before it too gets sucked back into the syringe, followed by another syringe, which injects water, which washes the print for another minute or so.
At this point, I crack open the camera, whip out a knife (exhibiting yet more anti-social behaviour) and use it to pry the saturated, shiny, dripping wet print from the camera back. I shake off the excess fluid, sandwich the print in a drying frame, seal it in a ziplock bag, and slide the whole thing into one of the backpack’s outer pockets.
The camera gear gets dried off; the syringes get put away; the tripod gets folded up; the changing bag gets rolled up, and the entire shebang gets stuffed back into my multitude of bags and packs, ready for the next spot.
And speaking of spots, I can really only photograph a maximum of three locations before the chemicals are exhausted — and, truth be told, that third development is rather woeful. So, unless I plan to haul all this around for the purpose of taking only two photos, I need to also carry an additional jug full of pre-mixed developer; another full of pre-mixed fixer; and a third filled with water. I also need to carry an even larger, empty jug for disposing of the exhausted chemicals.
So basically, it takes me 30 minutes to take the same photo I could have taken in 1/60th of a second with any other camera.
Shooting with the Pinsta is not just a ridiculous drain on the amount of time I have left on earth — it’s an equally ridiculous burden on my need for unencumbered mobility. On a normal photo excursion, I carry — in one hand — a single camera with only the lens that adorns it. A tiny, empty bag is slung over my shoulder — just in case Vancouver does its thing and begins to drop rain from the sky. But a Pinsta-based photo excursion means packing a full size backpack, a large shoulder bag, and a tripod — basically the same amount of gear the average college graduate uses to travel the world in their “gap” year.
Fortunately, I can endure anything — even an assault on both my patience and mobility — should the results prove worth it. Alas, one look at the smattering of photos contained within this article indicates they are not. There are far easier ways to take grungy photos — one of which will be featured in Part Three of this trilogy.
I have no doubt this would be a dream camera for someone who isn’t me, or isn’t anything like me. A hermit monk perhaps; or maybe someone who breeds pack mules; or, at the very least, someone whose personality aligns, rather than clashes with their romanticism. There are definitely people for whom the Pinsta will unlock their creativity, rather suppress it; who will bond with the workflow, rather than rebel; and who will use it to create works of art that trample everything I’ve done in my 30+ years of hit and run photography. But in my hands it is, without peer, an object of sheer folly. In the words of Dirty Harry, “a man’s got to know his limitations.”
Final Ratings:
Personal Enjoyment Factor : On a scale of 1 to 10 (10 being most enjoyable), it rates a negative 3 – ’nuff said.
Convenience : On a scale of 1 to 10, (10 being most convenient), it rates a negative 8 – also ’nuff said.
ABOUT THE ARTICLE : This is Part 2 of a three part series exploring the use of cameras totally at odds with the expectations and demands of 21st Century life. Part 1 is here and Part 3 is here.
ABOUT THE PHOTOS : As with all cameras, the image is inverted on the film — but because I’m shooting to direct positive paper, the usual film-to-paper image reversal does not occur. Sure, since I’m simply photographing the 4×5 prints for publication, I could just flip the images in Photoshop — but that seems contrary to the spirit of this camera, so all images remain reversed — exactly as they appear on the physical prints.
Also, I should note that the introductory photo — which shows some of the gear required for a basic Pinsta excursion — is missing a few items, such as the aforementioned knife, plus some towels for drying the camera between shots, and a few large ziplock bags for protecting the wet prints — increasing the bulk and the burden beyond what you see here, and what was able to fit on my table. And yes, “The Making of Skeletal” was, indeed, shot with the iPhone while I was standing around, waiting for the Pinsta exposure to finish.
REMINDER: If you’ve managed to extract a modicum of enjoyment from the plethora of material contained on this site, please consider making a DONATION to its continuing evolution. As you’ve likely realized, ULTRAsomething is not an aggregator site. Serious time and effort go into developing the original content contained within these virtual walls — even the silly stuff.
Cheesy British horror anthologies occupy a soft spot in my heart — along with cheesy Italian horror anthologies; cheesy Japanese horror anthologies; cheesy Korean horror anthologies; and… oh, who am I kidding? My heart is big enough and soft enough to accommodate the entire spectrum of 20th century genre cinema.
The point, however, is that sometimes an assemblage of short schlocky silliness is just what the doctor ordered — were I lucky enough to have such a doctor. And if this is true for genre cinema, perhaps it’s true for genre blogs — which I guess is what ULTRAsomething is… though I’ve never really been able to classify its precise genre.
So with this in mind, I decided to craft ULTRAsomething’s next three articles as if they were vignettes in an overarching theme — a theme that, when all three entries were combined, would be about the length of a typical article.
Well, that didn’t happen. This — the first so-called “vignette” — was supposed to clock in at about one-third the length of a typical essay. Instead, it wound up being twice the length. Fortunately, I’m nothing if not adaptable, so instead of calling this next series of three articles an “anthology,” I’m calling it a “trilogy.” Problem solved.
Semantics aside, the thematic structure of the trilogy remains the same as the anthology. Each of the next three articles, whatever their length, will revolve around a different camera — and when I say “different,” I mean “utterly inconsistent with modern visual tastes or with 21st century photo dissemination techniques.” Each camera is a folly unto itself, and each will make you (and me) question whether I harbour some hidden desire to burn my web stats to the ground.
On with the show!
Our first folly is the Kodak Stereo camera from the mid-1950’s.
It’s a rather unorthodox looking box of brown bakelite — the sort of thing that invites unsolicited commentary from total strangers. For this reason, toting the camera on a photo walk requires allocating extra time for the inevitable conversations it provokes. I discovered this on my very first outing, when I ducked into the local grocery, and quickly found myself engaged in the following conversation:
Clerk: “Is that a real camera?”
Me: “Yes.”
Clerk: “Does it work?”
Me: “Yes.”
Clerk: “It looks so weird.”
Me: “It’s a stereo camera. That’s why there are two lenses.”
Clerk: “Oh, so it’s a radio.”
Me: “No, it’s a camera. By stereo I mean it takes 3D photos.”
Clerk: “Like in a circle?”
Me: “No. It takes images that look 3-dimensional, as if they had depth.”
Clerk: “I’ve never heard of anything like that.”
Me (in my mind): ‘Of course you haven’t. It predates social media.’
Curiously, she was only the first of three that week, who asked if it was a “real camera.” I’ll admit, I’m as confused about why someone would ask this, as they are about why I’d sling such a thing over my shoulder.
Had I more time (or had they enough interest), I could have explained that the camera’s two lenses are separated by a distance equivalent to that which separates our eyes. One press of the shutter captures two simultaneous images on film — distinguished only by the parallax shift inherent with such separation. When these images are combined in some special way, or viewed side-by-side with (or without) the aid of a stereoscope to merge them, the two images form a phantom centre image, which has a pronounced 3D effect.
Using some surprisingly sharp lenses, the 35mm Kodak shoots 20 pairs of stereo images on a strip of 36 exposure film. Each image is 23 x 24mm in size, and the way each stereo pair is entwined with other stereo pairs on the film makes scanning a bit tedious, but the results (I believe) are worth it.
I’m sure, to anyone who’s only ever taken a photo with a telephone, 1950-something sounds like an eternity ago. They might even believe this camera dates from the dawn of 3D photography, but they’d be wrong. The fact is, stereo photography is almost as old as photography itself.
Niépce took his first photo in 1826 — a mere six years before Charles Wheatstone realized you could take two side-by-side photos and gain access to that precious third dimension. But the whole concept really took off in the 1840s, when optical physicist David Brewster slapped a couple of refracting lenses onto a stereographic viewing device, and caught the attention of Queen Victoria. Thanks to the royal thumbs-up, stereographs lit a fire beneath the rapidly evolving caldron of photographic techniques, and within months the London Stereoscopic Company had manufactured hundreds of thousands of stereoscopes plus a million stereographic prints — employing teams of photographers to travel the world to take 3D images.
Unfortunately, Brewster’s stereograph was not very forgiving of those with either non-aristocratic incomes or less-than-perfect vision, and many people — Oliver Wendell Holmes included — would get headaches from using them. This prompted Holmes to partner with Joesph Bates, and invent an extremely simple, lightweight, handheld device with an adjustable lens-to-photo distance that allowed people with crappy vision and a beer budget to also enjoy 3D photos.
Stereography remained popular for a couple of decades, until it became a victim of its own success — attracting photographers with both dubious imaging skills and a penchant for rephotographing other photographer’s stereo cards. With declining image quality came declining interest. An economic downturn further dampened the appeal of the stereograph, as did the inevitable backlash that occurs when one generation yields to the next. In this case, it was a hip, new breed of young photographers — engaged in the hip, new school of “pictorialism” — who universally proclaimed stereography “a gimmick,” and declared photography’s true purpose was to give an artist’s impression of a scene, and not a clinical rendering.
3D fell from favour in the art world, but found new life in the educational market, where ‘clinical renderings’ were considered a good thing. Over time, as movies and television introduced their own third dimension (time) to the photographic image, the educational market began to erode, and stereographic interest shifted to motion pictures, which adopted another ancient viewing method: the “anaglyphic magic lantern.” Unlike the stereo cards favoured since the Victorian era, this technique did not project two separate side-by-side images, but instead coloured one red and the other cyan, and superimposed them into a single frame. In order to see the 3D effect, viewers used special glasses with one red lens and one cyan lens, thus ensuring each eye would see only the correctly coloured image. As ubiquitous in the mid-20th century as stereoscopes were in the mid-19th, I suspect anyone who’s old enough to remember the panic surrounding Y2K is likely to have at least one pair of cardboard red/cyan 3D glasses in the bottom of a forgotten drawer or box.
As the years progressed, 3D continued to go in and out of fashion — and with each resurgence came and went other viewing methodologies. The simple red/cyan anaglyph glasses yielded to more advanced polarized glasses, which yielded to the active shutter glasses that fuelled the failed 3D TV market in the early part of the 21st century. Lenticular prints and their online equivalent, the “wigglegram”, represent two more attempts to create widespread acceptance of simple 3D photographic stills — each but a blip in the trash heap of trends.
It’s clear that the one unifying factor in stereography’s 200 year struggle to succeed has been (and continues to be) the absence of a suitable viewing mechanism — something I find rather strange. After all, most of us have two eyes with variable focus capability; and there are two images in front of us — so why do we need a mechanical viewing aid at all? Why not just refocus our eyes to form a phantom stereo image between the two projected halves? We can all position ourselves between a pair of stereo speakers, and without donning some sort of elaborate, rickety contraption, we can hear the instruments spread across a phantom sound stage. Our eyes’ ability to localize objects is no different than our ears’.
I’ve had a fascination for stereo photography since, as I child, I first peered through a beige Model G View-Master at a handful of God-awful tourism reels. But it was enough to hook me, and I have subsequently engaged with far more (and far more obscure) types of stereo images than I discuss in this cursory introduction. In the 30 years since I decided to take the leap from photography connoisseur to actual photographer, I’ve wanted to get involved with stereography — but the distribution problem has always stopped me.
In general, I’ve settled on three techniques for displaying stereographic images:
Method one (and my favourite, by far) is the classic Victorian approach of stereo cards and an Oliver Wendell Holmes style viewer. Alas, not only is it the most internet-hostile of the techniques, it’s even gallery-hostile — since only one person at a time can engage with a stereograph. This approach guarantees I’m the only one who will see the photos in their greatest glory — hence the need to be comfortable with obscurity.
Method two is the humble red/cyan anaglyph, which can be vaguely satisfying when viewing images online — provided one is willing to rummage around a few drawers and boxes to find that old pair of cardboard glasses. Without such glasses, however, the photos are pure gobbledygook.
Method three, which I find to be the most satisfying for online viewing, is the crossed-view presentation technique. This method requires absolutely no goofy viewing devices and uses nothing more than our own eyes — just like people listen to stereo with nothing more than their own ears. However, many people do need to practice a bit in order to see the phantom image. And sadly, if I’ve learned anything from my time on earth, it’s that most people would rather buy their way to an instant solution than practice their way to a free and better one.
I have posted both crossed-vision and anaglyph images with this article. Those of you without benefit of a ratty old pair of glasses, but who still want to see some stereographs, will need to apply the crossed-view technique. For the unfamiliar, it works like this:
Size your browser such that it’s wider than 1200 pixels.
Click one of the cross-view photos to open it full size (1200 pixels wide).
Position your eyes a little bit more than arm’s length from your computer, and focus on the screen.
Slowly begin crossing your eyes until the two images form a centre, phantom image. It works best if you concentrate on aligning only one single element in the frame (preferably in the foreground). Once aligned, the stereo image should seem to almost snap into place and your eyes will lock focus — allowing you to peruse the image in full 3D glory, and without any viewing aid. If you feel your eyes crossing uncomfortably, you’re trying too hard. In general, your eyes only cross about as much as if you were trying to read a book pressed close to your face.
And if, after practicing, you’re still unable to form the phantom image, don’t sweat it — I’ve got an entirely different folly camera with which to horrify you in the next installment…
Final Ratings:
Personal Enjoyment Factor : 8 – this thing is a blast to shoot. Its only downside is it’s rather addictive and causes me to constantly prowl for scenes that would ‘look good in 3D’ even when I’m carrying a regular camera.
Convenience : 2 – The little aperture slide on top of the camera is a bit fiddly to set, and its through-the-viewfinder bubble level — while both handy and important — triggers 20 bouts of photographic OCD per roll. Scanning is a pain, since pairs are interleaved on the negative, requiring a lot of shuffling back and forth, with every left frame needing its scan exposure documented, so as to set a matching exposure for the right frame. Post processing is also a bit tedious (particularly since I employ three entirely different display techniques), but I’ve mostly automated that now. In general, when you consider the entire process from shooting-to-displaying, this is probably the fussiest camera I’ve used… but it pales compared to next month’s camera…
Long Term Potential : To taunt me from the camera shelf until I finally take that series of impressionist 3D photos I’m planning — photos that will ultimately become my greatest achievement. But with no ability to display them to a mass audience, I will eventually succumb to a devastating psychological breakdown, and a lifelong dependence on anti-depressants.
ABOUT THE PHOTOS: Yes, these images are rather pedantic — so much so that I haven’t even bothered to publish them in a proper ULTRAsomething display format. That’s because, first and foremost, I needed to get comfortable with how the Kodak Stereo camera ‘draws’ a scene in 3D, and I had to devise a scanning and display methodology, as well. At this point, I’m now comfortable with the process, so my next goal (as mentioned in the article) is to start using stereography to create impressionist images — ’cause it’s about time someone thumbed their nose at all the pictorialists who ruined 3D photography in the late 19th century.
REMINDER: If you’ve managed to extract a modicum of enjoyment from the plethora of material contained on this site, please consider making a DONATION to its continuing evolution. As you’ve likely realized, ULTRAsomething is not an aggregator site. Serious time and effort go into developing the original content contained within these virtual walls — even the silly stuff.
Some people live for the here and now; and some live for the future. I’ve historically been one of those future dwellers — always planning; always sacrificing today for the promise of a better tomorrow. Funny thing though: the older you get, the less of a future you have. It’s one of those immutable laws of physics that eventually forces many a “futurist” to become a “here and nower.”
To date, I’ve failed to budge one iota from a tendency to plan several decades in advance — decades that, thanks to those immutable laws, now stretch into the afterlife, and the somewhat nebulous notion of “legacy.”
As legacies go, mine is a bit ramshackle. There were a couple of synth pop albums in the early 1990’s — neither earned me a dime, though friends did report hearing the music while on-hold for Microsoft Tech Support. So I’m pretty sure I don’t want that as my legacy. Additionally, I’ve had a significant hand in numerous music technology innovations — particularly early in my career. These, however, were all conceived and designed while employed by some company or another, and are thus unrecognizable as a personal legacy. Also, there’s that BC License Plate, which is sort of the photography analog to the Microsoft hold music. Which, pathetically, just leaves this website…
Legacy-wise, it seems I have less to mark my time on earth than the guy who knocks up his girlfriend at the high school dance.
But recently — and surprisingly — that iota of mine seems to have shifted ever so slightly, and I’m beginning to think living for the future isn’t really the sophisticated endeavour it’s cracked up to be. Society tends to put us planners on a pedestal, as if careful consideration of one’s future actions is more noble than succumbing to the lure of current delights. But is it? As a lifelong model of such virtue, I’m questioning whether all this planning isn’t just an elaborate ruse — concocted by my subconscious as a way to pretend I’m doing something useful with my life when, in fact, I’m not doing a damn thing. When you live for today, you can assess your situation, and adjust accordingly to maximize each moment. When you live 20 years in the future, there’s no accountability — so you get to be a little lackadaisical on the fine details.
Besides, when did anyone who’s planning 20 years into the future ever achieve a single one of their objectives? What good is living for a future that never comes? When I was 10 and planning for 30, my world was consumed with designing fashionable jetpacks and garages with retractable roofs to facilitate my hovercraft. As I aged, my planning became more practical, and as little as a decade ago, my scenario for this year involved being retired from my day job, working on ULTRAsomething full time, and making annual pilgrimages to Japan. Unfortunately, these plans seemed to collide with someone else’s plans for a worldwide pandemic, savings-eradicating inflation, and a generational disinterest in both the written word and in any sort of metaphoric and/or ‘social landscape’ photography.
If I can’t make feasible plans for life in the future, how am I supposed to make them for death? Why worry about legacy when I don’t even have a currency?
Putting aside my suspicion that legacy planning is merely a mollification of a life lived for naught, there’s another sticky issue: 100 years from now, will there be any humans left to care? That was the timeline for human extinction, suggested by Stephen Hawking at the end of his life — and I’m starting to think he was an optimist. So it’s pretty silly to invest all this time and energy into building a legacy, when there’s only going to be another generation or two. Tops.
So all these plans I’m making for my work to outlive me? They’re as absurd as designing a house with a hovercraft garage. Wouldn’t the more sensible plan be to simply try to take a photo that pleases me when I look at it? Or write a piece of music that I want to listen to? Or pen an essay I actually want to re-read?
Besides, no one really gets to choose their own legacy. Show me the reanimated corpse of most anyone famous, and I’ll show you one ticked-off zombie — annoyed to discover all the inaccurate quotes, actions and beliefs that society has wrongfully attributed to them. My intentions in life are misunderstood enough — I can only imagine how they would be interpreted in death.
What is legacy really? And why do we all want one? At its most basic, it’s really just a desire to be remembered… or at least to have had one’s existence acknowledged. I’ve always balked at the idea that children are a legacy, even though it’s the most surefire way of being mentioned for another generation or two. Some people are so desperate to be remembered, they don’t even care what it is they’re remembered for — just some post-mortem acknowledgement that they once roamed the planet. But what’s the point? I certainly don’t know anything about the people who don’t yet exist, so why care if they know anything about me?
So I’m making a conscious effort to step away from the “legacy planning” thing. And while there’s still a little of it left, I’ll be diving head first into the “here and now.” Obviously though, before doing anything too rash, I’ll need to consider how future generations might perceive this decision of mine… I wouldn’t want to do anything to tarnish my legacy.
ABOUT THE PHOTOS:“Optimism Rally” was photographed with a Leica M10 Monochrom, fronted with a 21mm f/3.4 Super-Elmar-M. “Shoddy Matinée” wasshot on Fomapan 100, inside a Nikon 28Ti, and developed in HC-110 (H).“Condo Living” was photographed through a 35mm f/3.5 Elmar LTM lens and Leica IIIc, onto Tri-X at ISO 400, and developed in HC-110 (E). “Placeholder” was shot on FP4+ at ISO 125 and developed in HC-110 (H). The camera was the cheapest bit of utter crap I could possibly find. It shall remain ‘nameless,’ since it’s a gift I’ve yet to present to a photographer friend. Hmm… maybe this is indicative of why I have so few friends.
REMINDER: If you’ve managed to extract a modicum of enjoyment from the plethora of material contained on this site, please consider making a DONATION to its continuing evolution. As you’ve likely realized, ULTRAsomething is not an aggregator site. Serious time and effort go into developing the original content contained within these virtual walls — even the silly stuff.
Before cinema’s fall from relevancy, most movies were stand-alone, self-contained creations — not episodic instalments in a franchised, multi-segmented marketing blitz. Often, within today’s modern movie franchises, it’s the origin stories that are among the most-loved and lucrative entries — indicative of an audience’s hunger to discover the source of some serialized character’s eccentricities.
Though eccentric itself, I’m not sure if ULTRAsomething counts as a franchise, nor if its readers are as famished for details as the average Batman fan. But another month is upon us and I have to write about something, so now seems as good a time as any to crank out this site’s origin story.
ULTRAsomething first appeared in early 2001 as my online music, photography, sound- and product-design portfolio. Seven years later, it was repurposed into the photo-centric, essay-based format you see before you. But these simple facts are not its origin story. For that, we need to travel all the way back to the days of rabbit ear antennas, dial phones, and typewriters.
Through a series of fortuitous events, as described in Jim’s Victory, a prepubescent, protoplasmic blob now known as Egor, began to compose its own music. As I grew, so too did my thirst for musical knowledge. I became increasingly obsessed with the idea of making ‘weird’ music; got exposed to the avant-garde through some records in my local library; and launched into a lifelong journey of sonic exploration. Music became my primary, all-encompassing love. Unfortunately, my high school guidance counsellor was adamant in her belief that “avant-garde composer” was not a viable career choice, so I decided my only other childhood interest, architecture, would become my vocation.
By the age of 17, my architecture plans were crumbling. The career counselling books all suggested that a “successful architect” would become a wiring or ductwork specialist at a large architectural firm. I wanted to design transformative spaces for human interaction — not be some cog in a machine. So if a five-year architecture program wouldn’t pave the road to becoming the next Le Corbusier or Mies van der Rohe, why was I trading in my dream to become the next Pierre Schaeffer or Karlheinz Stockhausen? Fearful of “succeeding” my way into a tediously uncreative corporate career, I made the last-minute decision to study electrical engineering, hoping I might graduate into a job designing synthesizers.
Instead, I graduated into a job testing high voltage power supplies for the U.S. defence industry — a fate infinitely more soul-crushing than that big-firm architecture gig that had so frightened me. Suffocating beneath the workplace misery, I sought solace in my continued passion for electronic music, and I rekindled my interest in architecture — thinking, perhaps, that it wasn’t too late to switch careers.
Throughout my 20’s, my architectural interests widened more than deepened, and grew to include furniture and industrial design. I began to hang out in architectural bookstores, where trips down other aisles led me to an interest in graphic design, which led me to discover a small sub-section of photography books contained within. Until then, I hadn’t the slightest interest in photography — but through those books, I began to regard photography as a viable and compelling art form. In an act I’m sure delighted the proprietors, I stopped frequenting architectural bookstores, and transferred my browsing habit to art bookstores, which featured more expansive and diverse photography sections.
I devoured the contents of every photography book I saw — whether in stores or libraries. No subject was beyond my scrutiny; no genre unworthy of exploration. I began going to galleries, subscribed to numerous photography-centric fine arts magazines, joined the now-defunct Friends of Photography, and bought membership in the newly opened Ansel Adams gallery in San Francisco. I absorbed every book within that gallery’s store, and would attend each and every exhibition numerous times to scrutinize the prints.
During these years, I learned a lot about photography as a visual medium — about what I liked, what I didn’t like, and why. I learned what made an image work, and I learned the “language” of photography. I even learned about the photographers who made the images, and would study the economic and cultural conditions under which they created them.
And all the while, not once did I ever think about becoming a photographer myself. I saw photography as an art form, which meant it was created by artists — which I most definitely was not. Besides, by this point, I’d abandoned the corporate life and was now a struggling sound designer, composer, music technology writer, and computer music design consultant. The last thing I needed was another thing to struggle with.
It seems absolutely ludicrous from today’s perspective — but after several years spent vacuuming up every photo I could find, I was running out of new photos to look at. Tim Berners-Lee had just invented the World Wide Web, but it would still be several years before anyone realized its potential, and even more before the bandwidth would support photographic images. Fresh into my 30’s, and faced with a dwindling photo supply chain, I decided that if I wanted to see more photographs, perhaps I needed to start taking them.
There was no “Big Bang” — no singular moment that triggered my switch from photography connoisseur to actual photographer. It was simply the logical evolution. And while there were many factors that led me to purchase a brand new Canon EOS 100 (Elan) from Adolf Gasser’s in the fall of 1991, three stand out as significant:
First, was the influence of Bill Brandt’s “London, 1952″ — not because it was a nude (there were hundreds of fine art photographers working in that genre), but because it was the “anti nude” — a tightly-cropped, softly-focussed, high-contrast image that seemed more closely related to architecture and design than to portraiture. It was one of the most beautiful photographs I’d ever seen, yet it broke every rule of classical photography. Aside from this, and some earlier inspirational examples from surrealist’s like Man Ray or the Czech avant-garde, such concepts seemed underrepresented in the photography canon. “Breaking the rules” seemed like an avenue ripe for further exploration. So what if I gave it a try?
Second, in my ever-widening search for new photos, I’d begun to frequent Kinokuniya Books in San Francisco’s “Japantown” neighbourhood. Never mind that I couldn’t read a word of Japanese — I couldn’t read any of my French or German-language magazines either. I was there for the pictures. Most of Kinokuniya’s photo books were chock-full of the most banal landscape, cherry blossom, and cloud formation snapshots imaginable. But entwined amongst them was a smattering of photos that proved positively confounding in their seemingly total disregard for form, function or fidelity. Black and white; out of focus; poorly exposed, gritty yet murky — I couldn’t tell if they were the result of a printing press gone horribly wrong, or were actually intended to look that way. Though I now obviously know this was classic Japanese Provoke-school photography, I hadn’t a clue back then. All I knew is that I found the photos mesmerizing, and they seemed every bit as radical as the noise, drone, atonal, and avant-garde music I enjoyed. Without adequate access to more Japanese photography, owning my own camera seemed the most viable path to further exploration.
Third, was a realization that I could combine two hobbies into one. With only two-and-a-half channels accessible on the TV in my downtown San Francisco apartment, and with cable priced well beyond my budget, my viewing habits skewed toward the ancient art of “people watching.” I could (and would) spend hours camped in front of cafes — watching the passing parade, and delighting in the eccentricities, subtleties, personalities and conventions of human beings. Elliot Erwitt seemed to see exactly the same sort of things I saw, only he actually bothered to photograph them. At the time, I’m not sure I even considered people like Erwitt, Robert Frank or Garry Winogrand to be ‘real’ photographers, since I was still responding to photos by what they looked like, rather than what they said. But none the less, it seemed like having a camera with me could, at the very least, allow me to share those fleeting moments of serendipity with others.
My first forays into photography were a complete disaster. The visual gap between all those classic images and my one-hour photo lab colour prints — it was beyond cavernous. The photos I loved did not look anything like the photos I took.
I had a lot to learn about how a camera “saw” the world, and just as much about how to print. I invested in some stainless tanks, stocked my fridge with Tri-X, bought an enlarger and some B&W print chemistry, blacked out my bathroom, and started on the journey toward figuring out just how all those fabulous photographers conjured up compelling images from such a utilitarian little box. I’m still learning.
As photographer origin stories go, I suspect mine is somewhat backward. I didn’t grow up taking photos. Nor did I become a photographer in the ‘typical’ way — in which one starts photographing friends or vacations, and “catches the bug.” And I most certainly didn’t get interested through a love of gear; to be “cool”; to get access to events; or any other such nonsense. I became a photographer because I fell in love with photographs. And it was because of this love, and the large photographic vocabulary I had already amassed, that I ultimately chose to become a photographer myself. I honestly think, had I done it any other way, there would never have been an ULTRAsomething. Which, as far as I know, is pretty much the de facto requirement for any good origin story.
I’m well aware this is one of the most boring posts in ULTRAsomething’s near 14 years. But some day, when I’m dead and legendary, some poor copy writer is going to appreciate its existence when tasked with writing my obituary.
“Added Pressure” was shot on Tri-X, inside a Contax G1, fronted with a Zeiss 28mm f/2.8 Biogon, and developed in HC-110 (Dilution B).
“Ingels, et al.” was shot on Tri-X, inside a Leitz Minolta CL, fronted with a Minolta 28mm f/2.8 Rocker, and developed in a 1:50 solution of Rodinal (Blazinal).
“Post-It®” was shot on Delta 3200, exposed at ISO 1600 inside a Contax G1, fronted with a Zeiss 45mm f/2 Planar, and developed in a 1:25 solution of Rodinal (Blazinal).
“30 Years’ Fruition” was shot on Rollei Superpan, inside a Widelux F7, and developed in a 1:50 solution of Rodinal (Blazinal).
“Cart Before the Horse” was shot on Fomapan 100, inside a Nikon 28Ti, and developed in HC-110 (Dilution H).
“Technically Compliant” was shot with a Ricoh GRIII digital camera.
REMINDER: If you’ve managed to extract a modicum of enjoyment from the plethora of material contained on this site, please consider making a DONATION to its continuing evolution. As you’ve likely realized, ULTRAsomething is not an aggregator site. Serious time and effort go into developing the original content contained within these virtual walls — even the silly stuff.
The shortest path between two points is a straight line. Rarely is it the most interesting. And in the physical world, rarely is it as straight as you think — linearity being as much about perception as certitude.
For example, if I’m in the middle of the Bonneville Salt Flats, and I wish to walk the shortest possible path to a point only 5km away, I’m going to need a shovel. How else am I going to dig a trench — 2 meters deep at the midpoint — to counteract the curvature of the earth? No shovel, no straight line.
Our world is awash in trajectories we perceive as linear, but really aren’t. Time dilation anyone? It might take a rocket scientist to build a device for travelling to another solar system and back; but it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that a quick, 2-year roundtrip voyage from the astronaut’s perspective could result in the passing of, say, 60 years here on earth.
Fortunately, I’m not here to bore you with the impractical. Instead, I’m here to bore you with something else entirely: our bodies. The very surface upon which we visualize our surroundings — the retina — is spherical, and the images projected upon it are curved. Our brain intuits the true nature of the objects, and auto-flattens any bowed projections accordingly. It’s the same sort of optical post-processing we perform when our brain is fed an upside-down and reversed retinal projection, and flips it around to match the orientation of our own bodies.
In other words, what we think we see isn’t necessarily what we really see. Which, as a photographer, gives me carte blanche to do anything I want — including ditching the idea that a photograph needs to have straight lines just because our brains are fooling us into believing they should be.
The whole idea of curvature is what occasionally pulls me into the realm of fisheye lenses, and what keeps me constantly in the realm of the Widelux camera. Both will bow lines we believe to be linear.
In the case of a fisheye lens, a spherical object is used to project an image onto a flat surface, resulting in a curvilinear perspective in which both horizontal and vertical lines are rendered as curves.
In the case of the Widelux, a rectilinear lens rotates in a horizontal arc across the scene, and the image is projected onto a curved surface of equal radius. This gives a particularly unique look, in which vertical lines remain straight while horizontal lines become bowed.
Both techniques delight me to no end, because both mess with our brain’s construct of what an object is supposed to look like. In the common vernacular, we call these “distortions,” but I believe this is a term born of bias. In reality, any projection of a 3-dimensional space onto a 2-dimensional surface results in “distortion.” The question is which elements are being distorted, not whether any distortion occurs.
Most lenses are of rectilinear design, meaning they’re engineered to keep lines as straight as possible — a feat they achieve at the expense of dimensional integrity. Anyone who’s ever shot a wide angle lens has surely seen the grotesque way in which objects near the borders are stretched wildly out of shape in order to preserve linearity. To me, this is no less a form of “distortion” than the fisheye, which keeps relative dimensions intact at the expense of linearity.
In fact, I’d even suggest that our brains can more easily acclimate to curvilinear photographs than rectilinear ones — at least at wide angles. That’s because we’re already accustom to interpreting curved retinal projections as straight lines. In contrast, we’re not accustom to interpreting stretched objects, so we’ll never really succeed in ignoring those wide-angle rectilinear distentions.
It’s a belief backed up by my own experience: The more time I spend looking at photos from a Widelux or fisheye, the less I notice the curvature — my brain easily intuits which lines should be straight, and it soon begins to simply interpret them as such. Since we’re all born with the straightening algorithm installed in our occipital lobes, all we need to do is access it. In contrast, since our brains don’t have any real-time de-stretching code installed, we can’t un-see the elongated objects at the edge of a standard wide angle photo.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter which method — curvilinear or rectilinear — is closer to ‘reality,’ since ‘reality’ has little to do with what I’m trying to accomplish with photography. The simple fact I have no interest in colour should tell you that.
So for me, the party starts once I become aware of all the abstract possibilities of a curvilinear perspective — how I can alter spacial relationships by shifting an object’s location in the frame; how I can place arched surfaces contrary to the direction of the camera’s curvature to actually straighten them; and how I can tilt the lens to enhance or minimize the effects of the curvature — emphasizing and deemphasizing sections of the frame accordingly.
The notion that lines should be straight is just another arbitrary photography construct — no different than a belief that a good photo is sharp; has level horizons; adheres to the rule-of-thirds; or any of that other hooey. Whether you’ve got a blank frame of film or some empty space on your memory card, the only reality is that you’re free to record anything you want onto it. With that in mind, is the shortest path really the one you want to take?
ABOUT THE PHOTOS:Equivalence, Deco, Paganism, Dominance and Enveloped were all shot with my new (to me) Olympus M. Zuiko ED 8mm f/1.8 Fisheye Pro lens on an OM Systems OM-1 camera (yes, I’ve doubled down on Micro Four Thirds). Waves and Divergent were shot with a Widelux F7 on Acros II at ISO 100, and developed in Rodinal (Blazinal) 1:50. Spring and Exit were also shot on a Widelux F7 — this time on Fomapan 100, and stand developed for one hour in a mixture of HC-110 and Rodinal.
REMINDER: If you’ve managed to extract a modicum of enjoyment from the plethora of material contained on this site, please consider making a DONATION to its continuing evolution. As you’ve likely realized, ULTRAsomething is not an aggregator site. Serious time and effort go into developing the original content contained within these virtual walls — even the silly stuff.
This site has waxed poetic over half-frame film cameras for the better part of decade. My review of the Olympus Pen F surely qualified as an epic poem; while the Pen EE-2 was a work of ekphrastic poetry. The Ricoh Auto-Half veered into sonnet territory; while the Agat 18K could only be classified as an elegy — as much my own as the Agat’s.
I love the simplicity of these cameras. I love the way the photos they take are more a suggestion of a subject than a detailed rendering, and how that changes my vision accordingly. And I love their frugality — because not only can I fit over 70 shots on a single roll of 35mm film, but the cameras themselves are quite inexpensive.
Unfortunately, 60 year-old inexpensive cameras designed for budget-conscious consumers don’t last forever, and I must sadly report that my two most-beloved half-frame cameras — the Ricoh Auto-Half and the Olympus Pen EE-2 — have now shuffled off their immortal coils. Quite literally in the case of the Ricoh Auto-Half, as its coiled transport spring has now sprung.
Both cameras served me well, with the little EE-2 once acting as my ‘walk around’ camera on a trip to Iceland — a destination normally associated with seekers of the ultimate in digital image quality. In fact, it was the EE-2 that delivered my favourite photo from there — a shot I’d never think to take had I been lugging a “real” camera. But it’s the Ricoh Auto-Half to which I’d developed the strongest connection. Immediately after it failed, I had the irrational urge to get it repaired — a choice that would no doubt grossly eclipse the smattering of yen I spent to liberate it from an underground Shinjuku camera shop. Eventually, I realized the more rational option was to frame its loss as a golden excuse to buy an entirely different half-frame camera… and I knew just which one.
On the final day of my last Tokyo trip — a month before “Coronavirus” first became a household word — I’d traveled on a westbound train to some quiet little neighbourhood outside the megapolis. There, as happens in many Japanese neighborhoods, I stumbled upon the tiniest of camera shops. Inside was a half-frame Konica Recorder, which I made the mistake of handling for a bit too long. I wanted it. I hemmed a little, and hawed a lot. But with my return luggage already bulging with vintage cameras, I feared another purchase might incite Canadian customs to unilaterally declare me a “camera import business,” and slap me with a fine for operating without a license. Besides, I didn’t have enough time to run a roll of test film through it, get it developed, and return the camera should there be any problems. So I passed. But the desire to own a Konica Recorder remained, and the demise of the two half-frame cameras provided the impetus I needed to return to Tokyo (albeit only via eBay) and purchase one. Five days later, it was in my hands.
Unlike my Auto-Half and EE-2, which were both products of the 1960’s, the Konica Recorder is positively modern — arriving from the year 1985. You can tell because the thing has a sort of checkerboard ‘new wave’ case design, and bears an uncanny resemblance to an old Sony Walkman — a comparison that seemingly extends even to Konica’s decision to call it a “Recorder.” Hopefully such modernity will help it remain functional for the next several years. After all — though gloriously inexpensive — it did cost twice as much as the pair of half-frame cameras it replaced.
Adding to the comparative cost difference, is the Konica’s additional ongoing operating expense: two AA batteries! These are required to power its exposure meter (a task handled by unpowered selenium cells in the older cameras); its auto-wind (handled via a thumbwheel or spring in the EE-2 and Auto-Half, respectively); and its auto-focus (a feature missing from both the earlier cameras, which are fixed-focus designs). They also power the camera’s built-in flash — another feature missing from the Konica’s predecessors.
Speaking of autofocus, it seems to operate in “seat-of-the-pants” mode. There’s no actual focus area displayed in the viewfinder. So you’re left to guess what, exactly, the camera is focussing on. Common sense dictates that it’s the middle of the viewfinder — but how big is that area? Considering the camera sports a 24mm f/4 Hexanon lens, it barely matters — most everything is going to be in focus anyway; particularly since its minimum focus distance is still a meter away. To test this, I popped off a couple shots of rather large nearby subjects, centering them in the frame. Keeping in mind that focus is a fuzzy term when it comes to half-frame cameras, I scrutinized the shots and concluded that maybe, possibly, there might just be a tiny bit of bokeh in the background. So I’m lead to believe the autofocus does, indeed, do a little something.
The lens is surprisingly capable — quite helpful when you’re building photos with only half the number of grains. Exposures were certainly well-placed within the latitude afforded by black & white negative film. Overall, the images were more sharply rendered, and generally better exposed than those from any of my older point-and-shoot half-frame cameras.
Happily, this camera is free of all that DX-coding nonsense, so you can set your film speed to whatever you want. Unhappily, if you want your film speed to be anything other than ISO 100, 200 or 400, you’re out of luck. No shooting ADOX CMS 20 at box speed. No pushing Tri-X to 800 or 1600. Even at ISO 400, you might want to keep an eye on the sky — the shutter speed tops out at 1/250th of a second.
Film is transported vertically through the camera, so holding it horizontally results in landscape-oriented shots, like a full-frame camera. I actually prefer the portrait-orientation of the older half-frames, but it’s not a deal killer. As I mentioned earlier, the Konica auto-advances the film after each shot, and to my delight (and just like the Auto-Half), it transports the film only after you lift your finger off the shutter button. So you can take a shot in near silence, then walk away before releasing the shutter button — ensuring the zhzhzhzhtt of the auto-wind is safely out of anyone’s earshot.
In spite of being a bit larger than either the EE-2 or Auto-Half, it still slides effortless into the slimmest of pockets — aided significantly by the fact there are no extending bits or bobs to snag on your jeans on the way in or out. Instead, the camera’s working elements are all hidden behind a sliding shell that keeps the camera’s closed surface perfectly smooth, while protecting the lens, focus sensors, exposure window, ISO settings, and rewind switch safely from damage or accidental activation.
And about that rewind switch: when you reach the end of the roll, the film doesn’t automatically rewind. Instead, you need to flip the rewind switch, and those two little AA batteries start pumping out the juice needed to wind your film back into the cartridge. The problem is that there’s no indication of when the camera has completed this task. Instead, the rewind motor will happily spin that spool for as long as the rewind switch is ‘on.’ This makes it a bit difficult to judge when the film has been totally rewound. I thought I’d be able to tell by sound, but I was wrong. On the second test roll, after about 20 seconds, I thought it sounded like the film was back in the cartridge, but nope… it wasn’t. That little discovery cost me a few exposures when I opened the back. So for the third roll, I simply let the thing rewind for about 45 seconds before daring to open the camera. It probably means I’ll be replacing those AA batteries a couple rolls sooner than expected, but this shouldn’t add more than a few dollars to the lifelong operating cost of the camera.
Besides, any extra battery expense is sure to be offset by the amazing number of shots the Konica Recorder crams onto a single roll of film. I ran three different types of film through this camera — one corresponding to each of its possible ISO settings. I got 80 shots on a roll of Tri-X; 82 on a roll of Fomopan 100; and 78 on a roll of Rollei Superpan 200. Which makes this (AA battery costs included) THE most frugal film camera I’ve ever owned.
Much like the Walkman that seemingly inspired its form, this is a camera that begs to be carried around. So for two straight weeks, I did exactly that. And much like the concept that inspired its name, I used it to record just about anything I happened upon. 52 of these ‘recordings’ comprise the accompanying vBook. I could write about what I thought of the images this camera takes, or you can watch and decide for yourself.
As much as I like this camera, sentiment continues to nudge me toward repairing the Auto-Half. Whether I’d find a camera technician willing to bother? Doubtful. But until I do, the Konica Recorder — fashion victim that it is — has proven to be an able and technically superior substitute. Objectively, it produces the finest photos of any point-and-shoot half-frame I’ve used. Subjectively, it’s still too early to know whether I’ll develop the same sort of emotional attachment I formed with its two predecessors — but I have no doubt I’ll enjoy the opportunity to find out, as it will surely accompany me on many more walks in the coming years.
ABOUT THE vBOOK:A Portent Dawn, Redundancy and Fortuitous — as displayed in this article — are just 3 of the 52 shots included in the vBook. Since it’s an article about the Konica Recorder half-frame 35mm camera, you would be correct in assuming these, and all the photos in the vBook, are from that camera — shot over a two week period, and on the three films stocks mentioned in the text. The soundtrack is basically just a one-take improvisation performed on a Buchla Easel Command, with a tiny bit of additional accompaniment haphazardly improvised in a similar one-take-and-done fashion. The photos were then sequenced against the music in Final Cut Pro X.
REMINDER: If you’ve managed to extract a modicum of enjoyment from the plethora of material contained on this site, please consider making a DONATION to its continuing evolution. As you’ve likely realized, ULTRAsomething is not an aggregator site. Serious time and effort go into developing the original content contained within these virtual walls — even the silly stuff.
In February 2013, on one of my then-frequent trips to Portland Oregon, I made one of my then-frequent visits to Pro Photo Supply to feed my then-frequent habit of shopping for interesting old lenses. There, sitting amongst a collection of gleaming chrome products in the impeccably tidy glass Leica display case, sat some sort of gnarly, heavily used, blackened brass pipe fitting. I naturally concluded that it had been left behind by a tradesman, tasked with repairing and replacing a section of the store’s antiquated plumbing.
I caught the attention of my buddy behind the counter, nodded my head in the general direction of the anomaly, and asked “why is there an old chunk of pipe in the Leica case?”
Without even glancing toward it, he knew exactly what I was talking about. “That’s an old, screw-mount Leitz 90 Elmar,” he replied.
“Is it any good?” I inquired.
“Probably not,” replied my buddy.
He opened the cabinet, extracted the alleged lens, and handed it to me. I nearly dropped it through the glass Canon display case over which I stood. My brain had severely underestimated just how heavy an ugly little tube of solid brass and glass could be. I held it up to the light and witnessed its densely oxidized brass and black patina seemingly absorb all the ambient light in its vicinity. I rotated the focus ring, and to my surprise, the lens elements moved in and out. I spun the aperture ring, and the internal blades dutifully opened and closed.
Both repulsed and mesmerized, I screwed it to an LTM-to-M adapter I had in my bag, then mounted the combo on my Leica M9. Visually, it was the unholiest of unions — a device certainly capable of photographing Satan himself. No lens/body marriage ever looked so homely, ill conceived, or just plain wrong. But like the plot of a bad romantic comedy, repulsion turned to love. And like the plot of a bad porno, love came cheap. $65.
I’ll admit, the images it foisted upon the M9 sensor looked every bit as ill conceived and homely as the lens itself. They were soft, blooming, heavily vignetted, and weirdly colour-shifted. Plus, the lens seemed incapable of rendering more than 3 stops of dynamic range — no matter how contrasty the actual scene. Calling it a “character” lens would merely trivialize its many aberrations.
Several times, over the next year, I’d mount it to the M9 and snap off a couple of shots — wondering what subjects, if any, could possibly benefit from being photographed with a 1938 90mm f4 Elmar? Particularly when there’s a perfectly capable 1996 90mm f/2.8 Elmarit-M sitting beside it on the shelf? Obviously, unlike the Elmarit-M, I could mount the pipe on an old Leica III — but I possessed neither a 90mm viewfinder nor the will to bother. So the ugly little pipe fitting eventually got ostracized from the “good gear” cabinet, and into a box with some of Satan’s other photographic castoffs.
And there it sat… month after month… year after year… until a few weeks ago, when it finally realized its purpose: to protect me from myself.
Prior to my dual cataract surgeries, I was fearful that my photography style might change once I gained the benefit of sight. For the last several years, trees had no branches; architecture had no ornamentation; humans had no faces. Post-surgery, I can now see that trees do have branches; architecture does have ornamentation; and humans have taken to wearing face masks.
Sure enough, with my daily environment now awash in a rich display of detail, I felt compelled to photograph it — and the high-res, high-fidelity Leica M10 Monochrom seemed just the tool to use. It took but a single afternoon of snapping the most banal images imaginable for me to learn my pre-surgery fears were coming true. Gone were the metaphors — replaced by hackneyed shots of snowcapped mountains, and boats floating on a gently rippling sea.
What I needed was a way to save me from myself. And it dawned on me that salvation might just lie in that old 90mm Elmar, sitting in the bottom of Satan’s drawer. Mounted to that same M10 Monochrom and tasked with photographing the vapidness to which I was currently drawn, it worked a treat. While it didn’t stop me from pointing my camera at scenes awash in splendid detail, it did stop my camera from recording all that surfeit precision — the type guaranteed to lead me insidiously down a path to some untoward belief that the “best” photo is the one which most sharply renders an aphid on the stem of some superfluous plant halfway across the frame from the actual subject.
No matter what I point this lens at, it produces images as soft as a roll of premium toilet paper; with resolution that would strain to chart above 2 lines/mm on an MTF chart; and with the dynamic range of grey cement under a heavily overcast sky.
Though such characteristics may sound detrimental — and the out-of-camera images do look grotesquely horrendous — there are actually a couple of benefits. First, the inherent lack of resolution eliminates any point to pixel-peeping, and instead lets me concentrate on the more interesting aspects of a photo’s shape and form, and not its details. And second, the paucity of dynamic range makes the files highly malleable. Once I started shoving pixels around in Photoshop, I discovered I quite liked how this old lens saw the world. The very act of setting an image’s black-point and white-point spreads the limited collection of captured mid-greys widely apart — granulating any gradations to produce a rather organic grittiness. This results in an ‘old fashioned’ quality that’s entirely contrary to the technical accuracy favoured by today’s lenses. So while my photo subjects remained every bit as banal as the ones I shot that first afternoon, the actual photos became suggestions of banality, rather than full-on clinical examples.
Naturally, once I saw how successfully the pipe fitting mucked with the Monochrom’s fidelity, I wanted even less fidelity. And so it soon found its way onto the front of my Olympus OM-D E-M1 Mk3 — courtesy of not one but two lens mount adapters. There, the images took on even more grit.
I’m not sure how much longer I’ll remain enchanted by the fact that skies have birds, boats have names, and signs have words… but at least I know the patented lo-fi look of my photographs doesn’t need to suffer too much (even if the subject matter does). Maybe it’s finally time I got around to mounting this sucker on an old Leica III, where it truly belongs…
Astute readers will notice that I’ve applied the apocryphal formula of “One dozen mediocre photos = one good photo” for visually populating this article. I’m pretty rusty on the whole notion of taking photos of things I can actually see, so there might be a lag until I regain enough skill to take some good photos, and thus reduce the quantity I need to publish.
As suggested by the article, everything was shot with either the Leica 10 Monochrom or the Olympus OMD E-M1 MK3. For those that actually care, “Fulcrum”, “Stratum”, “Farrago” and “Electroswoosh” are the Olympus shots. Everything else is the Monochrom… well, except the product shot, obviously.
REMINDER: If you’ve managed to extract a modicum of enjoyment from the plethora of material contained on this site, please consider making a DONATION to its continuing evolution. As you’ve likely realized, ULTRAsomething is not an aggregator site. Serious time and effort go into developing the original content contained within these virtual walls — even the silly stuff.
