Imagine a blurry figure walking out of frame right.
I always get a frame like this at the start of a roll through my OM-1. They are never in focus, but they are often properly exposed, which is strange. They often don’t look like much, but, for some reason, I’m intrigued by them. It’s always kind of fun to try to figure out what the heck they are showing me. I think this one might be of the wood paneling in my apartment. I think.
Picture number 03580035?
Marek asks “have you already made more than three and a half million pictures in your life Matt?” Er, well no, not exactly. Here’s how the serial numbers work. The first four digits are the roll number. The last four digits are the frame number. Any letters indicate that there are multiple workings of that particular frame. So picture 03520008b (Thinking Wide), is the second (b) version of frame 8 of roll 352. Why 8 digits? Room for growth. Who knows, film may one day come in 9999 frame rolls ;-) I’ll wish I had gone for 16 digits when I break 10,000 rolls of film, but until then the system works.
I started using this numbering scheme just a few years back, so I actually have shot more than 382 rolls of film (scanning 383 as we speak). Really, I have. For each frame from each of those 383 rolls, there are a number of resulting files. 16 bit 3200 DPI TIFFS of the original scans get archived off to external drives. Full resolution JPEGS of every frame go into a folder on my computer for back up and quick reference. Thumbnails, the 740px wide images that end up on this site, of the edited frames go into an Index folder divided up into 50 roll sub-folders (Roll 1-50, Roll 51-100, etc). These Index folders are easy to eyeball for just the frame I’m looking for, and, since they just contain 100kb or less jpegs, they browse quickly even on my crappy computer, much faster than browsing in Photoshop for example. For each frame, the file number stays the same through all the different file sizes and types. So for frame 03520008 there’s 25mb 16bit TIFF (03520008.tiff), the PSD file I print from (03520008.psd), the full size JPEG (03520008.jpg) in the JPEGS folder, the small web sized JPEG in the Index folder (also 03520008.jpg), and the alternate version presented in the previous post (03520008b.jpg). It is not necessarily efficient for disk space concerns, but it makes things easy to find.
All this talk of swing lens cameras, panoramics etc, has got me thinking. This was originally posted here. Just thinking.
Despite my recent comments about using what you are comfortable with, at the moment, I can think of two great ways to spend $5000:
- Buy an M8.
- Buy a Seitz Roundshot.
The Case for an M8
It’s fairly hard for me to justify buying an M8. I’ve gone through three digital cameras in as many years. The Canon 10D lasted 4 months before I traded it in for my first Hexar RF. The KM 7D a year later followed on the heels of the great gear purge of ought-five that saw the mad sale of my Hexar AF and Nokton 35 F1.2. The 7D fared poorly; I’m fairly certain I’d sold it within three months at least in part out of bitterness over the lost Hexar AF and Nokton. My current digital, a D80, I’ve had for almost a year, but it’s been sitting unused on the shelf for most of that time. It doesn’t know it yet, but it’s days are probably numbered.
Given this serial dissatisfaction with digital, why would I go spend almost $5K on another? Well . . . one could make an argument that all of the other digitals were discarded because what I was really waiting for was a digital M or, better yet, a digital Hexar. The M8 might just be good enough. Although I haven’t been all that impressed by most of the reviews or most of the resulting photos, Dante Stella’s recent piece on the M8, has sparked my interest again. He’s described the M8’s strengths and weaknesses in a way that makes sense to me and that runs parallels to my own thoughts on camera design. I’m intrigued again.
Intrigued or not, the M8 would essentially allow me to continue what I’m doing but without dealing with film. I’m not sure if that’s a good or bad thing. Film has a certain rhythm that I’ve come to appreciate. And, as Colin has noted, there’s something about the tangibility of film. I know that regardless of my scanning or photoshop skills, I could go rent a darkroom and print my negs. I probably won’t do it, but it’s nice to know that I could. I also know that even in the event of a massive and multiple hard drive failure, I’d still have the negs. I’m not sure I’m ready to give that up. But with the pile of undeveloped film growing again, I can see the appeal of at least lessening the amount of time I spend with my hands in a changing bag, spotting negs, mixing chemicals, etc etc etc. It’s usually fun, but not always.
The Case for a Roundshot
Michael Reichman’s recent review of the Seitz Roundshot 28/220 came to my attention just a few days after having stumbled on “America by the Yard”, Robert MacKay’s excellent book showcasing some of the best Cirkut images from the 1900’s to 1950’s. I was vaguely aware that there had been some really, really large format panoramic photography done in the past, but the book turned out to be a revelation and potential inspiration.
The Cirkut and the Roundshot 28/220 work on the same principle; the film and the lens both rotate, but in opposite directions. The result is a photograph that can be as wide as you want - up to or even beyond 360 degrees - with a corresponding growth in the negative size as you go. The early Cirkut cameras produced negative that were literally yards long by up to 16 inches tall. The Roundshot, by comparison, uses 120 or 220 film, but the principle is the same.
In either case, the great appeal lies in the resulting images. Long, wide and fairly distortion free if you pay attention to the bubble level. The Cirkut was often used to create giant portraits of whole towns, factory floors, quarries etc. You have to see these to understand the impact entirely. The town and group portraits are particularly fascinating, being a kind of group photography that is certainly posed but almost entirely free of artifice. Do a google image search on Cirkut Cameras and you will start to get an idea of what I’m talking about.
As a modern day stand in for the Cirkut, the Roundshot has a lot of appeal. It would just be too much fun to take one of these things around to small towns, county fairs, all manner of gatherings etc. The documentary possibilities are huge even before you get to architectural photography. With a little luck, you might even be able to get a grant to do this.
This would be something entirely different from what I’m doing now. I’m not sure how much my skills would translate into something like this. I might be entirely lost, up a $5000 creek with no paddle. But it might be a hoot.
Choices, Choices, Choices
All this is working from the erroneous assumption that I’ve got $5000 to spend on camera equipment. I could do it, but it would seem kind of silly given the circumstances of my life at the moment, which perhaps isn’t a reason not to do it. 9 months ago I was thinking about spending $10K for to go to Salt’s documentary program. Heck, if that’s my yardstick, I could buy both the M8 and the Roundshot, and still be ahead of the game considering I wouldn’t be loosing all those wages by being in school full time. Hmm, see how that works? You talk yourself out of spending $5K by way of talking yourself into spending $10K.
If you had $5K to spend on photography, what would you do?