Friday, May 18, 2007

Boring (for you!)

Oh, don't worry; I've got lots of stuff to complain about, and I'll get back to that real soon. I promise.


I'm all about the photos lately. Sorry. Deal with it.

I bought a little $15 accessory for the new camera. Turns out, if you take the lens off your camera, turn it around and put it on backwards, it works like a magnifying glass. For some reason, when most people discover this they immediately run out and take a picture of either a coin or a flower. Do I get credit for at least taking a picture of a dead flower? No? Well here's my live one, then.


Yawn.

Requires a whole lotta light and a very steady hand (or a decent tripod - which I don't own.) Okay. Enough with these boring, tired old images we've all seen hundreds of times already. (Except for that first one - I kind of like that.)

I know, I know. Sometimes it's hip to like old things just because they're old, but sometimes old things really are hip. While people move to digital cameras, there are all kinds of used medium-format cameras out there, and they make pictures that look incredible - far beyond what a digital camera could do. You'd need at least 30 megapixels and some very expensive glass to get similar results in a digital camera. So, it's a buyer's market, and the cameras are awesome.

Yeah, my new camera is a wicked pissah, but I'm really jones'n for some vintage medium format action.

Check it...



Sweet, huh? Something like that looks cool just sitting on your shelf.
Forget it though, because people know this and a Rolleiflex is priced accordingly. Just forget it.

Always wanted one of these, though.

Oooh... A Hasselblad. All Swiss and whatnot. It's the camera that went to the moon (Right. Like that ever really happened.)

I just saw one with a couple of scratches on the lens go on the eBay for $450. That was a good deal, actually. Still hard to justify at this particular point in my life. Maybe sometime. My choice is the simple 501c (in chrome, as pictured above) should you ever decide to jumpstart my collection for me. Thanks.

Til then, it might have to be one of these...



The Kowa/SIX, which you can get for about $150 and the picture quality is still about 100x better than any affordable digital camera. Yup, you'll take fewer shots and you'll have to buy and develop film, but with a medium format camera like this, you're eventually going to get an image that looks great and means more to you than any piece of art you could buy.

That's what I want hanging on my wall.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The Hasselblad would make me feel like Elvis Costello on the cover of "This Year's Model". Sigh.