June 30, 2023. 10mm F 4.0 Laowa
"Kodachrome Simulation"
This batch of images follows the Kodachrome recipe more closely than my earlier attempts. There are some things I cannot duplicate, such as the film's ISO rating of 25.
Blushing Behind A Rose
Frederick Street Bodega
Train Stop
Hope Meets Beauty
Mother Of Sorrows In Planter Box
This morning forced me to confront my dependence on post production. Adjustments for exposure, color saturation, and white balance were abandoned to better reflect the limitations of using real film. In many ways, the inability to craft the final appearance of the image left them wanting in some way, leaving me with a "close but no cigar" response.
June 24, 2023. 10mm F 4.0 Laowa
"Kodachrome Simulation"
Flash Assist.
Preferences
Laundromat Mural
June 23, 2023. 10mm F 4.0 Laowa
Statuary And Smart Meters
This shot was made with the Kodachrome simulations in place. This is probably not a valid test since the photo was made with open shade illumination and the Auto White Balance preset, per the specifications. I am still looking for some real sunlight.
I experimented with reduced highlight and shadow contrast settings, but found the "off the edge" highlights and shadows more to my liking. The extreme contrasts gives me the sort of images I was used to seeing during my early years of darkroom work.
The last shot is almost sinister looking.
June 17, 2023. 17mm F 1.4 TTArtisan
Non-Complimentary Color Combination, Surprising Sharpness
The Morning After
Beached Sawyer
June 13, 2023. 28mm F 2.8 Meike
Perspectives
Accent Light From Above
Plywood
June 9, 2023. 28mm F 2.8 Meike
Recently Painted Donkey
June 6, 2023. 28mm F 2.8 Meike
Cloud Reflection
Fairy Door, Clifford Terrace
Bear Stump
Reading Room, Community Library, Belvedere Street
June 5, 2023. 28mm F 2.8 Meike
I am going to stay away from the 10mm for a while. It's a vacation from backgrounds that appear to go on forever.
June 3, 2023. 10mm F 4.0 Laowa
Cole Valley
Two Mascarons*, Cole Street
Movable Feast-Maker (With Flash Assist)
Perfect Lily With Inescapable Background. Wide Angle Lens Addiction.
*In architecture, a mascaron ornament is a face, usually human, sometimes frightening or chimeric whose alleged function was originally to frighten away evil spirits so that they would not enter the building. From Wikipedia.
May 31, 2023. 10mm F 4.0 Laowa (Mostly)
Sausalito
May 27, 2023. 28mm F 2.8 Meike
Spiral Staircase From Above. Ark Row, Tiburon
May 24, 2023. 10mm F 4.0 Laowa
17th Street, Near The Castro
Alleyway, Castro Street
Door Pull, Vulcan Stairs
May 23, 2023. 10mm F 4.0 Laowa
Repurposed Door Knocker, Danvers Street
May 21, 2023. 10mm F 4.0 Laowa
Ghost Leaves
Aging Together
Morning Dew
Pots
May 18, 2023. 10mm F 4.0 Laowa (Mostly)
Tiburon Town Square - Stylized Shark Fins
(Famous) Sam's Café. Tiburon Tommy's Is long gone.
Elephant Rock
Tiburon has a special place in my heart. Dad and I used to fish from Elephant Rock, an artificial island with a safety platform created in memory of a young boy who drowned while fishing here. Originally, only youngsters sixteen years or younger could fish from the rock. Dad would help me bait my hooks and cast into the channel. I don't remember what I caught here, but one day, while fishing from the shore, Dad caught a striped bass that just barely made the sixteen inch minimum length.
May 17, 2023. 50mm F 2.0 TTArtisan
Humidifier
Yellow Pincushion
Child's Toy
I mounted the 50mm F 2.0 TTArtisan lens on the Fuji this morning. I found that focus peaking very easy to use. Sharpness appears to be "reasonable", but this overcast morning was the best test of contrast. I had to remind myself that I would need to compose my images from a greater distance than I was used to.
I will play with the 50mm lens again, but I already miss the "sense of wonder" when the world is viewed through a 10mm lens.
May 15, 2023. 10mm F 4.0 Laowa
Artist Vandalism Writ Large
Repurposed Column Finial
May 13, 2023. 10mm F 4.0 Laowa (mostly)
Skiff, Galilee Harbor
Mail Boxes, Galilee Harbor
Greenhouse, Galilee Harbor
The greenhouse was photographed with a Meike 28mm 2.8 lens.
I thought it would be a monochrome day, but the call of color was to much to resist.
May 3, 2023. 10mm F 4.0 Laowa
Monochrome Preset
Photos taken on shoreline path in Belvedere.
April 30, 2023. 10mm F 4.0 Laowa
Monochrome Preset
I was in Cole Valley waiting for my take-out dinner when I decided to walk down the street directly into the setting sun. This corner happens to be a stop for the N Judah streetcar and the local merchants have given these planter boxes an artistic treatment. This was target-rich environment for some interesting shadows.
April 28, 2023. 10mm F 4.0 Laowa
Monochrome Preset
Skiff, China Camp
Dry Dock, China Camp
Display, China Camp
Arbor, Marin Arts And Garden Center
April 26, 2023. 10mm F 4.0 Laowa
Monochrome Preset
New Fire Hydrant
Leaf
Ominous In Black And White
Replacement Siding
April 18, 2023. 10mm Laowa Lens - Zone Focusing
April 17, 2023. 10mm F 4.0 Laowa
All of these photos were "zone focused". The lens was set to F 8.0, and the distance set to .5 meter. Based on the depth of field scale for this lens, everything from .3 meters to infinity "should" be in focus. Exposure was Aperture Priority, with the Velvia film simulation.
While the sharpness and/or critical focus weren't/wasn't precise, it was fun to just take photos with the care-free optimism of an ten-year old holding a red Sabre 620 camera with its precious twelve frames of roll film.
April 16, 2023. X-Pro 2, 16mm F 2.8 Fuji WR Lens
Upper Saturn Street
Twice Reflected
Telephone Pole
Ricoh/Pentax will be introducing an APS-framed DSLR, the Pentax K-3 Mark III, that is truly monochrome for about $2,200.00. An interesting concept, but not one that I'd readily adopt, since I am committed to the Fuji X-mount system. It started me thinking that if I bought a dedicated monochrome body, How much use would it actually get. Experimenting was as easy as setting the film simulation on my X-Pro 2 to Accros, Fuji's most refined monochrome preset, and attaching an 16mm F 2.8 Fuji lens for improved sharpness.
April 11, 2023. 12mm F 2.8 7Artisans
Stutz DV32 Super Bearcat
Higher Shooting Position
Fishing By The Golden Gate
Flower Growing In A Piling
Crab Net
April 3, 2023. Laowa 10mm F 4.0
Monday Morning, 17th Street
Doorway, Ord Street
Ord Street Watchdog With Lemon
March 25, 2023. 10mm F 4.0 Laowa
Kayaking Class
Yellow Houseboat
I've concluded that if the situation warrants, I can use a polarizing filter to obtain that surreal blue sky I find so appealing. I also found that I could achieve a similar effect by simply underexposing the image. When shooting, I aligned the lens axis to coincide with the direction of shadow, creating a perfect front lit situation. This forced me to compose the image based on the position of the sun, which could prove limiting.
March 20, 2023. Laowa 10mm F 4.0
Boat Launch, San Francisco Yacht Club, Belvedere .
Hoist, San Francisco Yacht Club, Belvedere .
March 6, 2023. 10mm F 4.0 Laowa
Morning Highlight
Whimsical Vision
I'm taking a walk to Cole Valley. I didn't feel like cooking breakfast, so I walked to a Boulanger in Cole Valley for some pastry. There was a break in the rain, so the walk was a chance to experience a fresh, clean morning.
March 5, 2023. Zeiss 12mm Touit (mostly)
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| Zeiss Touit 12mm F 2.8 |
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| Zeiss Touit 12mm F 2.8 |
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| Zeiss Touit 12mm F 2.8 |
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| Zeiss Touit 12mm F 2.8 |
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| Zeiss Touit 12mm F 2.8 |
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| Meike 28mm F 2.8 Today might have been my last opportunity to make some photos in Sausalito before the next storm pelts the Bay Area. I decided to use a 12mm Zeiss Touit wide angle lens which hasn't seen much use due to its bulk. I allowed the Fuji X-E1 and the Zeiss lens to do their autofocusing thing, and was not disappointed with the results. I alternated between it and the Meike 28mm which I focused manually. Compared to the 10mm F 4.0 I used yesterday, the Meike's 2.8 maximum aperture made it much easier to focus manually. |
March 3, 2023. 10mm F 4.0 Laowa
Lockers
Tender
Red
For Sale
February 10, 2023. 10mm F 4.0 Laowa
Valentine
Bits Of Red
For the record, I used a polarizer for these first two images. I've always had polarizing filters somewhere in my kit, but I never used them. I knew for a fact that the effects the filters create cannot be duplicated with post production presets, and with that in mind, went looking for some blue skies, and maybe some reflections. Also, the camera's Film Simulation was set to Velvia Vivid. I will continue to play with it until I get a better feeling for what the filter can do. Perhaps a blog post will follow.
Art Vandals
February 4, 2023. 10mm F 4.0 Laowa
I was in Redwood City photographing the county's last Lunar New Year's celebration. I was experimenting with the manually-focus Laowa 12mm F 4.0 lens on a Fuji X-E1 body. This was grab shot made by simply estimating the distance.
This was a hard composition. I wanted he Courthouse in the frame, but wish I could have moved closer, since I was using a non-zoom lens. That would have altered the spatial relationship between the subjects and the background. This is a cropped frame.
The lens did respond reasonably well to the flat lighting on this almost-rainy day. The images seem to lack a certain "snap". The vignetting in the corners is very pronounced.
The hazards of a super-wide lens: The blur at the lower right edge of the frame is my left index finger attempting to focus the lens.
January 24, 2023. 28mm 2.8 Pergear
Wildlife On The Corbin Stairs
Flash was used to saturate the colors. Since the subject was in deep shade, the flash was needed to just give the figure some sense of three-dimensionality.
January 21, 2023. 12mm 2.8 7Artisans
Sun Rising, Shadows Setting
Texture
Time Elapsed
January 19, 2023. 28mm 2.8 Pergear
According to the weather forecasts, San Francisco is in for a "dry spell" until early February. As the Pineapple Express is finally in the rear view mirror, the city takes time to asses the damage, and begin a cautious return to normalcy.
Occasionally we find spots where trees once stood, the locations marked off with Caution Tape. In my neighborhood the damage has been minor, and we were spared the power outages to occurred here and there.
Often window reflections are transformed into spotlights, often bringing a moment of brilliance to areas normally in perpetual shade. The decorative holiday "ornaments" make the entrance to this basement flat so much more festive.
January 10, 2023. 28mm 2.8 Pergear
Layers Of Paint
Decorative Tile At Cat Daycare Facility.
January 9, 2023. 28mm 2.8 Pergear
Wolf Alice Concert Poster
Christmas Decorations
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