These are my first photos with my new (old) Mamiya rb67 pro-SD. I just wanted to test that the camera is working and wasn’t waiting for the best conditions. Kodak Portra 160.

180mm lens, ISO 160, f/5.6, 1/60s

This is an accidental double exposure, which happened because I’m still learning how to use the camera.

180mm lens, ISO 160, f/4.5, 1/400s

180mm lens, ISO 160, f/5.5, 1/60s

This is what happens when you don’t nail the focus because puppies don’t sit still.

180mm lens, ISO 160, f/5.5, 1/8s

This is what happens when you have a low shutter speed and puppies don’t sit still.

180mm lens, ISO 160, f/5.5, 1/60s

I think this camera and film have real promise. The photos have an authentic mood about them with good color, good contrast, and a buttery smooth background.

There’s a big storm here today and I’ve been wanting to create an abstract image, so here’s one of rain bouncing on our deck.

My friend Tim came over at the weekend. He wanted a few photos and I want to get better at taking them, so it was a great way to socalize and help each other at the same time. We commandeered the living room for a couple of hours and got it done.

Here’s the first photo, and as Peter Hurley would say, “Shabang!”.

This is Baxter. He was a random dog at a dog park that we visited last weekend, and he was fascinated by my Yashica TLR camera. Obviously a diva dog.

This photo was taken from the first roll of film that I’ve ever pushed. I exposed the Kodak Portra 400 film as though it was rated at ISO 1600. Then, I told the developer to push it two stops (400 to 800 to 1600), which means soaking the negatives in developer for a longer time. The overall quality of the photo is not bad for the Yashica TLR, which isn’t a professional-level camera and tends to produce lower contrast, softer images.

Some other photos on the same roll came out muddy and grainy, however. The difference? Maybe it’s that Baxter’s photos were taken in daylight with a shutter speed of 1/1000th, but the others were taken indoors with a longer shutter speed of 1/30th. I used the same light meter for all of the photos so I know they were exposed correctly. I can’t show the other examples without permission because they were of kids.

I also tried pushing a black-and-white Kodak Tri-X 400 film to ISO 1600. The images worked out incredibly well for what were effectively ISO 1600 images, as the example below shows. There was possibly more contrast than usual giving was more areas of pure black and areas of pure white in the photo.

The newest version of Tri-X, in particular, is a very forgiving film, meaning that you get good results even if you overexpose or underexpose it. It also has a nice grain texture, and certain colors are translated into a higher brightness than others, creating a pleasing balance of tones. This is why Tri-X has been the black-and-white standard since 1940.

So why push film? When doing street photography we usually need shutter speeds of 1/250 or faster to stop the motion of people walking. That means either 1/250, 1/500, or 1/1000 on a film camera. We also typically need apertures that will give us a decent depth of field so, (a) We can pre-focus the lens to the distance at which we expect to be capturing our subject, and then shoot without actually focusing at that time, and (b) See some background context in the image. We’re typically working at f/8, f/11, or f/16. The third variable that determines exposure is ISO. To get a combination of shutter speed and aperture that will give a correctly exposed image, we need a high ISO film. By using 400 ISO film and also pushing it two f-stops we can achieve the kind of ISO that will get us there.

Having said that, comparing the pushed film with photos taken with the recommended ISO, I prefer the normal film. Pushed film has less details in the shadows and it has more grain. You can see more comparisons in this gallery.

I was going through photos from 2006 when I had my first digital SLR. It was a Canon 20d. I didn’t have it for long, though because it was stolen when my house was broken into. After that, until 2012, I just had a point-and-shoot camera.

Here are a couple of photos of black crowned night herons.

This is how whippets go snowshoeing.

An early-morning coyote on Mission Peak.

And here’s a bird of prey attacking a pigeon.