Photography

I’ve been going hard with my old Pentax lately. I really enjoy film – how it delights me with strange quirks, textural grains, and amazing colours. Digital is so perfect and smooth that it takes the character out of photos, and you don’t really have to think. Take 50 photos of something and you are bound to get one shot that looks good. With film, you have to think about your shot, and I like that.

My latest find is a Canon Canonet (above), cheap as chips on trademe. It is a rangefinder camera, which is similar to an SLR where you can change lenses and so forth, but rangefinders have a really clear viewfinder, are lighter, and smaller. This beauty is a 1961 Canon, which has a very unusual but totally groovy bottom winder. 1961 appears to be the only year that put the winder on the bottom, and I really like its design of simple clean lines. The ultimate in rangefinders are the Leica M’s, but even 10th hand these are worth gold. The Russian Zorki – a Leica imitation is pretty cool to, and I just missed out on my bidding for one of those.

The Leica M7:

The Zorki 4k:

The more I research and read about photography the more I like the natural, un-composed shots. Fine art photography, or highly composed shots bore me. They are too clean, and unreal. I prefer everyday moments, or pieces of the everyday. One Blue Wren has beautiful everyday bits, as does Annie Leibowitz in her book A Photographers Life. Interestingly that is like a book of contrasts. Composed shots with everyday moments of her real life (in between shooting famous people) in between.

I’m looking forward to churning out a few rolls on the Canonet. Especially some black and white Rollei slide film I just acquired. It’s supposed to be amazing.