Soo Ling Beads, Toronto, Kodak Portra 400
Yes, I took this picture with both slide film AND Portra. I liked this storefront.

Alley, Toronto, Kodak Portra 400

Galego’s Furniture Storefront, Toronto, Kodak Portra 400

Fresh Baked Bread Sign, Toronto, Kodak Portra 400

Old Coke Sign, Toronto, Kodak Portra 400

All images were taken with my Hasselblad 501cm camera and a Zeiss 80mm f2.8 lens.

We had our “victory dinner” on Sunday night at Yours Truly. As luck would have it, we had an hour free before dinner and were able to meet up with the super cool Lisa, who we had only previously known online. While Kate and Lisa caught up, I shot a few rolls of film in the surrounding neighborhood of Little Portugal. I know next to nothing about Toronto, but I loved this area. There were plenty of interesting storefronts, signs, bicycles, etc for me to take pictures of and after 45 minutes I had burned through two rolls of medium format (I only took the Hasselblad for the trip) Fuji Provia 100 slide film and two rolls of Kodak Portra 400.

Here’s about a roll worth of the slide film pictures. I’ll post the Portra pics tomorrow.

These first six pictures were all taken on Dundas Street West in Little Portugal.

Auto Repair, Toronto, Fuji Provia 100

Soo Ling Beads, Toronto, Fuji Provia 100

Super Variety Grocery, Toronto, Fuji Provia 100

Discount Mart, Toronto, Fuji Provia 100

Laundromat Sign, Toronto, Fuji Provia 100

Easy Driving School, Toronto, Fuji Provia 100

I first met Kate at Mile 14 to hand her Gatorade, water, and a bag of ice. It was a gorgeous day, but hot when you are running 26.2 miles. After Mile 14, I hopped on the trolley that crawled down King Street to the waterfront. It must have taken me an hour to get down to Lake Shore Boulevard. I had hoped to see Kate at Mile 19 and Mile 25. She beat me to mile 19 by a long shot. Yes, she was winding through the streets on foot and STILL beat the trolley that slowly traversed King Street towards Lake Ontario. So, I gave up on Mile 19 and stopped at Mile 25. Here I was about 15 minutes early. Kate was still remarkably on schedule – much better than Toronto’s public transportation system. I took a few minutes to snap pictures before she arrived.

Lake Ontario Waterfront, Toronto, Fuji Provia 100

A Hasselblad medium format camera loaded with 100 ISO slide film is not the best tool to capture the action of a marathon. But you work with what you have. I took turns cheering and snapping a few pictures while I waited for Kate. The race shots look pretty good. I prefocused on a line in the street and shot at f11.

Toronto Marathon Runners at Mile 25, Toronto, Fuji Provia 100

Gentleman Entertaining the Runners, Toronto, Fuji Provia 100

I took these first four shots early in the morning on a walk to meet Kate after her long training run. At this time of the morning, the light is perfect. These were all shot with Hasselblad 501cm on Kodak Portra 400 film.

Looking Straight Down Park Slope Street, Kodak Portra 400

One Hanson Place (The Clocktower), Brooklyn, Kodak Portra 400

My Favorite (or one of my favorite) Bodega, Brooklyn, Kodak Portra 400

Lee Brothers Auto Body and Repair Shop, Carrol Gardens, Kodak Portra 400

This was taken later in the day on the way to the Brooklyn Flea in Fort Greene. This is the Koadk Portra look that I always hope for…

Brooklyn Music School and Playhouse, Kodak Portra 400

White Blooms Shot Wide Open at f5.6, Brooklyn Botanic Gardens

If you are used to thinking about aperture or shooting wide open, you might be thinking f2.8 (if you are used to medium format) or even f1.4 (if you are used to 35mm). When shooting large format, f5.6 gives you ridiculously shallow depth of field. Only a branch or two of these blooms are in focus, while everything else is out of focus. It’s a neat trick, but pretty unforgiving, especially using slide film. This shot feels gimicky to me.

Pink Blooms Over the Pond, Brooklyn Botanic Gardens

I shot a roll of Kodak Portra 400 in the Hasselblad (handful of pictures below) and a few sheets of Fuji Provia 100 slide film in the Toyo. The Portra is pretty much perfect for the cherry blossoms. I’ll post the Toyo pics tomorrow, but the slide film is a little too intense for the blomming trees.

Gate to the Pond, Brooklyn Botanic Gardens

Closeup of Blooming Cherry Trees, Brooklyn Botanic Gardens

Small Blooms on this Tree, Brooklyn Botanic Gardens

This Couple Took Forever While I was Waiting to Take a Picture of this Tree, Brooklyn Botanic Gardens

Pink Blooms Over Pond, Brooklyn Botanic Gardens

More White Blooms Up Close, Brooklyn Botanic Gardens

And it simply glows in the light. When I looked at this slide on the lightbox at the lab I actually gasped. The colors were so vivid and perfect.

Since I don’t have a light box, I tried to replicate the experience using the light from my comuter screen. It’s not the same, but you can still get a sense of the color.

Holding a 4×5 Slide to Light Source

Here is the same slide scanned. You lose a little bit of the punch, but it still looks good. This was a 30 second exposure metered with incident metering and shot at f22. There are slight light trails from light traffic in front of the cafe and you can see that the people inside were moving and talking while the shutter was open. Remarkably, and I didn’t notice this at the time, there is a woman in one of the upper windows sitting perfectly still for the entire 30 seconds. If you view this same photo in the original size on Flickr you can really see all the details. You can also see that I didn’t clean the slide up after scanning.

Cubana Cafe, Park Slope, Brooklyn on Fuji Provia 100 4×5 Slide Film

and taken just a few moments earlier… I like the heavier light trails from the traffic in this one.

Cubana Cafe, Park Slope, Brooklyn on Fuji Provia 100 4×5 Slide Film

Right as dusk settled in I shot the blooming trees on Fifth Avenue just down the block from us. This was a 15 second exposure and there was a strong wind. You can see the blossoms moving in the wind.

Trees Blooming on Fifth Avenue, Park Slope, Brooklyn on Fuji Provia 100 4×5 Slide Film

These slides were shot with my Toyo 45AII 4×5 camera and Schneider f5.6 lens on Fuji Provia 100 slide film. It’s going to be difficult to shoot anything but slide film with this camera during the next several months.

Awesome Display in a Window on 8th Avenue, West Village

Rebel Rebel Record Store on Bleecker Street, West Village

Kate Having a Glass of Prosecco (on tap!) at Frankies, West Village

Right Across from Frankies on Hudson, I Noticed this Film Developing Sign on Awning, West Village

On the Way to the Subway, A Mural of Cards on Corner of Bleecker Street, West Village

And this final shot was from last week, when Kate and I walked from her work down to the East Village.

Lovely Day for a Guinness Sign off of Second Avenue

Lately I’ve had requests for prints and have printed some “one off” versions for friends, but I have finally bitten the bullet and selected a handful of photographs for printing. I can print anything by request of course if you ask me, but I thought it would be easier for people if I set up a formal prints page featuring a handful of my more popular photographs.

There are two large format 4×5 prints (Jane’s Carousel and Brooklyn Bridge in the Rain), three Hasselblad prints (Empire State Building, Lower Manhattan Glowing, Coney Island Lifeguard), and one 35mm print from my old Leica M6 (Vintage Camera Wall) for sale via PayPal.

These are not darkroom prints hand printed by me, but I do use a local NYC printer (Vista CRC) that I’ve come to trust. We are on a first name basis and they know what I like. I can hop behind the counter to proof prints and most importantly they offer digital C-prints, which I think gives the best hybrid workflow print available. This process uses a film negative scanned and proofed by me to create a digital file. I then hand deliver the scan to Vista where they use an extremely fine laser to expose traditional type-C photographic paper. This paper is then developed in traditional darkroom chemistry. The result is a photographic print with fantastic sharpness, accuracy and reproduction of detail while achieving the ultimate in image fidelity.

I *could* farm my prints out to any number of online printers and have them deliver the prints to you. It would be so much easier and cheaper. But that would drive me crazy. I need to see and feel the prints and make sure they look like I envisioned them to look. I also want to be the one packaging and mailing your prints. I took the time to take these photographs using the best cameras available to me and I want to be the one making sure they arrive on your doorstep.

If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to ask me. I will probably be adding more prints as the weeks go by, but I wanted to start with a small selection. If there is anything you would like to see offered as a print, email me I’ll be happy to make you a print.

And lastly, thank you. Thank you to each and everyone of you who comment on my posts, who favorite or comment on Flickr, Twitter, or Facebook. I take photographs because I can’t not take photographs. I drag ridiculously antiquated, heavy gear around, because it’s the only way that I care to take a photograph. And knowing that a few of you like or support what I do is priceless. Thank you.

AVAILABLE PRINTS

Super helpful, Kodak. Thanks! So you didn’t test the film for anything longer than 1 second? You would rather let the consumer make their own tests (which I agree to some extent makes sense)? It is discouraging that a box of 10 sheets of Kodak Portra 400 costs about $30 and each sheet is $3-6 to develop depending on which lab you use. Mine is only $3, so my testing consisted of loading two film holders with four sheets of film and blowing $24 in fifteen minutes.

Yes, I’m being a little hard on Kodak. However, Fuji and Ilford do a fantastic job of documenting the change needed in exposure (due to reciprocity failure) for times longer than 1 second. Kodak should do better.

Anyway, I shot four sheets from my usual test location (in Dumbo underneath the Manhattan Bridge looking at the Brooklyn Bridge and Lower Manhattan) for long exposures and didn’t see a bit of difference. The first shot was 8 seconds for f22, but I gave it 15 seconds as a starting point.

The second one was taken right after the first and I gave it 30 seconds. I couldn’t tell a difference between the two.

I repositioned my tripod slightly for the second film holder and repeated the meter reading. As it was getting darker, the reading called for 15 seconds. I exposed one sheet for 45 seconds and the other for 90 seconds just to see if it would matter. It didn’t, both negatives were pretty much the same.

Here’s the 45 second exposure at f22.

The bottom line is that Kodak Portra 400 handles long exposures nicely. I got great results between 15 seconds and 90 seconds. Some of that was obviously due to the rapidly changing light conditions, but as its been well documented, this film is VERY versatile and forgiving. I wouldn’t hesitate to use Kodak Portra 400 for exposures between 1 second and 90 seconds. Next time I would probably just give the shot double the time that the meter reading calls for. Please note, this was in no way a scientific method. I didn’t keep notes, but I recall the exposure times and which film holders were which times. For critical paid use, I guess I would do as Kodak suggests and “make tests under your conditions.”

But these two photos, when viewed together, really made me smile.

Kodachrome slide film, finicky as it was, did have a timeless feel. This is my favorite area in Chinatown; essentially Doyers and Pell meet at this weird angle (known back in the day as The Bloody Angle, b/c of heavy gang fighting in this little cul de sac) and not much light makes it to street level. The low light makes for a very contrasty image – bright sky and dim street level detail. These images, without the use of filters or photoshop, look like they may have been taken 50 years ago, but they were taken in 2010. The first shot of the woman walking up Doyers toward the angle was also double exposed. You can see the post office building superimposed across half the image. The second image, a man walking down Pell Street towards me and away from the angle is slightly underexposed.

Last week Kodak discontinued its slide films. This was met with much gnashing of teeth and doom and gloom reports online concerning the “death of film.” As well as comments like these regarding tricky exposure with slide film: “And you just gave the main reason why nobody wants to shoot film anymore. I love the ability to check the exposure on the camera, and the ability to decide if I can push it more to the right or keep it as it is. Film is just dead in general. I should get rid of my film gear before it is 100% worthless.” Sigh…

In truth, the announcement really only matters to the photographers who were still using the three remaining Kodak slide films. I’ve never used any of them, though I did use Kodachrome and much of my childhood was captured on those slides. Since Kodachrome has went away, I’ve used Fuji slide film. I might try to grab some remaining rolls of Ektachrome E100G/E100VS or Elite Chrome Extra Color 100 though to see what the fuss is about.