Cold day.
Blog
The photographic blog of Sean Wood (aka motionid)
Oleg
So my friend Oleg came to Tokyo for a week of work and a few days off recently. I'm very glad he could make the trip. I didn't really take the chance the last time he was here to get a decent shot of him but I couldn't let him escape this time.Now that 400b has gone I'm shooting 3000b and carrying an ND4 or 8 filter with me when it's required. Nice thing about 3000b is the neg that you get from the shot. And this shot is from the neg. I only hope instant film for the Hasselblad stays around for a while.
The Englishmen
Adrian and Jon – The Hub, Shinjuku.
And I'm going to use this photo as an excuse to talk about the demise of the 400B Fuji Instant film. Can't believe they have taken it off the market. Right in the middle of a series I was doing using it. This impossible project better get it's act together and start producing peel apart film asap @400 asa at least.
3000 asa! I'm going to have to use a pure black filter just to shoot in the afternoon and still have the background out of focus. Having said that, 3000 asa at night...hmmm, very tempting to do a series with this in the dark.
Impossible
Jon, Cory, Brian and myself went to the launch of The Impossible Project here in Tokyo. All very flash and what seemed to be extremely trendy. Araki and Diado photo's amongst others were on display in Polaroid form in a nice chocolate flavor (which Jon doesn't seem to like). Nice that the film is now available and more affordable than being shipped from Europe. We didn't stay that long but we all came out of the exhibition space / store and asked - how the hell are they going to afford to pay for the space!
Here is hoping customers find the store and any additional exhibitions they have don't end up being too trendy and high end - or they'll risk alienating their customer base.
One request I have (as I'm sure a few others do as well) - Can we get a bit of 669 and other 100 films so I can get my Hasselblad going with this stuff?
[gallery]
Clemens in the bar
Clemens shot with this camera at THE BAR on Friday within the last year or so.
Kodak Autographic Brownie
A recent comment on a Tokyo Tower photo I took a while back prompted me to write this post. I shot the photo with a early 1900's Kodak Autographic Brownie no.2 using a Fuji Polaroid back. The camera originally took a different kind of film that is no longer made. After checking the camera I thought I might be able to get away with using 120 film but could not work out a way to modify the original camera back without destroying it. And given the camera is actually not mine and kind of on permanent loan I figured that would not be a good idea. So I though perhaps I could connect a Polaroid back to it. After checking the size of my Hasselblad back with the camera it looked like the idea was going to work. But I needed to find a back that did not have a little window (like the Hasselblad or Mamiya) but had the film area fully exposed when the dark slide was out. A trip to the local camera store immediately paid off. I found myself a Fuji back in the junk bin for ¥525 which was quite lucky because I didn't want this little test to cost me and end in failure. I figured the easiest way to connect the back to the body would be with electrical tape and that once I had proved it would work I'd figure out a more permanent solution. After reading on line and discovering that the aperture would be around f/9 at it"s widest I took a shot and hoped for the best. The image you see above is the result I got. I was quite surprised at how the image turned out. You will see from the other images below how I modified the camera and the controls it offers. F/9, f/19, f/22. T, B, 25th, and 50th of a second shutter. And a viewfinder that is very cool and at the same time very hard to use. Feel free to share your old camera mod stories in the comments area below.
Fragments of Tokyo
Watanebe san, Koga san, Thomas and Jon looking his usual self at the front
So I managed to visit the Fragments of Tokyo exhibition at M Place in Shinjuku Gyoenmae and have to say I was impressed. Four very different styles of photography and each with a wonderful and different perspective of Tokyo.
If you missed it you'll have to bug them to put on another show. Below is each members flickr stream although to really do any of these pictures justice you need to see them printed. It was really a different and exciting experience to see them printed and presented as a series. Congratulations to the four of you.
Polaroid
Well, It's actually not Polaroid, it's FujiFilm FP-400B but it's close enough given the number of boxes of the stuff I've gone through without getting a single result because, for the last year, I've been loading the fucker the wrong way! I was hoping, on my first outing with the stuff, to keep the negative side. But alas, it seems you have to really wait till it dries before it can be moved. Not really suited to taking a shot and moving around either unless you have some special container to hold the negatives (tried a box but got carried away with putting more than 1 in the box. Result? Stuck together and useless).
Any tips or suggestions on the negative holding, drying carrying or scanning are most welcome.