Steve Maniscalco Photography

Savoy

Do you love toy cameras? Do you yearn for crappy, low resolution photos? Do you like carrying cute red plastic things in public? Boy, do I have a camera for you!

Meet the Savoy.

 

Functionally, the Savoy is a Kodak Brownie Hawkeye. It's small, plastic, has a single shutter speed and aperture, and it takes 620 film.  Actually, it's not quite accurate to say it is equivalent to a Brownie because brownies were better made. 

On the plus side of the Savoy...it's got that cute retro 60's thing going like nobody's business. On the down side...well, it takes pretty crappy pictures. Of course, crappy isn't always a bad thing. Heck, I know folks who spend a great deal of time and energy in photoshop making their perfect digital images look like they were taken with a crappy old toy camera.  With the Savoy, you can skip the manipulation and get right to the bad image.

 

Living right up to the image quality is the handling. Man, that's about as squinty a little viewfinder as I've ever seen!  As a bonus, the shutter won't fire if you don't mash down on it pretty decisively. 

 

Of course, you're dealing with a red window for the roll film. That doesn't bother me, since I have many other cameras with red windows. You do however have to spool your 120 film on to two 620 spindles before you can shoot, as the camera will not take a 120 roll on either side of the film path. You have to love a camera to put yourself through that extra trouble.

So, what kind of results can you expect? 

 

Let's just say you won't be burdened by an overly sharp image.

 
 
 I think I could take a q-tip to the plastic lens and maybe improve things a bit. On the other hand, if this picture from the old 620 roll I found in the camera is any indication, it never was a great one for clear images.

 
 In any case, if this sort of thing is to your tastes, drop me a line. I can be persuaded to part with it pretty cheaply. I'm just not likely to use it and I refuse to accumulate shelf queens.

(This post is repeated as a permanent reference page under my Cameras link).

010310

Instant 365 project. Day 3.

 

 Polaroid 330 Land Camera, FP 100c

Ektar Goodness

It's no secret that I'm a black and white guy. I relate to shapes and shadows better than to colors. Color has always struck me as a substitute for good composition. I know that's not really fair, it's just that so often I see spectacular color and I feel as though the image is carried by that color more than any single other factor. 

Now that I've disparaged the practice, I'll show you my own examples of it. 

 

 

Ok, honestly, I have a hard time deciding if my own images are good or are being propped up by eye catching nature of their color. I'm pretty sure the first one here would stand on its own. I'm not so sure about the second and third shots.

What does it all mean? I don't know. Again, that'd call for a conclusion and I'm mostly about rambling. I can say that Ektar is a hell of a color film and if you're trying to wow your audience with color, it looks like the way to go to me.

Yashica Mat 124G, Ektar

Jenny's Valor

Roadside memorials, or "Descansos" remain one of my favorite subjects.  Keeping the Instax camera and a couple of diopters with me, I can stop when I come across a memorial and see the results right away. Instant gratification, kinda like digital...except I really like it.

 

 

 

Every memorial tells a story, but the story is almost never complete. The visitor is left to wonder about the life and death of the person memorialized and about those left behind.

Hopefully, the images I come away with convey those same feelings.

Fuji Instax 200, Instax film

Three Brownies

I did get the three brownies out over the weekend and managed to burn 3 rolls of film pretty quick. It's a funny looking arrangement and I was stopped twice by people wondering what the heck I was doing with three cameras at a time.

The results did not quite live up to my hopes. It seems the camera I had on the right side had a very dirty little plastic lens. It was so dirty that those shots just don't look like they belong with the shots from the other two cameras. Now, I'm not really objecting to the crappy images. It's just that all three images need to be at about the same level of crappy to make a decent looking tryptych...for my tastes anyway.

So, I'm left with two choices; clean the dirty lens or dirty the clean lenses.  I went for the cleaning option as having more predictable results.

The other thing I learned from this run is that perhaps a wider angle of coverage...a greater angle between the cameras...would be a better look.  There is just a bit too much overlap on these images.

Here's an example of what I came out with. I think you can see that the concept has something going for it, now I just need to make the execution right.

Beach Pinhole

Carpenteria beach, CA. 

Home made 6x9 pinhole camera, FP4, Thornton's 2-bath developer

Beach Pinhole

Carpenteria Beach lifeguard stand.  Three views.

Homemade 6x9 pinhole camera, FP4 film, thornton's 2-bath developer

Burial Ground

Cemetery on tribal land.

Iskra, PanF, Thornton's 2-bath developer

Desert Decay

Old broken down stuff makes a good subject for photography. I'm sure that's been a great subject for discussion somewhere.  I'm not sure why I would not find a freshly polished Porche to be an interesting subject, or why this old building would not appeal to me if it had windows and a little garden in front...but the fact is, I like the character of beat up and run down.  I don't think I'm alone on that count.

Yashicamat 124G, PanF, Thornton's 2-bath developer

Yashicamat 124G

Did I mention my brother sent me home from Louisiana with a like new Yashicamat 124G?  Well, he did.  It was given to him and I think he couldn't find where the memory card went, so he gave it to me.

I've shot a little bit of TLR in the past.  I owned a Mamiya C220 for years.  I just never really got to love it.  I don't know if it's just the passing years or the extra small goodness of the Yashicamat when compared to the Mamiya...but this was a very fun camera to shoot.  I'd intended to shoot a roll through it, then put it away and continue to shoot with the Mamiya 7, but ends up I was having such a good time with it that I just reloaded it and kept going.

It worked like a charm.  The built in meter seemed accurate and I'm very happy with the results.

These were taken in and around a small cemetery on tribal land just East of Scottsdale, AZ. 

The first two images were shot with a ND filter held over the lens so I could shoot wide open in the mid-day light. 

PanF, Yashicamat 124G, Thornton's 2-bath developer

At the Museum

R3A, 35mm Nokton f1.7, Porta 800 converted to bw

One Camera, One Lens, One Failure

It's true.  I failed miserably at the "One Camera, One Lens" challenge I wrote about a few posts ago.

Yes, I loaded up the Balda as planned, and yes, I shot the three rolls I'd planned on shooting...problem is, on my last day of shooting, I took along another camera.  It's really not my fault (nothing ever is).  I'd seen some colorful things that I wanted to shoot and I was determined to shoot them with Ektar.  Unfortunately, I'd not yet received my Ektar 100 in 120, so I had none to load in to the Balda.  What's a guy with no discipline or free will to do?  Well, carry a 35mm camera loaded with Ektar of course!  And that's just what I did.

At least in the end, I did the honorable thing.  I confessed my sins over on the rangefinderforum and found that others had sinned as well.  Being a sinner among sinners, it was easy to find forgiveness.  I've uploaded my three entries to the challenge gallery where anyone who doesn't mind my lying/cheating ways can comment on my photos and by doing so, vote for them.  So far, I've only got two comments.  Either they don't like lying cheaters over there, or my shots aren't all that good.

I'm trying to decide which of those possibilities to believe in.

Yellow Either Way

Fun with Ektar.

I actually loaded the camera with Ektar and drove back to this location I'd passed earlier in the week just to see how Ektar would handle this scene. Having said that, I really should show you the "before" to go along with this "after."  It was necessary to dial back the cyan and the yellow a bit because they were really screaming.  All you Velvia fans out there, you may just love this film.

Test Driving Kodak Ektar 100

I don't shoot a great deal of color film...at least I haven't since I started developing my own black and white.  This is mostly because I just like black and white better.  A great many of my color film shots were converted to black and white after scanning.  Cost and quality are also factors.  I soup my own for pennies a roll and I am less likely to scratch or ruin my film than the corner mini-lab.   

Still, I do shoot color for the sake of color now and again.  So, when Kodak announced a new color film, and it started to pick up some positive buzz, I jumped on a few rolls right away to give it a test drive.  Kodak claims that the new Ektar 100 has all the fine grain qualities of the old Ektar 25 plus the obvious addition of 2 stops of sensitivity and the less obvious, but perhaps as important addition of far better exposure lattitude (-1 to +2 stops).  I have no experience with the old Ektar, so I can't tell you if Kodak delivered on it's promise relative to that film.  I can say though that they have created a really fine color film.

To test this film, I employed my usual half-assed, non-scientific methods.  I picked an old camera off the shelf that hadn't been used in a while, loaded it up, and went looking for colorful things to point it at.  This, of course, led to the reminder that Arizona is not exactly the place for vibrant colors (outside of wildflower season and sunsets).  The camera I (almost randomly) picked was an old Balda 35mm RF.  It has an indifferent lens and a working selenium meter.  I realize this is not really giving the film a fair shake, but...there you go.  

Overall, I really liked what I saw with this film.  For my tastes, the colors are rich and intense without being oversaturated.  It scanned easily, giving me very nice files to work from.  One thing I did not test was skin tones.  I just didn't think of it.  Kodak actually recommends their Porta line of films over the Ektar for portrait, so I suspect we may see unrealistic skin tones with the Ektar. 

I'll take a few people shots with this next.  I currently use Porta 160NC as my standard slow speed color film.  The colors are realistic and it's a good performer overall.  If skin tones are reasonable with the Ektar, it might be worth switching to it for the fine grain performance and the really well done colors.  We'll see.

Check flickr for other results.

12/9/08

The Mailman Brought
Seven 4x5 film holders.  Cool.  We continue to get closer and closer...

Projects
Just when I thought my 4x5 pinhole project was hopeless due to lack of cheap way of using film holders, I find there are film holders that will fit my back. They are not common though, and considering I'm resigned (ok, excited about) buying a large format camera, perhaps it's still not worth going there.

Photos
I swear, I will eventually post some more photos.  The holidays and my projects are eating up shooting time.  We're planning a family outing to the mountains this weekend.  I doubt I'll get any dedicated shooting time, but I'm taking the borrowed R-D1 along with...so at least I should get a chance to play with it.

Ramblings
I love film.  I hate negatives.  Ok, mostly I hate trying to keep track of negatives.  It's not really much worse than keeping track of digital files...maybe not even as bad...but it is a chore.
These days I've taken to carrying a binder full of negative sheets with me when I take my boys to events/appointments.  I then sit and lable the sheets from memory as I wait.  How much better if I were disciplined enough to record that stuff in the first place?