Above/featured: Vienna skyline from Kleinwasserkraftwerk Wehr I in early morning light. Photo, 7 Jun 2022.
For 2022, the act of looking forward and backward is dominated by a 4-week stay in the city of Vienna. In between the collected images is a reclaimed longing for the Austrian capital to which I was first introduced 20 years ago, but for which there was no camera and, sadly, no recorded pixels.
I’ve already described a set of images setting the urban scenes in Vienna from 2022. Below is an additional set of 22 images selected from a period of 35 days; the time interval represents only 10% of the year, but it appears to be a personally important “watershed moment” as well.
Above/featured: 1st Narrows, from John Lawson Pier.
My Fujifilm X70 mirrorless fixed-lens prime camera has been a big plus for photography at domestic and international locations. The built-into-camera film-simulations (e.g., Provia, Velvia) work beautifully in standard settings, but as I’ve never had a film camera, the advent of “camera recipes” to produce additional film-like settings stimulated interest in different colour or pictorial representations.
So far, I’ve tested these Fujifilm film-simulation (“film-sim”) recipes:
• Ektachrome 100SW (saturated warm), simulating images with the Kodak colour transparency or slide films produced 1996–2002;
• Kodachrome 64, simulating images with the Kodak colour film produced between the mid-1970s and 2009;
• Kodacolor, “producing classic Kodak analog aesthetic closest to early-1980s Kodacolor VR200 colour film that’s been overexposed.”
Above/featured: U2 train departing Berlin’s Zoologischer Garten station – 28 November 2021.
I look back at an eventful 2021 year with 21 images with personal questions about how impending- and actual-loss affect how life proceeds beyond death, and how feelings of real belonging are different from feelings of a proper home.
Above/featured: After Girard: Vancouver-Strathcona, 14 Oct 2021.
The Fujifilm X70 mirrorless fixed-lens prime camera has been a real boon to my approach to photography for personal projects both domestically and internationally. To satisfy my curiosity, I’ve provided examples of X70 images made with two Fujifilm analog-film simulation (film-sim) recipes:
• Ektachrome 100SW (saturated warm), simulating images with the Kodak colour transparency or slide films produced between 1996 to 2002;
• Kodachrome 64, simulating images with the Kodak colour film produced between the mid-1970s and 2009.
In this post, I examine the Kodacolor film-simulation, a reproduction of which Fuji X Weekly’s Ritchie Roesch describes as “producing a classic Kodak analog aesthetic.” According to Roesch, the digital film-simulation is closest to Kodacolor VR analog color film from the early-1980s, whose ISO200 version is still available for purchase as “ColorPlus 200” (Kodacolor 200).
The following film-simulation recipe creates images similar to the look of “Kodacolor VR 200 (film) that’s been overexposed.” My X70 settings are:
The recipe above is for the X-Trans II sensor; the corresponding recipe for an updated or more recent sensor is found here. All other recipes sorted by specific sensor are found here.
The following images were made at locations throughout metropolitan Vancouver. Minor adjustments to brightness level, rotation, and geometric distortion have been applied from straight-out-of-the-camera (SOOC) to posting.
Above/featured:False Creek east, from Cambie Bridge – 12 Jul 2021.
A variety of film simulations in the form of recipes with different settings are applicable to Fujifilm cameras to create uniquely historical and/or vintage look to images. Fortunately, a number of recipes are available to apply onto Fuji cameras with X-Trans II sensors.
That’s where my Fuji X70 has entered the fun fray. Previously, I showed examples of images made with the Kodachrome 64 recipe, simulating images made with the Kodak analog colour film produced from the mid-1970s to its final run in 2009.
I wanted to try another film-simulation recipe: the Ektachrome 100SW (SW for ‘saturated warm’) described by Ritchie Roesch in Fuji X Weekly. Historically, the Kodak company produced the ‘Ektachrome’ line of colour transparency or slide films. From its introduction in 1996 to its termination in 2002, the ‘Ektachrome 100SW’ film with increased ISO sensitivity produced images with deeper colours and warmer colour balance.
At locations throughout metropolitan Vancouver over a period of four weeks in July and August 2021, here are images below straight-out-of-the-camera (SOOC) with the following settings:
All recipes sorted by specific sensor are found here.
Above/featured: South portal, Lions Gate Bridge – 25 Jun 2021.
I wrote about how the Fujifilm X70 fixed-lens prime has been great for my photography. Fujifim prides itself on good to faithful reproductions of film simulations (film-sims). For the most part, I’ve used the default or “Standard” setting, equivalent to the “Provia” film-sim which is one of 11 film-sims built into the X70.
I learned about other film-sims, particularly those applicable to the older X-Trans II sensor that’s in my X70 camera. I’ve been interested in digital reproductions of “old” colour slide film, and seeing how images over a variety of subject matter appear with a film-sim that looks a little more like “old school film”. Ritchie Roesch describes in Fuji X Weekly the differences between the Kodachrome II and Kodachrome 64 film-sims; the former resembling the look of Kodak film from the 1960s to the mid-1970s and the latter echoing the final version of the film-type from the mid-1970s to 2009. Roesch provides additional historical context to the development of Kodachrome film here.
Here I’ve used the Kodachrome 64 film-sim recipe with the following settings:
All recipes sorted by specific sensor are found here.
Above/featured: Winter morning at Kitsilano Beach in Vancouver – 22 Dec 2020 (X70).
Frankly, I don’t know why I waited so long.
For the longest time, I thought photography wasn’t for me. But the curiosity of making images would soon win me over.
My late-entry to photography means I have some regrets not having any images when I lived in Toronto and in Germany. After I moved to Minneapolis, I asked friends and colleagues for some advice, and by 2015, I purchased a compact Canon point-and-shoot camera. I pushed the limits of that camera, and I realized very quickly the kinds of images I wanted to make were beyond what the camera could manufacture. I needed greater flexibility and capability to adjust aperture- and exposure-values, and within three years, I moved “up” to a Canon camera with a crop sensor (450D).
I learned quickly I wanted a broader range of focal lengths, which led me to acquiring a couple of extra lenses. I pushed the 450D very hard, including my year-long around-the-world (RTW) journey in 2012. The shutter died the next summer in Prague, and with my investment of glass within the Canon camera-system, I moved “up” to a Canon camera with a full-frame sensor (6D1) in early 2014. With a larger sensor providing greater sensitivity to low-light, I feel the camera has furnished great images under a variety of conditions. But the 6D1 camera and complement of lenses can be bulky and heavy to carry around for an entire day, and I was feeling “burned out” by the camera-and-lens combination’s larger footprint and weight.
In early 2018, I pondered the idea of a more portable camera, and I decided on a lightly-used Fujifilm X70 mirrorless camera. I brought the 6D1 and the X70 on trips to Europe and the U.S. Southwest to experiment with both cameras, and to understand which device was ideally suited for different environments in different places. The 6D1 still has its place for what I want to photograph, but I discovered a different level of fun and versatility with the X70 with its light weight and small compact size. The X70 isn’t perfect, but it’s a lot easier to carry the X70 into the streets than with the 6D1.
I don’t know what happens next, but there are lots of possibilities for further projects in locations near and far.
Above/featured: Vancouver, 22 December.
I look back at the 2020 year with the following images to address how different locations in both Seattle and Vancouver question the nature and ideas of displacement and belonging, home and travel.
Instead of merely talking or whining about a desire to carry something lighter for day-to-day photography situations, I decided to do something about it a couple of weeks before my month-long visit to Austria in May 2018.
I looked online for a mirrorless compact camera, but I didn’t need the latest or a top-line model. I preferred an older model with a lot of online reviews and user comments, and I decided on a compromise among three criteria: cost, weight and size, and image quality.
Fotoeins Fotografie 