Portra 400

Another roll post, but weirder this time.

This roll is a stranger one than others for a couple reasons. First off, obviously, is that there are way more pictures, like more than double. In fact there are 78 individual pictures in this roll. That’s because I took this on a fun little camera called the Canon Demi S. Introduced in 1964, it’s a really old camera but also a lot of fun. That said, it’s also a fair bit different from the cameras I already have.

Obviously, the format is different. Being a half frame camera, the frames are about half the size. This means that the frame is 3:4 instead of 3:2. This means that unlike a normal 35mm camera, the frames are taller than they are wide, but also that they’re a bit more square overall. This also affects the ergonomics of the picture taking process. The viewfinder by default is vertical instead of horizontal which definitely took getting used to. For the first probably 30 pictures or so my brain assumed a horizontal viewfinder and I had to actively adjust my thinking to go, no this is a naturally vertical viewfinder. That said, I now feel comfortable enough with it to switch between this camera and 35mm cameras without too much cajoling.

Another thing to note is that this is a fixed lens camera. While there are some interchangeable lens half frame cameras, this one is a fixed lens f1.7/28mm camera. I really wanted to get a f1.7 lens because I do so much low light photography with all the shows I go to that I really wanted a lens that allowed me to shoot at reasonably fast shutter speeds.

Lastly, the one thing this camera doesn’t really let you do is have super clear focusing. Changing the focus has no effect on the viewfinder because it’s not an SLR. In that way, it’s similar to the Instax camera I’ve been using for instant photography. However, unlike that camera, you can change the aperture and shutter speed. In fact you have to, there are no automatic funtions on this camera at all. Perhaps more than any other camera I’ve used, this one requires you to actively imagine the picture you’re taking and while it’s definitely more work, it’s a lot of fun.

Before getting to the roll itself, why did I get this camera? It’s in a lot of ways inferior to the cameras I already own. Well there are a couple of reasons, first of which is that I wanted to have it for SXSW this year. The camera policy is really annoying and I wanted to just not think about it. While I did end up bringing one of my Minoltas for a few nights, I took this camera with me for the beginning of the week and it turned out alright, I’ll post on that soon. Additionally, I really wanted to see what it was like to shoot half frame and have so many frames to shoot. In a lot of ways it feels like the roll never ends which is a really satisfying feeling to just keep shooting.

Anyways, onto the roll. I’m torn. I’m really flip flopping on this roll more than any other I’ve shot. Ostensibly it’s a pretty bad roll. The focus and graininess is terrible. A lot of the pictures are illegible. But there’s still something to a lot of the pictures that I find really interesting and powerful.

Let’s go through them in groups. The first group is just a few neighborhood type pictures which I’ll admit are pretty bland and pedestrian. They cover some interesting contrasts though and I’m glad I took them. With them, you can tell there’s a bit of distortion towards the edges and that the lens imparts a kind of softness, even on what should be relatively sharp pictures.

The second group is live music. I went to see Holy Wire and Urban Heat. Explicitly, I wanted to see how the camera would do with low light conditions. One interesting thing to note is how strongly this camera handles reflections. I’m not sure I understood it even after I got back this roll, but reflected light just blows out way more than I expect. This can be seen in the first of these pictures. The light reflecting off the guitar is really bright, unexpectedly so. When I was first looking at these pictures I think I just thought I maybe metered wrong, but as I’ll say in the next roll, I do think it’s a shiny reflection thing. Anyways, I struggled really heavily here with the focus and these pictures definitely suffer as a result. That said, I do kind of like the weird softness this camera imparts. There’s a really old and nostalgic feeling and effect from these pictures that’s hard to discount. They may not be the sharpest or most technically proficient, but there’s a lot of character to them that’s a bit unexpected.

After that is a small group of neighborhood stuff followed by a few pictures at the Blanton and Austin specifically. The neighborhood stuff is once again relatively pedestrian but again, there really is that old photo look to these that isn’t necessarily there with most of my pictures. I have to assume that’s the lens, but it’s hard to say. In regards to Austin, it’s kind of amazing that I continue to take pictures there that I have never taken before. It is by far the place I have taken the most pictures at and every time I’m there I find myself finding something new or different to focus on or interact with. In that way it has provided an endless amount of inspiration.

The last, and largest, group of pictures is of downtown. It’s a bit hard to describe this group. On the one hand, a lot of these pictures are really simplistic and uninteresting. However, I think there are also some really odd and interesting ones too. This group includes a rare self portrait. It also includes some odd spontaneous pictures mid arm swing. I think what I would say about this group is that it’s simultaneously the most structured, and the least structured. There’s a much stronger emphasis on composition, but also it includes pictures with no real intention of fixed composition. I find it a really interesting collection even if there aren’t really any particular stand outs.

All in all, I like the amount of spontaneity that shooting half frame gave me. Unlike with normal 35mm shooting, I didn’t feel much of a need or sense to ration my picture taking. I definitely needed to gauge my distances better and I will say that I do better in the next roll when I specifically focus on it. But overall, I feel like this will be the type of camera I use to explore and expand my scope of picture taking more than any other. There’s a freedom and wistfulness to this camera that I do adore and I’ll definitely be taking more pictures with it in the future.