I have a show opening on Friday, February 3rd at Ruberto Ostberg Gallery.  It’s a group show featuring photographic based work for the 2012 Exposure Festival.  The festival will be occuring during the month of February and takes place in Calgary, Canmore and Banff.  Many galleries participate in the festival so it’s a great time of year to see a lot of local photographic work.  You can gallery hop from Calgary and Banff and probably see 20 galleries’ works in only two days.  Great stuff!

The above is an 8×10 proof print of one of the works I will be exhibiting at the show.  I pulled out all the stops in the darkroom to get this one to work.  It’s a 4×5 shot of a very contrasty subject.  I had to combine contrast reduction masking with dodging to get the sky detail to show up, the shadowed foreground to show up, and all without exhibiting strange tones.  I’m very excited that the image turned out as rich as it did.  Shots like these renew my faith in film photography.

It wasn’t until I began shooting 135 film with 36 shots per roll that I started to create a contact sheet for every batch of film shot.  I would instead look at the negatives and try to judge which ones to print 8×10 proof prints from.  This has turned out to be very time consuming with roll film and it’s much easier to run a contact sheet then choose images from that for proofing or even straight printing.  Plus it’s good to see how the colour balance and exposure changes from shot to shot making it possible to adjust the colour balance & exposure for direct prints.  I’m starting to “nail it” when guestimating exposure & colour balance just because I now run contact sheets from every roll I shoot.

These all were shot with a Voigtlander Bessa R4a and a Voigtlander 21mm Color Skopar rangefinder lens.  This lens is turning out to be just as sharp (if not sharper) than my Zeiss 35mm Distagon 2.0 I used on Canon.  Very nice lens at an amazing price.

I’ve got some more toys.  This was shot on Ektar 100 with a Voigtlander Bessa R4A, a Voigtlander 21mm Color Skopar 4P lens on Ektar 100.  The voigtlander came about because I’m switching out my Canon 5D DSLR for a smaller, mirrorless Sony Nex-5N.  The resolution’s better, the dynamic range is about as good and I can slap on tons of cool lenses like this Voigtlander 21mm.  Plus with the extra cash from selling the kit off I picked up a rangefinder film body so I can finally start getting into M mount glass.

I’ve fought with Ektar in the past and haven’t been too pleased with the results.  I’ve discovered that it was my lack of experience that was at fault.  When I heard the stuff’s as finicky as slide film I figured I should give it another chance.  The Bessa has a TTL meter so it’s tough to make a mistake on the exposure.  Too little exposure and it takes on a red cast.  Too much and it takes on a cyan cast.  Expose it just right and it’s a great 35mm film that works well for 14 inch enlargements!  The grain is so fine that it’s very hard to spot when enlarged to 14 inches.

This is probably going to be my “small works” kit and my first camera I reach for when doing a site survey, looking for new subject matter.  I’ll post my thoughts on it and the Nex-5N once I have some more use out of it.

I haven’t disappeared I’ve just been working very hard.  I’m working on printing a load of 16x20s of the back yard body I’ve been working on.  I was worried about the snowy winter causing problems with the subject matter but I actually thoroughly enjoy the snowy photographs and have had good feedback on them.  The Mamiya 7II is getting more use than the 4×5 now and frankly the 6×7 negatives this beast produces are perfectly fine for 16×20 enlargements.  It’s been a wonderful system to shoot photos with as well.  It stays out of my way and lets me concentrate on the subject matter as I’m shooting in the field.  The DSLR offers a sort of “distraction” when the mirror slaps up during the shot.  Looking through a rangefinder provides an uninterrupted view when the shutter is fired.  I hear a click and the viewfinder image is undisturbed.  I really like it.

This V700 is still producing problems with colour balancing.  The scans are pretty sharp with good information recorded but the consistency from film frame to film frame is very poor.  The scans don’t do the images justice compared to the darkroom enlargements.  I’d like to get something like a Nikon Coolscan 8000 some day but that’s money that can go towards paper & film.

He’s an experienced printmaker who graduated from the fine art printmaking program at A.C.A.D in 2008.  His own art is a blend of video narratives and performance installation aimed at challenging the large, farming technology corporations that affect the world’s food supply.  He’s created a fictional company named Uni-Farm, which is prevalent in all the art he creates.

My backyard portrait project is on the go and I have 20 editions to make before March, 2012.  Lots of film to shoot and prints to make!

On another note I hired an assistant, Alex Moon, to help with my printing.  Getting a print washer and dryer would have cost more than hiring somebody to wash my prints as they come out of the roller transport plus it gives somebody work.  I need to ramp up my production because I have a show to prepare for in February and I’d like to get as much work done as possible much before then.

These were shot a couple weeks ago and the autumn foliage is now almost gone.  Frost is on the ground every morning but this wonderful yellow light is still here.   I sold my Mamiya RB67 Pro-S but I had luckily shot my last roll with that system capturing these images.  I shot some good photographs from it but it’s gone on to another user in exchange for a Mamiya 7II.  I’ve wanted something with symmetrical lenses similar to what I shoot when using my 4×5 view camera and it appears as though the Mamiya 7 rangefinder system can provide that same image quality at a scaled down size and weight.

Kodak 160VC film, scanned.

I just got a pin registration system from Lynn Radeka. It’s been great and I highly recommend it to others.

• Mamiya RB67 Pro-S body with waist level finder
• Pentaprism finder (without meter)
• 50mm C 4.3 lens
• 90mm C 3.8 lens
• 120 back
• 220 back

This review/reflection was prompted due to recently listing the camera system for sale.  Even though I’m selling it I highly recommend this system to others who need a good workhorse when shooting subjects that don’t move around much.  The RB67 system is perfectly suited to studio, landscape, architectural and other forms of photography where fast focusing isn’t required.  That’s where high-end Canon/Nikon bodies are the norm.  What the RB67 brings to the table is a camera system that takes large 6×7 images and is a joy to work with.

This is not a small camera.  It’s about the same size as my Wista 45SP 4×5 camera and weighs about the same as well.  The mirror box is large because the images are large and the rotating back adds a little bulk, too.  I believe the rotating back is probably the best feature of this camera system.  I prefer portrait oriented images and if you do as well you will love this system.  It’s a breeze to change the orientation while on a tripod and when shooting hand held strange contortions aren’t required.  The added feature makes it larger than a Hasselblad but this beast weighs less than a Pentax 67.

As for the lenses I didn’t get much use out of the 90mm, much preferring the angle of view the 50mm provides.  It’s about the same as a 20-24mm lens on full-frame/35mm.  The 50mm lens has a floating element that increases sharpness a bit.  I found that setting the floating element is important with subjects closer than 30 feet or so or else chromatic aberrations will occur.  It’s lens hood is a rubber style like the 90mm’s which doesn’t provide much protection but does do a good job at preventing flare.  The hood is massive and a sure attention grabber.  I’ll be shooting on the street with this camera and people think it’s a movie camera.  This camera, when using this lens, attracts much more attention than when I use my 4×5.

The 90mm is unfortunately the least used focal point of mine.  I sold the 50mm lens for my Canon camera and the 90mm virtually stayed in my bag.  Some people like this field of view but I don’t.  Other than that it’s a very sharp lens, sharper than the 50mm and better corrected.  It doesn’t have a floating element and I feel it doesn’t need one.  My only wish is that this lens had a wider f-stop, but I think that’s asking for too much considering 6×7 exposures require a very large imaging circle.

As for the 6×7 imaging circle I truly enjoy it.  It was a little awkward at first but now I love it for two facts:  it crops well to a 4×5 ratio and when printed in portrait orientation without any cropping performed it has a perfect amount of lower “floating” space on 11×14/16×20 paper.  I’ve come to love 6×7 and I highly recommend it to anybody who likes the 4×5 ratio without the 4×5 time consumption.  The negatives are much larger than a 6×6 cropped down to 4×5 and contact sheets of 6×7′s are absolutely stunning.

So why am I selling this system when I have gotten much use out of it and thoroughly enjoy it?  The answer is that I’ve been bitten by the “upgrade bug” and severely desire a Mamiya 7II with a 50mm lens.  Shooting with the 50mm from this kit caused me to love the field of view but this system’s 50mm leaves much to be desired compared to what the Mamiya 7II rangefinder system will provide.  I believe for wide-angle photography symmetrical lenses are the kings and that limits one to rangefinders and viewcameras.  So I’ve listed the gear for sale and will be putting the money towards a rangefinder 6×7 with a symmetrical 50mm.

It’s supposed to be one of THE sharpest wide-angle lenses in existence, along with it’s sibling the 43mm Mamiya 7 lens.  So when this system sells I’ll be one step closer to getting what will hopefully be an easy-to-carry, high-sharpness imaging system.  But in the mean time I will continue to use this camera and I highly recommend it to anybody who values high quality images without spending an atrocious amount of money.

Tonight my wife and I went south of Calgary to High River where a good friend of our’s, Mali Vargas, was having a solo show at Evanescence Gallery.  The show was great and congratulations to Mali for getting all the work together!

On the way I had seen the most incredible lighting develop I had ever seen in my entire life.  It was a shame that I was neither prepared nor had the time to stop and photograph what was happening in the sky.  Thankfully my wife was driving and I did what I abhor:  I shot photographs from a moving car.  This one photograph turned out fairly well.  This is how the photograph came out from the camera.  No adjustments to anything, those colours were this crazy in real life.  Shot with a Sigma DP2 (Foveon).