Gotta Love that Portra

Kodak as well as other film manufacturers have always had some kind of hierarchy when it comes film. At the bottom of the list was the everyday "family snapshot" kind of film. For Kodak its the Kodak Gold or Ultramax 400. These days the only difference between these kinds of films and the best so called "professional" films are that the latter are generally not available in drug stores or Walmart. The difference in price, especially when you consider processing in the mix is almost negligible. To be honest, there's not much difference in quality either but there is still something special about Portra. It just has a look that says you cared enough about this shot to use the very best film. Although I still like Gold and Untramax very much Portra is more and more becoming my "go to" film.

Here's a nice family snapshot of my son and his beautiful family shot on Portra 400 with my Pentax ZX-7. It probably would have been just as good on Gold or Ultramax but Portra just has "That Look!"

WPPD 2019

Here's my submission for this year's Worldwide Pinhole Photograhy Day. This vigilant and graceful Guardian Angle watches over those who sleep at a nearby cemetery in Port Vincent, Louisiana. 

I have really come to love Kodak Ektar, especially for pinhole. The colors are just beautiful and the film speed puts me right in a "sweet spot" for shutter speeds on all of my pinhole cameras. This particular photo was shot with the Holga Pinhole Camera (f192) resulting in a 6 x 6 image on 120 roll film. The exposure here was 1.5 seconds.

Budding Young Photographer Takes Her Work Seriously

I took my budding young photographer granddaughter Claire out on a photo shoot to capture images for a contest she participates in every year and could not help but shoot the shooter. She takes her photography very seriously and was one of the winners in the contest last year. She was of course shooting digital (Pentax istDL) while I was shooting my favorite black and white film in one of my favorite cameras, Kodak Tri-X in my Pentax ZX-7.

Graduation Day at the Fire Hydrant

Last year when my son graduated with honors from Southeastern Louisiana University we naturally had a photo shoot and in addition to all the digital photos I had to shoot a roll of Portra 400 with the Holga. This was my favorite. If you have followed this blog for any time at all you know how I love fire hydrants and there just happened to be one where we were shooting. How could I resist!

WPPD 2018

Clearly it's been a while since I posted anything here but not for lack of subject matter. In any case I will try to bring things up to date a bit. Here's last year's Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day submission. Its a shot of one of my favorite pinhole subjects at the local Baton Rouge Botanical Gardens. This was a 2 second exposure from the very first roll of film through my new (at the time) Holga 135PC, 35mm plastic pinhole Camera. It was shot on Kodak Portra 160 color film on a sunny spring day.

Another Ondu Pinhole

This is one of the Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day (WPPD) images that I didn’t submit to the WPPD Gallery this year but in many ways I actually like this one better than the one I did submit. I was shooting a long (16 second) exposure on Kodak Portra 400 with my new Ondu 35mm Pocket Pinhole camera but I couldn’t get the red birdhouse in the foreground to stay still. The birdhouse hangs on a stainless steel cable from a tree limb and was facing away. When I turned it so that it was facing the way I wanted it to face it would slowly turn back around.

I decided the next best thing to actually having the birdhouse facing the way I wanted was to have it turn and thereby “blur out” during the exposure so I rotated it around so that it made a complete 360 degree turn during the 16 second exposure and the image above is what was captured in my little wooden box.

In spite of my misgivings about the shutter the Ondu really is a beautifully crafted camera. The wood it is made out of was clearly carefully selected and finished to produce a work of art. I love wood and love working with wood and I appreciate that the fit and finish on the Ondu is some of the finest work I have seen on something made of wood.

I will probably continue to use it just because of the pleasure derived from handling such a beautiful well made camera.

WPPD 2017 & The Ondu

Well its Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day (WPPD) time again! Actually WPPD was on April 30^th this year but I just got my film & scans back, picked out the one I wanted to post to the WPPD website and got it uploaded. The image shown above is the one I selected. It is an 8 second exposure on Kodak Portra 400 shot with the new Ondu 35mm Pocket Pinhole acquired last year through their most recent Kickstarter campaign.

It is a delightful compact little camera hand crafted from the most beautiful wood. This was the very first roll of film I put through it and was generally pleased with the results. My biggest complaint is the shutter. This is basically just a piece of wood that pivots up and down across the pinhole and works fine except it is very easy to not get it open all the way or to get your hand and fingers in the way when opening and closing. For longer exposures this is not a big deal but for short exposures it can create a brown blur at the periphery of the image. Here’s a picture of Ondu.

In the future I will use this camera with slower film and/or select compositions that require longer exposures so that I can take the time to make sure the shutter is completely open. Anything longer than 10 seconds should be fine for this strategy. That way even if the shutter arm is in the way briefly it will not affect the image.