And God wants to kill himself it would seem. Again with the 40 hours of random music it played 7 songs in a row that were all by bands and/or members of bands that have killed themselves. It was a set that started with Elliot Smith’s – Needle in the hay, followed by Nirvana’s – Jesus Doesn’t Want Me For A Sunbeam. These two I knew about, but the next one on the list I had to consult Google about. It was Nick Drake’s Pink Moon apparently Nick Drake took to many pills and died. This was followed by Joy Division’s Colony, and well I only knew that there was an untimely death in that band because of D. talking about this movie. The very next song was the big lizard one from the Dead Milkmen and well Dave Blood killed him self there. Then this is where it gets random! Roy Buchanan came up next doing a cover of Hey Joe. I have one album of Roy Buchanan and I don’t even recall listening to it before but Google informs me that he kicked it via hanging while in jail for public drunkenness. Then Pennywise doing a cover of Brown eyed girl came next, While the band is still rockin out Wikipedia tells me that their original bassist Jason Thirsk Killed himself in 96, then the last one was Joy Drop – I Sometimes Wanna Die while the was no one in this band that has killed themselves the song title makes it get lumped into this list as well as the song was banned from Radio and TV after September 11th because of fears that it would make the nation to depressed to continue living. ODD!!! Perhaps there are random musical coincidences in my winamp all the time and I have never noticed! Well God, Winamp, go away!

At least that is what my winamp is trying to tell me :) I am listening to my entire library on random today and out of 40 hours of music it has landed on all my rockabilly/hillbilly & old country music. The Super suckers have come up twice! What are the odds!

OK Update the super suckers have come up twice since i posted this!! WTF?!?!

Last night we went for some dinner at the best place in for food in Vancouver period! Dadeo New Orleans Style Diner and this is a Polaroid of it!

Camera: Polaroid SX70
Film: Polaroid 779 with a blue holga filter
ISO: 690
Date Taken: October.29.2007

Ahh yes the Days before digital camera’s I would like to take everyone on a trip in the way back machine so let’s all climb on board. Is everyone in? Mind your fingers and toes! Alright I would like to roll back to the days before digital photography was even a term. Back to the time when photography required patience! Back when you had to wait (sometimes for weeks) for your photos to be developed and returned to you, only to find out that you cut the tops of people’s heads of in every shot (Damn That Parallax Error) Now imagine someone saying that you don’t have wait forever to see your photos. What if I told you that you could see them Instantly!! welcome to the heyday of the “Instant Camera”. I heart Polaroid’s!!! In fact I spend way to much time energy and money playing with a medium that is guaranteed to give me inferior image quality, filled with caustic paste that will quite possibly cause cancer in any rats that may eat our garbage, and look remarkably like it was taken in 1977 even if it was this afternoon, but damn it is so cool! Now ask anyone who loves playing with instant fun what the coolest Polaroid ever made was and they will most likely tell you that about the SX70. I wont go into detail about all the things that made the SX70 and the time zero film cool because it was a little bit before my time! however I have modded (its not much of a mod really I removed the ND filter and I scale the lighten darken slider to darken) my camera to be able to use the regular Polaroid 600/779 . This is by far the coolest 1970’s camera Polaroid ever made, it is jam packed with ahead of its time features! To start the camera is a SLR meaning what you see is what you get! No parallax anything! second the camera focuses via the large Sonar disk a the top so it can focus in the dark well! It has a flash system that I unfortunately don’t have so when its dark out the SX70 just has ridiculously long shutters (like over a min sometimes) but with the right colour filtration you can make any Polaroid long exposure look awesome! Expect to see a lot more of this in upcoming days!

I have had a Black & White dark room that has been in a box since I moved from Edmonton! Not that I haven’t had the chance to play in the darkroom for our last building had a very nice darkroom set up with big sinks and a lot of plumbing! It was fun but it wasn’t mine! I was always worried I was going to step on someones toes or that when I went down at 2:30 in the morning that some one was already going to be using it! Silly I know but I am a little odd with these sorts of things. So in the last few weeks I have been slowly dusting off the old enlarger and setting up our laundry room as a darkroom! Loads of fun, but I have always had a desire to work in colour. So after some searching craigslist provided me with a inexpensive colour enlarger and last night I tried my first colour prints ever.

Now getting real true colour can be tricky but i am shooting with holgas and modified brownie cameras so i am not really to concerned about true colour! When i get a chance i will give a little write up on the process.

Yup I ordered some Moo + Flickr cards from moo.com. Everybody seams to think that I am crazy to have bought one of each though! I dont get it. They are wicked printing! I was really expecting some diluted colour and spotty printing. I am very happy with the quality. I will have them in my camera bag so the next time you see me ask me for some MOO!

This is a shot that i took a bit ago now! It is some expired and crossed processed film from a rainy day a month or so ago.

So In the vain of a darren night I feel that I need to blog loaded! SO here ya go the second loaded blog in a week :) this time I took pjhotos :)

Here…

So we were having B-fast at the Tomahawk last Saturday and we all decided that we need to go camping! so we did. This is on the beach at Dinner Rock Campground taken with the Seagull. The Camera I am learning to love more and more!!!

These jeans looked like they were carefully picked vegetables in an apple basket or something. Taken on Cordova Street near the Cambie.

Camera: Canon 5D
Aperture: 1.4
Shutter: 1/1600
Lens: Canon EF 50mm 1.4
ISO: 1600
Date Taken: Oct.17.2007

Today’s Camera Adventure – A 35mm Holga Party!
So the other day I went to Beau Photo and grabbed the 35mm Adapter for our Holga (as well as a holga for Darren) and I ran my first roll though it.

Loading The Film
The adapter (like everything else about a Holga) is ridiculously simple to use. You replace your existing film mask (either the 6×6 for 12 Exposures or the 6X4.5 for 16 exposures) with the 35mm one. You then just wrap up the leader to the 120 spool (some people use tape, I just looped it though and then back on its self) and place the 35mm can in its slot, wind it a bit to make sure that the leader will grab, slap on the opaque camera back (the little red window of your regular holga back will expose your film) and Bob’s your uncle you have a regular 35mm holga. For panorama’s and wicked wild sprocket photography, (which I will try next) you will have to look at one of other the mods I will talk about later.

Shooting the Roll.
So you basically shoot the roll the same way that you would a roll of 120. The sunny vs cloudy and the focus all work the same; the only catch is that you need to advance the film a little different. Instead of watching for the numbers on the back like you would with 120 you need to use the winder as a guide. The Instructions for the 35mm insert suggested that you “advance the film one full rotation for each shot can be more but never less” By marking two dots with a felt marker, one on the body and one on the winder knob you can easily know what one rotation is. This will work fabulously and you can be guaranteed to not have any over lap in your photos, and will generally yield about 25 photos or so per 36exp roll. Now if you follow these instructions you will end up with negatives that look like this.

You can see that the gap between exposures is getting bigger and bigger and bigger as the roll progresses. This is because the wheel that is doing the winding is getting slightly bigger each rotation so it will wind up a little bit more length each time you advance the film, so a full rotation will eventually be complete overkill. (Hence you get about 25 exposures a 36exp roll) If you are feeling adventurous you can advance the film slightly less then the last shot to try and get the gaps consistent and closer together, as well as yield more exposures a roll, but be advised you may end up with some overlap on the edge of the frames till you get your technique down.

Unloading the Film
Now the only catch with this mod is that you need to open the camera in a pitch black environment to manually wind the roll back up! Not a big deal really, the folks at custom colour let me use their dark bag to do it or you can do it in your bathroom but you will need to block all the light coming in from the door cracks and such. Once you think you have it really dark in your bathroom sit and wait 5 to10 min to let your eyes adjust to the dark. You may just find that your dark room isn’t so dark after all! If you find that finding a darkroom to change film to be a pain, you can buy a 35mm modded Holga from HolgaMods.com that features a rewind crank for about 45 dollars plus shipping. This a little steep i think considering that it doesn’t seem to have any sort of 35mm mask and makes you find your own foam to hold the roll straight. You could get the moded holga and then add the 35mm adapter but that is getting a little bit $$ for a holga and it wouldn’t get you sprocket goodness! I personally would invest in a changing bag instead of a holga with a film rewind. Now this adapter only cost me about 12 dollars but if even that is a bit little to steep for some of you or you are looking for pano/sprocket Holga, you can mod a holga your self as per these instructions. This method will expose the whole negative including the sprocket area, as well as being a bit more panoramic. My next roll I will try something of the sort.

Developing the film.
Now the beauty of 35mm is that you can get a roll of colour negative film developed anywhere! If you get your film done at Walmart or London Drugs (shudder) you may have some interesting prints depending on the method that you use to mod the camera. the 35 Adapter will produce a regular 36×24mm exposures but the other methods including the 35mm holga from holgamods will give you around a 60mm wide panoramic exposures with the regular square film mask. I would recommend getting where ever you develop your film to not cut the negatives and scan them in your self, or get them to give you a contact print, so you can see what the sprocket area looks like. I personally always get the lab to develop only and then I cut them into strips and scan them at home. It costs around 5 bux a roll total and I can do what ever I want with it after the fact
.

All In All
I think that the film came out looking its usual holgalicious goodness but it was lacking something. I think that the larger 6X6 format captures that holga essence better then a framed 35mm shot can. I will be dropping off some 35mm sprocket photography film tomorrow so we will what that is like!

So we have decided that we will go camping hurrah see you tomorrow!

Errrrr Ahhhh Ich bin ein errr ahh loaded, but i just got back from beers at the Railway club with darren and josh, where many complicated math equations were computed in our heads or via long math on chalk boards. I also decree that darren be from this point forward refered to as Good Will Hunting and every one should go up and ask him how he like them apples. IT will be funny do it i mean it! Now i am eatinf cornflakes and watching dramatic chipmunk

And scanning film cause that is what one does when one drinks!

A new shot form the last shoot with Melissa.

I was searching through old film and I found this! This was taken on my old Mamiya M645 1000s. Its funny to say that a 6×4.5cm look really small compared to the 6X7cm of the Mamiya RB67

So the other day when Josh and I decided that work is for chumps I shot a roll or two of crazy old expired Slide film. This is it developed and Cross Processed

Camera: Canon EOS 3
Aperture: 1.4
Shutter: 1/60?
Lens: Canon EF 50mm 1.4
Film: Fuji Realia X-Processed
ISO: 100 pushed to 50
Date Taken: Oct.02.2007

Man it’s wet out! even more wet then the day that I took this photo.

Camera: Seagull TLR
Aperture: Unknown
Shutter: Unknown
Lens: Seagull 75mm
Film:Kodak 400 VC
ISO: 400
Date Taken: October 2007

This is a regular non-expired cross process pushed one stop in camera and one in processing.
We have a crazy busy weekend but it is the last wedding weekend for a bit so i wont complain. I have to be up early again so goodnight.

So I went for a walk to Leo’s Camera today, and then I hit some alleys. It’s good to walk :) But everywhere I went there was tonnes of random mattresses all over these downtown alleys, Perhaps I am blind and it’s always like this.

Camera: Canon 5D
Aperture: 5
Shutter: 1/200
Lens: Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM @ 46mm
ISO: 400
Date Taken: Oct.01.2007

Camera: Canon 1Ds Mark II
Aperture: 2.8
Shutter: 1/500
Lens: Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM @ 46mm
ISO: 400
Date Taken: Oct.01.2007