Yuppers here I am home from a day of early season boarding up at Whistler, all I have to say is Awesome!! More than half the runs and lifts weren’t open and of the ones that were there were areas of no snow, but good times were still had.

The weather was mostly clear with some foggy patches and warm, like stupidly freakishly warm. We just drove up for the day, we got on the slopes at about 10ish which was a little late but considering that I am a fat bastard all summer we figured we would be a little tuckered by 3pm when the hill closed. M came for the ride as well although she hung out in the village while we hurtled ourselves down a mountain.

The backpack was the awesome I didn’t even notice that it was there all day. In fact I even forgot that I was carrying water and stuff till around 1 O’clock. Real cameras are a must the next time I go! All in all awesome day awesome weather, and an awesome time. I am so glad that I went.

Video from coaxial‘s iPhone

Yuppers all up and at them for a day of fun at Whistler!! The board is all loaded up and ready! Just going to grab Coaxial and we are off!! Hurray. No real camera’s on the hill today but crappy camera an iphone will document the good times :)

I know i just posted, but this started as a reply comment on this post, but it turned into a long rant So I figured it should be its own post.

I thought long and hard about Polapremium this morning and I ended up even more disappointed. I was looking for long term and I instead affronted with just how temporary it all is. I have a rule, if it costs more then $3.00 a shot I need to be making good money at it, or it better knock my socks off in some other way. Most things that I would buy from Polapremium unfortunately doesn’t meet that code. I don’t mind spending extra to support people/businesses doing cool things, but I think I will take all the money that I could have spent at polapremium and use it to buy more of Fuji’s instant stock on a long term regular basis. My feeling is, lets support the long term guy, the guy who is going to be around for a while. I am going to stick with my normally attractive and funny long term girlfriend, instead of dumping her for a fleeting romance with a super model with a coke habit that will last an intense week, but be left in the end with nothing but heartbreak and regret.

My Omega 4×5, the 360 Land camera, and I will happily shoot our Fuji FP100C with fantastic results and well into the foreseeable future.

I figure that it is time to tell my Canon EOS 5D story.  Some of you may have been able to decipher the story from my random Facebook updates and Twitter rants over the last year, but the story is this.

Way back in September 2007 I decided that I would buy a Canon 5D to supplement our compliment of canon gear.  Basically I was getting it with the intention of using it for photo walks, and to have a decent backup camera in the event that one of our Canon 1D/s’ died at an event. (knock on wood) I didn’t buy it with the intent of using it all that heavily, I just wanted a good alternative camera just in case it was required.

During this last year and a bit it has seen around 30,000 shutter actuation’s. That might seem like a lot to some of you but my Canon 1Ds Mark II averages about 5,000 to 7,000 a week for the better part of the year.  What is the reason that number is so low? Well that would be because it has been sitting in Canon’s Calgary repair depot for more then half of that year.

Seriously it has simply out of the blue stopped working three times, and it was sent back once not fully repaired.  Four times it went in! While I generally like the camera, it takes nice photos and is comparatively a nice light camera that is decent to operate, I am really wishing I had bought another used Canon 1D Mark II instead. Which, incidentally, is exactly what I did eventually end up doing because the 5d was never available.

I have been so burned by this camera that I am not sure that I really ever want to shoot with anything other then pro gear again.  I have it back from repair again but to be honest I am really just waiting for it to stop working randomly, so much so that I really don’t want to use it.  We will have to wait, use, and see, I suppose. Of course, the warranty is now also out, which just makes it that much more awesome.

The wait is over. After a few moments that turned into a long forever for us crazy few that were watching the some what inaccurate clock (Not Gastown steam clock inaccurate but inaccurate non the less) for the last week, here we are in the new land of Polapremium and what does that mean? Well as near as I can quickly determine it means that we are able to shoot a variety of films for a few more months anyway. My first impression is that of slight disappointment.  It almost looks a lot like a last big money grab by polaroid, but I do have to say that depending on how much room is on my visa right now, I may need a larger film fridge! :)  There is a huge variety of films but they all look like they are limited run or already close to being expired. They are also selling cameras as well which is cool but all said and done I want a do over on the last week to get my precious time back.   Call me optimistically disappointed.

just another 8200 seconds!!!!

….but when it is a full day of it (and i went to bed at 3 or 4ish last night) it can be quite tiring. So words you don’t get, photos you do.

Well I guess some words you might get. Polapremium tomorrow!! (I am little sad that I am no longer the number one result on Google for that term) That is exciting I think! I am shooting in studio again for the better part of tomorrow so I will likely miss the grand launch, which will be around 2pm to 3pm if my math is right :) I have decided that I can’t wait the two weeks or so for Cypress to open so I am going to fire off to Whistler on Sunday for early season fun.  I think the mountain opened today if I read their awful, confusing, lacking relevant information, website correctly. Seriously, perhaps I was drunk or something, but I had to search for a long time to find out how much a one day lift ticket was.  Saturday is a Downtown East Side photo walk (thanks to Potter for setting that up) and a bunch of work for me, but otherwise I am hoping to get caught up on life and start work on new projects and super surprises for the new year!!  Tomorrow night is a busy one, everyone and everything seems to be doing something tomorrow night.  There is a Movember party at Caprice, the Hanson Brothers are playing the Anza Club, there is a Photographer Studio Opening, Gastown Shop Hop and about 6 other things that I keep getting invited to. I am running out of time so ya my no words for you has turned into a long ass post.

Now because I obviously have heaps of time and absolutely no work to do I figured I would poke around and see what the rumor mill has to say about this whole polapremium business. What I have to say is that people initially seem to be about as skeptical as I am at first.  That is not to say that there aren’t a few metric tonnes of hope floating about out there.  Near as I can decipher from random rumors, and peeps in the know dropping hints, is that Polaroid and Unsaleable.com have teamed up to release a last run of instant films.  Rumor is saying that a release of a type 600 and possibly a replacement film for the SX70′s (that is not to say that they are releasing time zero again, my guess would be that they are releasing a type 600 that either has a built in ND filter or is a slower film closer to time zero’s ISO 150). It does seem however that the focus is going to be on the continuation of the integral films (non peel apart films) with little to no mention of pack films.

The British Journal of Photography recently published that Unsaleable.com (who is indirectly the registered owner of polapremium.com btw) was able to convince Polaroid to “produce an outstanding amount of breathtaking film, before closing down their factories”  “Many of these films are completely new products, never produced before” – spokesperson for polapremium.com

This is all super awesome except I am concerned that this is going to be nothing more then a short term run of Polaroid films that will quickly run out and within a year we will be left where we are right now. I also worry that the price is going to be an unbelievable ridiculous and arbitrary amount that would also make the long-term use of these films impractical for most, which is not unlike unsaleable to do.

What I hope to see is a return of square film formats like the type 87 or 84 because all my pack film cameras (with the exception of my land camera of course) shoot square leaving a black edge on the photo.  I would like the Polaroid to be the finished product but that stupid black edge is so ugly.  It gets to the point that I don’t shoot Polaroid with my Mamiya or Holga anymore (other than for the very few precious remaining boxes of type 84/87 I have left in my fridge).

One other possible bit of good news, that I am hoping is true, is that Polaroid may have licensed out production of type 664 and 667 films to Fuji.  The 664 I don’t really care about but in my humble opinion the 667 is a far superior Black & White then the Fuji FP 3000B.  In fact the 667 is the only medium format Polaroid brand pack film that I am sad to see go. I would also love to see the large format 8X10 etc.. come back but here I know that I am dreaming! :)

In my humble opinion what Polaroid should have done is stopped shipping date sensitive product to every Wal-Mart, London Drugs, and small town photo store in the world, and instead moved to an entire mail/internet ordering system.  Condensed the entire instant film section of the company down to their two remaining factories and have two shipping departments and a kick ass website/online presence.  Instead of having a large bloated company with sales offices all over the bloody world doing god knows what, streamline the whole thing down to the bear necessities.  It is not like the bulk of us die-hard Polaroid users haven’t been internet ordering our precious film for the last couple of years as it is.  I don’t claim to know how it all works but I will be shooting film/Polaroid till it becomes too expensive to do so. The dificulty is I am super cheap, and this sorta work makes me absolutely no money, so I fear that day is too quickly approaching.