Fotoshimaz

I spoke about this camera before in one of my earlier blog posts, as I was pretty excited when I scored a group of film cameras. I go a little more in depth here in this post. Got the Zenza Bronica ETRS medium format camera on 12 Jul 18, at one of the Goodwill stores in Gilbert, AZ. Seems some film photographer dumped his entire film collection here, along with a few old digital cameras. Zenza Bronica ETRS Everything I bought came with an additional 20% off, since you can apply online for this coupon, which I did, but the discount never showed up on my phone. The guy working there gave me the discount regardless. Great deal. So while this medium format camera was marked @ $129.99, I got if for about $103. I've never owned one of these before, so I was excited. I got an additional lens for $20, and of course bought some other high end film cameras while I was at it. A week or so later, I bought some 120 film from Tempe Camera, and loaded up the Bronica. I had to read some ...

I currently live in San Tan Valley, Arizona. Lately the weather here has been kind of exciting. Lots of rain, dust storms, and more recently, lightning. I can do without the dust storms, but the lightning is always fun. 18 sec, f13, ISO 400 When I shot these images, I stayed close to my garage and roof of the house. There wasn't much lightning overhead, more so in the distance. However as I continued to shoot photos, the clouds overhead did start to get some streaks of powerful lightning, so I eventually went inside. I'm sure there are better more conductive objects than my metal tripod, but I figured I didn't need to take that chance. The following image had to be edited more than I like in Photoshop, due to the light streak from a nearby aircraft, which basically made it a straight distracting line in the image. It was more difficult than I imagined, since the spot healing brush did a poor job, and I had to use the clone brush to repair some of the smudges and m...

I bought this camera on Ebay, I think, for about $40. It's a great camera, bright viewfinder, wide aperture, and metal construction. You can find these everywhere online, it doesn't take much to find one in great condition. According to Ken Rockwell, Yashica made 8 million of these in its lifetime. So I think finding one shouldn't be too difficult. Sharp coated lens with a wide aperture. I had my film developed at the darkroom.com, and they did a great job. Just realize that your images will come out much better if done by them, because I noticed they added extra sharpening in their scans. When I scanned the same negatives, I didn't get the same sharpness. But I could reproduce their results by applying some sharpening. And I had to do a curves adjustment in Photoshop. So regardless, the images did come out very nice, I just tweaked them a little in Photoshop, and they came out similar to the images you see here. Merchant Square Antiques, in Chandler, Arizon...

Hit the jackpot at my local Goodwill, lots of film cameras for sale. Seems some film photographer donated his collection to the store. I bought 75% of everything in the glass case. I think I did pretty well. Bounty in the glass case. The cameras I bought. The only digital I bought. Panasonic Lumix, 8mp, but amazingly sharp zoom lens. My favorite though, was the Zenza Bronica ETRS. It is a medium format camera, and I've never owned one of those. So after I was able to find some 120 film online, I shot some pictures (15 per roll for this camera), and developed in Cinestill monobath. The pictures came out very well, but was disappointed with the grain. Will have to try again with some lower ASA film. Luckily, I got 20% off with a coupon! So only around $100! Near Apache Junction, Arizona

So what is THIS all about? I decided that I'm gonna cancel my other website about cameras. I'm paying for a domain name, plus the hosting, which is dirt cheap for the first year, however the 2nd year gets substantially more expensive, something they keep discrete, as I couldn't find the 2nd year's plans on my invoice. Only after calling them did they explain the price after my first 12 months. Not very transparent. So I figure that blogging here is free, I can get some decent exposure (pun intended), and there will be no pressure to blog every week because I'm paying for a website. This should work out well, at least I think it will be easier. So join me on my film/digital/camera/developing/everything blog. I hope it will be fun, and I hope that you will join me. I plan to publish lots of images from whatever camera I'm shooting with, whether it be film or digital. And I'll post some non-technical reviews and tips on how I've learned to do things, ...