Wednesday, August 25, 2021

Analog photography

For over a decade, all my photography has been digital, but this spring I finally pulled out the 1939 Voigtlaender Vito 35mm camera I inherited from my grandfather, checked with an oscilloscope (photo-detector on one side, flashlight on the other) that the shutter timer was still correct, loaded it up with 100 ISO black and white film, and took a bunch of pictures around Waco over several months. 

I had the pictures developed and scanned by OneStopDeveloping on Etsy.

Last years, Waco installed a bunch of animal-themed sculptures near the zoo. Though one of the pictures is of real animals.

 









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2 comments:

  1. PeterAugust 26, 2021 at 7:44 AM

    I am curious: did you find that the difference in medium changed the way you approached photography? For example, did it make you take fewer shots and take them more thoughtfully (to conserve film)? Putting aside the final product, do you appreciate the process of photography more in either digital or analog?

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  2. Alexander R PrussAugust 26, 2021 at 12:39 PM

    I did have to think things through, both to conserve film and because all the settings were manual (including estimating distances for focusing, since there is no rangefinder on this camera). Also, I may have sometimes paid of attention to the fact that some background-foreground distinctions that would show up in color would be difficult to see in black and white. And I was trying to be a bit more "artistic" than I normally would, whatever exactly that means.

    It was fun. But I also really appreciate auto-focus and auto-exposure, and not having to wait a long time for processing.

    By the way, I obviously didn't post pictures of family members, but I found it hard not to think of those as pictures from the 1970s and earlier. They felt like old family photos rather than fresh ones. My daughter looked to me like someone who was a contemporary of my mom. :-)

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