Film Photography Podcast – Episode 150 – July 15, 2016
The internet radio show for people who love to shoot film! Kodak Retina Reflex S! Koni-Omega Range Finder! Carlton TLR, C-41 Home Kits! Listener Letters and More!
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Show Notes
Film Photography Podcast – Episode 150 – July 15th, 2016
Show Notes By: Alex Luyckx
It’s the Internet Radio Show for people who love film! Joining Michael Raso in the studio today is John Fedele, Mark O’Brien, Leslie Lazenby, and Mark Dalzell. It’s a big show today! Camerapalooza with the Koni-Omega Beast, Carlton Reflex, Kodak Retina Reflex S, two books, listener letters, quick tips, and so much more! Keep us locked in!
Special of the Week – It’s summertime, and there’s no better time to get out there and shoot color film. While many people still use labs, the FPP makes it easy to soup your color negative at home (like Michael and John in the video below) with the FPP Color Negative Kit!
Our show special between July 15 – 31, 2016 is in addition to the 1-Liter kit you’ll get three FREE one liter jugs (to mix your chemistry) and two FREE rolls of 35mm Kodak Vision3 50D film!
Carlton Reflex – One of the latest cameras in Mark Dalzell’s collection is the Carlton Reflex, this is one of those faux-TLR cameras that flooded the market in the late 1940s through the 1950s, they’re only slightly better than a box camera. Don’t let that scare you, these are fun cameras.
The simple lenses produce a dreamy classic look that if you’re careful about what’s in the background, you can duplicate the snaps of the past today! There’s not much information out there about the camera, only that it was produced by the Utility Manufacturing Company of New York, New York. This company would later move to Chicago and start producing cameras under the Spartus name.
Kodak Retina Reflex S – From crappy to good, Mark’s second camera is the Kodak Retina Reflex S. The thing is one doesn’t associate Kodak with SLRs and yet the Retina Reflex is a selenium metered 35mm SLR released the same time that Nikon, Canon, and Minolta were just getting into SLRs. The system had a full line of lenses, all fine German optics from Rodenstock and Schneider-Kreuznach. Now the one odd thing is that the camera does have a bottom winder which is pretty good once you get used to it.
Koni-Omega – Leslie brought in a monster that is a Koni-Omega rangefinder camera. These beasts are the brain-child of Konica (providing the beautiful Hexanon lenses) and Omega (marketing them in the USA). These cameras because of how they look and were built were popular in the armed services of the United States. The cameras are true rangefinders that take a 6×7 image on medium format film. Since the camera was designed for military use it’s fairly bulky, the film advance even acts and sounds like the bolt of a rifle. The camera did have several lenses (Konica Hexanon) made for it; the trouble is that they tend to jam, this is because whale oil was used to lubricate the shutter and apertures, but there is a gentleman, Greg Weber, who can fix your camera up like new. Leslie does warn that this isn’t an easy camera to operate, even she’s been getting some blank frames. Your best bet is to head over to Mike Butkus’ website and read a manual!
Books of the Month – Mark O’Brien has a pair of books-of-the-show. The first is something on the academic side, How to Read Photographs: Lessons from Master Photographers by Ian Jeffrey. The book is fantastic, filled with tonnes of images from some of the big names in photographic art. While it is a bit wordier than most books the insight it gives in the concepts and context of the images is invaluable. The second book is David Plowden’s Hand of Man in America. The images shot in the 1970s show much of urban and rural America right at the dawn of the environmental movement and shows the effect of humankind on the American landscape. And the best part is that David is still out there shooting you can follow along with his work at his website!
1 Minute Tip – Leslie has a couple of tips to share! The first relates to dust, something we all hate especially those who scan their images. But there’s an easy way to clear out those last pesky pieces. Leslie uses cheap generic ‘sticky notes’ a couple of light applications, and they’ll pick up the dust. She does warn not to use the genuine ‘post-it’ notes as they are stickier and may cause damage to the emulation. The second tip is regarding contact sheets. Most people remember making these in the darkroom, and while many don’t have a darkroom or don’t want to get everything setup and going for a couple of sheets, Leslie suggests making digital contact sheets. You can use your scanner to scan the printfile pages and then printing them out with your inkjet. Saves you both time and effort and gives you a physical index of all your images on each roll!
Summer Break – That’s it for this show; we’ll be going on our summer break, and we’ll be returning on September 15th! In the meantime, you can check out our FPP archives and listen to your favorite FPP shows. You can also interact with the whole community through The FPP Facebook or FPP Flickr Group Forum. Plus we’d love to hear what you’re up to this summer you can write us by email or by post! Podcast@FilmPhotographyProject.com
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