I moved to Oklahoma 6 months ago, all by myself. This is the first time ever in my life I move to a completely new place and know no one before. This new journey in life has been making me face new challenges and encounter new experiences that make me feel more grateful for everything. This house is the very first place in Oklahoma that I can call “home”, my first shelter, my first safe place to return to after a bad day. Although I cannot live in this house for longer time, I have had some fond memories of this place and with the people in it. However I am moving out in the next few days, to a new house. Therefore this house already becomes nostalgic to me. I want to hold on to that nostalgic feeling and take photos of the house to reserve the memory of this place. I choose black and white photos to unify the photos and add timeless sense to this series.
This is the third roll in my photography journey in 6×6 ratio, still getting used to it but I’ve been enjoying the experience a lot. I think it doesn’t matter what aspect ratio I shoot with, just the experience of taking a camera and making some photos is already a sweet thing to me. That’s why I enjoy shooting with the 645, 6×6, 6×7 or panoramic regardless. The downside of this is I don’t spend enough time to master a camera or a ratio and might not get the most out of one aspect ratio. But I think keeping my context consistent throughout different ratios is also an important skill. I’m not an educator or a proper educated photography student so I’m not 100% sure my way of learning in this case is right but I think I made a little progress in my development through this.
In this particular roll, I spent about 2 hours walking in a a suburbs neighborhood in the afternoon. The weather was so nice and the afternoon sunlight was gorgeous. There’re few scenes that I like because of the messiness and mundane feeling about them, something quite inadequate but humanistically poetic. I always love the image of something crooked but beautiful in their own sense. Below is the digital contact sheet of the roll.
Shot with Rolleiflex SL66E and Fuji Pro 400H
As a whole, I’m very happy with the roll. There’re 6 out of 12 that I like. The first two shots is not that good as I imagined when I took them. The car shot might be good if there weren’t any tree peak out behind it. The second one was appealing to look at in real life but I don’t think I can present a clear context in the photo. The white car shot is pretty much comes out as I imagined, I like the warm sunlight hitting it and the trees behind are kind of tilting to the right and gradually high up, the electric wire is also parallel in the movement of the trees, one bonus is the car’s door is damaged and add a bit context to the photo.
The 4th photo is my favorite scene. As you know, I like the messiness and inadequateness in a complex scene. There’s no human in the photo but you can have a sense of how’s the person’s life and characteristic.
The 6th is compositionally nice but the context is not strong.
The 5th and 9th are a nice pair. I took the 5th first and wonder if I should take another angle but them I walked around to shoot some few more shots, when I passed the camper van[?] again I decided to shoot at another angle which line up the gap in the fence with the middle front frame of the van. I think the second shot is better than the first one, but overall I like the colors and composition in both of them.
The 7th is a accident shot when my camera bump to my bag, I’m having this kind of accident more frequently.
The 8th one is another favorite too. I think it’s have a similar vibe to the 4th one but in a more vivid and opened way. I like how the chair and the table is completely facing forward to the opened doorway[?] and stylobate. I think it tells a bit about the person, it’s must be an out going and straight forward kind of guy.
The 10th one I personally like because it reminds me of a street or a neighborhood in District 3, HCMC where I spent a lot of time hang out and buy art supply for school. I like how the air conditioner is completely put out of the building and the lower part of the building is jutting outward from the plane of the garage door, creating a nice little space that fits the air conditioner perfectly. The plants on the ground are bathing in sunlight and shine up is also a nice touch. I love this photo.
The 11th photo is not so special. The car has a nice shape but I couldn’t get a nice angle for it. However I like the fact that there’re a lot of tiny white petals fall all over the front hood of the car.
The last photo from the roll is nice but I think the context again is not strong enough. I like the shape of the tree and how the sunlight hitting it create beautiful outlines. The light hitting the wall also look gorgeous. The car on the left side is cool but I feel like it’s stuffed in the frame because of the front side of it is just barely fit completely in the frame, I don’t like that crop very much.
That’s all for my third roll of 6×6. Still want to shoot more with this aspect ratio. Hope you like it. More photos next time!
My second 35mm film roll shooting with the Pentax 6×7 is Portra 160. Since I have the intention to keep the sprocket holes, I tried my best to keep my camera straight and look carefully at the frame lines to make sure everything is line up nicely, this really helps me save a lots of time in post processing. I got 15 shots out of 1 roll and open the back while I didn’t wind all the film into the canister so I caused light leak on my 2 last frames.
I’m not sure keeping the sprocket holes is a nice touch or just a “cheesy film photographer” aesthetic but it looks cool. Let me know what you think.
That’s all I’m happy with in this roll. Thank you for going to the end. More photos next time.
Panoramic photos weren’t interesting to me from the beginning but since Nick Carver shows how wonderful panoramic photos can be, and other Youtubers’ talked about the Xpan and panoramic photos, I slowly get curious of this format. After awhile, I think I enjoy looking at panoramic photos because of the wide scenes and so much elements we can include in one frame. The feeling of looking at a photo from left to right slowly to appreciate the details and how the elements interact with each other in the shot is very enjoyable to me. So I tried panoramic photos for the first time, with my Pentax 6×7.
In other methods I saw on Youtube, most people use the adapter for the 35mm film canister and load the film into the camera with an extension paper at the beginning of the film roll so they don’t waste the film while winding the camera for the first shot. The down side of this method is you have to unload the film in the dark when you finish the roll, because you cannot rewind the film back into the canister when you finish so you have to go into a dark room or put your camera in a dark bag to take the film out of the film back and rewind it into the canister. This will limit your shooting experience in the field, if you can’t have a access to a dark room or dark bag, you cannot take the film out and load the new roll in. So I came up with this method, including 2 film canisters/cassettes, one is your brand new canister and one to take the film in, this one acts like the pick up spoon in normal scenario, but it can protect your film from the light.
First, I made 2 pairs of 35mm film cannister adapters from old empty 120 film spoons. You can buy them dirt cheap online but on the day I wasn’t be patient enough to wait for the delivery so I made my own. It’s not beautiful at all but it works well. If you do it yourself like I did, one thing you should make sure is checking the length of the adapters carefully, so when you put it on the 35mm film canister, it will have the same height as a regular 120 film spoon. If it’s too high, it won’t fit in your film back, if it’s too short, it won’t stay straight and neat in your film back, this may cause damage to your film back.
One pair of adapter
Left to right: regular 120 film spoon, 35mm empty cannister and 35mm new film cannister. Make sure they have the same height.
So, how to prepare your pick up canister? We’re going to step 2.
Step 2: Made the pick up canister/cassette from a old empty film canister/cassette, which still has a short amount of film left so you can tape a piece of paper on the actual film left. This piece of paper I cut from a backing paper of a 120 film roll, measured the wide is 35mm (same as the wide of the actual 35mm film) and the length is 18 cm. I taped one end of the paper strip to the film left on the old cannister and then taped the film lead from the new film roll to the other side of the paper strip, as photos below (step 2b).
Step 2a: Tape the paper strip to the piece of film left inside the empty cassette
Step 2b: Then tape the other side of the paper to the film lead from the new film roll
Step 3: Transfer the film from the original cassette into the empty cassette in the dark bag. So now you have 2 cassettes connected, and the film will be transferred from the new cassette into the empty cassette. Of course the transfer process is done in the dark bag. Why you must transfer the film from new cassette to the empty one? Because the point of this method is to let you unload the film in day light. So when you finish the roll and wind all the film to its original cassette, you open the camera back to take the film out, the backing paper strip that you taped earlier will be there at the end of the roll, and you don’t loose any last photo.
All the film was winded to the empty cassette, as you can see the white tape at the very end of the film roll is on the original cassette’s side.
Step 4: Cut out a rectangle in a piece of black paper, the dimension of the rectangle is 35x70mm. (This includes the area of the sprocket holes, if you don’t want to include the sprocket holes, cut out the rectangle 25x70mm). Then put this piece of paper on top of your ground glass. This is a guideline for your composition.
A cut out 35x70mm paper for composing in the viewfinder
How you will see the aspect ratio looking through the viewfinder
Step 5: Load the film into the camera. Remember to put the old film cassette (which now contains the film inside) on the left side and the pick up cassette (which is the original cassette) on the right side. So now when you take the photos and advance the film, you are actually wind the film back to its original cassette.
Film contained cassette on left side
Pick up cassette on the right side
Film will be transferred from the old cassette to the original one
Step 6: Finish the roll and unload the film. After you finish the roll, you can open the back and remove the cassettes out of the camera safely. You will see that the film in winded into the original cassette and the part exposes to the light when you open up the camera is the paper strip you taped in. You can just remove the film lead from the paper strip and reuse the old film cassette and the paper strip again.
Open the back to unload film when you finish the roll
So now you have it, a method to take panoramic shots on your Pentax 6×7 without requiring going to dark room to unload your film. All you need to do is preparing your film upfront as a set of film cassette and pick up cassette, and you can have more freedom shooting in the field. I was able to get 15 shot out of the 36 exposes roll but I was messing with the loading part, I think if you can load the film more careful than me, you can get 18 out of the roll. I will update the exact number of the shots you can get when I finish the second roll.
Here’re some photos I made with this first try. Taken with Kodak ProImage 100.
I love the photo of the man on the bike, it’s too bad that it’s underexposed but when I took the shot I knew this would work well on panoramic aspect ratio. You can also see that the ones with no sprocket holes are the ones I couldn’t get the horizon line straight 🙂
My favorites from the roll is this pair of photos, taking of the car in front of the house. I took the photo on the right side first and walked couple steps more to realize that the tail of the car and the scene was quite interesting and could make a good photo, so I took the second one. I think these 2 look very nice together because the continuation of the object, which is the car make the photos stand well next to each other. And I also like the idea of “the beginning is the end” cycle in the left photo, it’s not that literally but the photo starts with the head of the black car and ends with the tail of the silver car, like the end and the beginning come after each other. Or maybe I like series “Dark” a little too much 🙂
I love the last photo also. The frame feels a bit too much and messy but I like the overall feelings and colors of it.
Thank you for making it to the end. Hope you like these experimental photo ideas. Cheers!
This post does not have a specific theme but just shots from the Pentax 6×7, and some personal thoughts in life.
I got myself a Pentax 6×7 MLU body from Japan last September, along with a 90mm Leaf Shutter lens. I chose the LS lens in regard of the ability to shoot with flash, I don’t feel very comfortable with the flash sync 1/30s of the Pentax focal plane body. Since I got the system, I’ve shot with it through 4 rolls of film. Of course this is not a big amount of photos I’ve made with the camera but it’s very precious to me. The Pentax is my first 6×7 camera, I wanted a 6×7 camera for roughly a year back then, since the hype of 6×7 overrules Youtube and film community on Facebook groups. I never like the design of a replicate 35mm camera for a 6×7 system from Pentax, to me it’s just ugly and unergonomic. But after doing research, I end up getting the Pentax 6×7, because (1) the Bronica GS-1 is not as good as the Pentax or Mamiya, (2) the Mamiya RB is super heavy (not all people find it too much to handle but I’m a small Asian girl, it’s of course too big and heavy for me), and (3) the Mamiya RZ is so out of my budget. So the Pentax seems like a best option. When I received the camera, it’s not as bad as I thought, I actually did like to hold it. Gradually I find the Pentax 6×7 is not ugly anymore but kinda cool, because it’s black and huge and the sound is freaking amazing[?]. I set it up with a right hand 3D printed grip for more ergonomic to handle and of course a strap as an insurance for an expensive camera.
Since it’s 6×7 negative, means that I get 10 shots from a 120 roll, I choose my subjects and compose more carefully. Still I got some ugly and illegitimate shots, but I think my first 4 rolls are not disappointed. Not just because I got myself some favorite shots but also because the experience of shooting a “professional format” with a “professional camera”. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean those professional things make me a better photographer, but it gives me the spirit of intention and fidelity in my photography work. To this point, I haven’t done any paid photography job so the purpose of purchasing a Pentax 6×7 medium format camera has nothing to do with my professional or career but simply a dedicated inquisitive nature. My enthusiasm for photography is naive, I don’t know if I can become a photographer or have people admire my work, I am doing this because I want to create something that matters to someone, anyone. I’m always in the struggle of defining the purpose of my life and if I matter to anything or anyone. The only thing I can do to keep me from beating up myself with this query is keeping creating work and hope for one day, my work will give me an answer.
First shots I made with the Pentax 6×7 is still lives in my living room, shot with Ilford XP2. The main purpose of this is just testing out the camera to see if it works properly. The object I chose was a pineapple, because I like tropical fruits and the shape and texture of the pineapple is interesting to me. After a few shots with the pineapple, I decided to put more things in the frame, and I chose 2 eggs, because (1) 2 eggs and a pineapple makes it 3 objects in the frame, odd number of subjects is more pleasing to look at in general, (2) a pointy big pineapple is contrast with the round shape, smooth texture and small size of the eggs and (3) colorful contrast neutral (but you don’t see this in black and white photos, silly me). I like the contrast in life because things contrast each other doesn’t mean they are right and wrong, or against each other, they’re just simply different. It teaches me that everything may has its own way and we don’t necessary justify everything in order to accept it, we can just be opened and accept things or people for how they are.
The next 2 rolls I shot when riding a bicycle around my neighborhood. It’s fun to ride a bicycle just wander around and go to streets that you never go before. It reminds me of the time when I was 11~12, back then I was trying to ride bicycle and my friend was helping me and keep me company every afternoon that I went out and ride for an hour or so. Gradually, I didn’t ride bicycle every afternoon for practice anymore but because of it’s a pleasure time for me to hang out with my friend and passing by streets and scenes that elicited my curiosity and a strange urge to know/understand the stories behind visual things.
The first 2 photos I took to check out the shallow depth of field of the 90mm lens. I’m not sure why I shot a lots of cars with my Pentax but can’t denied they look quite cool on 6×7. My favorite photos are the one of the golden orange car packed in front of the windows with afternoon sunlight creating a clean line of light and shadow on the wall. I like the scene and the atmosphere here a lot. However the contrast between highlight and shadow is very high, it makes the shadows are too dark for my taste. The red car below is interesting to me because 1 of the head lights is half way up, makes the car has a sense of imperfection and uniqueness – something I’m always draw to.
The baby blue car below is cute and classic to my eyes. I like the shot of the wheel from outside of the window the most. The red color from the steering wheel lock gives a attraction to the frame, also the subframe is quite nice.
Next are some shots that feel very special to me. I’m from Vietnam, and I spent couple years in Saigon for my university study. There’s a area in Saigon that I usually went to with my friend for after school hang outs, called Thanh Đa. The places I went to with my friend back then were typical old, tight, a bit messy and mundane. Aside from all those adjectives, I still cannot find a proper word to define how was Thanh Đa exactly from my mind, but it feels very Vietnamese. And when I came across this street near my apartment here, I knew for sure it’s a Vietnamese community. The old houses and the tightness feeling and the way people hanging their stuff out on the walls, that all represent an old Vietnamese’s life style that I’m so familiar with. I don’t think these scenes are beautiful in other people’s eyes but to me they feel like a sad old poetic memory.
Final is some shots taken with Portra 800 in a rare foggy morning in my town. The tree standing there alone in the field feels very photogenic. I know that converting the photos to black and white will look more pleasing for these type of minimal shots but I personally don’t like minimalism style and “minimal shots + black and white” is too cliché for me. However, with these shots I was receiving a lots of helpful advices from fellows on Discord so I’m grateful for it.
Thank you for stopping by, hope my biography didn’t bore you to death. As always, leave a comment if you want to. Cheers!
film sequence 