I started writing this in the past tense before even deciding which film to use, in fact, I had not even put this lens on the camera before. The camera in question being the Canon EOS-1 — the first in its well known lineup — and this lens being the Canon TS-E 24mm f/3.5 which I had only played with indoors a few times to try to understand the tilting/swinging of the focal plane.
I recently decided to add something different to my regular film-stock replenishment order, and went for a selection of Rollei branded films – not something I’ve ever shot before, and not really something I know very much about. I exposed one of these rolls, a Retro 400S, at box speed across a few days in early November, mostly street photography. I used my Nikon F2, and a 50mm lens for the majority of these images.
As I was backing up I saw the heap of dumpsters outside the gas station in the mirror, and for some reason they intrigued me. That image of literal garbage captured in my rear-view mirror struck me as dramatic. So I created the challenge of dedicating a whole roll of film to just dumpsters.
I’m shocked to say that it’s not even been 2 months since my first article was published on 35mmc (at the time of writing this, that is). I think it feels like longer because I have gained so much from being part of this community.
One of the benefits of sharing my work, whether I consider it a success or not, is that it makes me look at said work differently and inspires me to do things that I wouldn’t have thought of. One such instance of this has been the desire to pick up my Exa 1C again.
My son bought me a copy of David Ellwand’s “Retro Photo” for my birthday in June. An excellent book, it is a guided tour of his camera collection, with examples of the pictures he has taken with them. It soon became obvious that most of these cameras were lovely to look at but out of …
