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FILM ON THE ROAD: SEDONA Pt. 2
AUGUST 24 2024
A little while ago I talked about a trip that I took to Sedona (in this post) and it was such a fun trip that I decided to do it again! And that's what we're going to talk about in this post. My first trip was in the summer, we left SLC in July 2021 and the actual trip was to Phoenix but going to Sedona was the most fun part. Fun enough that I decided to run it back in October 2021 with Liv... my now ex-girflriend, but we were dating at the time.. I know it's not helpful that I'm still writing about things from 2021 even though this post is dated August 2024, but I'm really trying to write about my history with film and this was a really fun trip so I figured I should at least write about it briefly.
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AUGUST 14 2024
Well well well. Here we are again on the blog and with me needing to apologize for not writing on it enough. So I'm sorry. I got caught up because I really wanted to do a camera review of the Olympus OM-1 since I introduced it in my last post (this one - post 37), but, doing reviews isn't necessarily fun so I never got around to it... But now i'm buckling down and we're gonna talk about the OM-1 because it's a pretty great camera.
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FILM IN THE MOUNTAINS: SAWTOOTH RANGE
APRIL 28 2024
My last "film in the mountains" post was a long time ago, you probably don't remember it. If you want to read the whole thing you can read it here - post 23, or if you just want a short summary I basically went hiking with my Dad in the Uintas and I brought my Yashica MG-1 and some expired film. It was such a fun birthday trip that we decided to make it a sort of tradition, so this time for my 24th birthday we decided to do a 4 day trip in the Sawtooth range in Idaho.This time I decided to take it seriosly and bring a proper SLR with some fresh Portra 400 and Superia 400.
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FILM ON THE ROAD: SEDONA Pt. 1
MARCH 18 2024
I talked about my forever camera, the Voigtlander Bessa r3, a few posts ago, but in this post we'll talk about the first time I got to use it. And that was on a roadtrip to Sedona... It was actually a trip to Phoenix to visit family there but we spent some time in Sedona and I had the most fun taking pictures there. So for this blog we'll pretend like it was a trip to Sedona. It was such a fun drive into Sedona that I completely repeated it a few months later! But we'll talk about that trip in Pt. 2.
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FISHING IN CEDAR CITY AND THE CAMERA THAT I WAITED A YEAR TO BUY
FEBRUARY 1 2024
This post will mostly be about the photos but I thought it would be a fun detail to include that I waited a year until I could buy this camera. The camera that I used for these was a silver Nikon F with an eye level finder and I waited a year to get it because the seller was in Cedar City, Utah and I didn't have a reason to drive all the way down there (4ish hours) until I went on a fishing trip with my girlfriend and her family.
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VOIGTLANDER BESSA R3M: MY FOREVER CAMERA
JANUARY 14 2024
So, I revived the blog in the last post, post 33, and now we'll go back in time to June 2021, right after my great film disaster on Saint John and coincidentally the same month I was gifted the nicest camera I've owned to date. You win some and you lose some right...I might not have deserved such a nice present from my parents after taking blurry pictures of them for 2 weeks on our family vacation, but I graduated college the year before in 2020 and they were looking for a good graduation present. It just so happened that when we got back from Saint John an almost mint Voigtlander Bessa r3m with 40mm 1.4 was listed on KSL, our local classifieds website. By this time I had been shooting film for a little while, I was clearly in love with it and my parents thought it was an excellent idea for a present. Their one caveat was that I NEVER sell the camera (I had been buying and selling a ton of cameras leading up to this). So that's how the Voigtlander became my forever camera. And after putting a dozen or so rolls through it I can say it's earned that title.
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JANUARY 5 2024
I seem to have a habit of contributing to this blog, taking long breaks and then restarting it, I already have two posts about my return to the blog (here and here) and now this will be my third time doing it. This has been my longest stretch yet though, almost a full year without adding to the blog. When I started the blog I wanted to do it as a way to force myself to write more (writing isn't my strong suit), but clearly I'm not being strict enough on myself because I continue to stop writing whenever I get tired of it. Unfortunately, the reason for this is because I consider the blog to be a low priority. Most of my energy goes to Instagram, and then TikTok and recently I've started doing YouTube which is incredibly time consuming so naturally the blog falls off when I get busy. But this year I'm going to try and change that. Believe it or not, I want to focus more on the blog and YouTube because I've been enjoying working on content that feels "complete" once I've posted it. Idk, it's kind of hard to describe, but if you've been posting on Instagram a lot you probably get it. It feels like everything I share there is just another step on the never ending journey of posting in hopes of getting more engagement and more followers... It's a bit draining and it feels never ending. But, last year I started a YouTube channel and I really enjoy how each video feels like a finished product. It feels the same with blog posts too, I write one up and publish it and that's that, it's out there for the world and maybe people enjoy it and find it helpful or it gets ignored but no matter what I had fun creating it, and it's something that I'm proud of. So, this year I'll be back on the blog :)
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JANUARY 19 2023
I hope you read my last post here about the X-700 before starting this one, because it’s important that you know how much I like the X-700. But if you want a TLDR version I like the Minolta X-700 A LOT. However, this blog isn’t a story about how much I like the X-700, it’s pretty much the opposite, this is a story about how the X-700 really really messed me up. This is a story about my second BIG film mishap.
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MINOLTA X-700: A DIFFERENT SLR JOINS THE RANKS
JANUARY 6 2023
The Minolta X-700 was a strange camera for me. There was a period of four weeks where I felt like all I heard about was how good Minolta was, how perfect the X-700 is and how amazing the glass is. Naturally I had to try it for myself, but the weird thing was that right after I acquired my own copy of the camera it felt like all the praise and hype for it stopped and all I started hearing about was the capacitators. Maybe I was less interested in how good it was since I finally had my own, but I did find it interesting how quickly the “background chatter” surrounding this camera changed for me before and after purchasing it.So is it a good camera though? The answer is a resounding yes from me. Even though I’m constantly worried about it’s electronics dying on me I absolutely adore the camera and they’re not lying about the Minolta lenses, they are truly incredible.
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DECEMBER 29 2022
So I’m jumping around in this blog now, skipping some minor events and just getting to the big stuff. Today I’m going to talk about a little road trip that my girlfriend and I took over presidents day in 2021. It was basical just a big road trip that involved some sleeping in an Airbnb and some sleeping in the car but it was really fun. We drove from SLC to Salinas California, spent some time there in a cheap Airbnb, and then drove around big sur on the Highway 1. We also spent some time in Monterey and Camel-by-The-Sea.Deep down it was a photography trip but it was also great to get out and explore California with my girlfriend Liv.
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DECEMBER 9 2022
Well, it’s been over a month since my last post on this blog. I keep posting and then forgetting about the blog and then coming back to it and promising consistency, I fear that cycle might be turning into a habit so I’m going to try to break it and come out and just say that I’m bored of trying to “catch you up”.
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RICOH R1: LETS TALK ABOUT ANOTHER POINT AND SHOOT
NOVEMBER 4 2022
Let’s talk about another point and shoot because why not. I have a lot anyway. This point and shoot is the Ricoh R1, which I was incredibly lucky to snag at the thrift store for only $5. And yeah, I’m actually not joking as most of you would think. I’m pretty sure I have a picture with the price tag on it if you’re really doubting. But anyway, this camera. It’s pretty good, I guess. The photos from it aren’t really anything special, BUT it makes up for all of that in size. This camera is TINY.
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BECOMING ADDICTED TO POINT AND SHOOTS
SEPTEMBER 20 2022
In my 24th blog post, this one: link I shared a bunch of point and shoot shots and talked a little bit about having fun with point and shoots. As well as my terrible habit of buying more cameras than I need. Anyway, here I am to talk about another unnecessary camera that I bought and share some of the photos that I took with it.
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FILM ON THE ROAD: SODA SPRINGS
SEPTEMBER 10 2022
Have any of you guys heard of Soda Springs, Idaho? I hadn’t either, but it turned out that it was the only place with a high school that had spots available for my sister to take the ACT. This was in October 2020 and something related to covid was making it difficult for my sister to take the test but she needed it for college applications, so, like any sane person *that’s sarcasm*, she registered for a test in a town 2.5 hrs away. And, well, I didn’t have anything better to do so I brought my camera and came with.
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AUGUST 30 2022
It’s starting to become a bad habit that I write on this blog for a little while then forget about it for months. It’s not great for continuity and really not great for catching you up on all the things film related that have happened since I started shooting film. For reference my last post from May about shooting landscapes included photos that I took 2 years ago, and the post before that about Kings peak was about a trip that I took on my 23rd birthday and I’ll be turning 25 soon!! So yeah, I’m super far behind on this blog and it’s not helpful that I periodically just stop writing https://www.gusdstevens.com/blog/posts.But anyway, enough talking about how far behind I am on the blog and how inconsistent I am, I felt like writing today so I figured let’s make it a fun one at least. I’ve been trying to post chronologically and to cover my significant film events in the order that they’ve happened, but for this one I want to jump out of that timeline and just share some point and shoot photos :)Marcus’s Birthday, Kodak HD Power FlashSince the blog is still kind of in 2020 I’ll share mostly my earlier point and shoot photos, but the goal is really just to share some fun photos that aren’t really related but that I enjoyed taking. That first one, of my roommate’s birthday was before I even owned a point and shoot camera. I think I had one SLR film camera at that point which didn’t have a flash so I had to go to the grocery store to get a single use camera so that I could shoot in the dark. And of course so I could get the super vibey party shots on film you knowMarcus’s Birthday II, Kodak HD Power FlashPretty much as soon as I got those scans back, I started looking for a proper point and shoot though. I really wanted something that I could reuse and I also wanted something with a better lens because the edges of most of the disposable shots were very soft.University of Utah, Nikon L35AF on Kodak Ultramax 400I got really lucky and found a Nikon L35AF locally which was the perfect addition to my growing collection of Nikon SLRs and it turned out to be an excellent camera on it’s own. When I first got the camera it was mostly to take pictures of friends, however, after a few rolls through it I discovered that the lens is amazing and the shots that this camera produces can pretty much stand up to photos from my F3. Safe to say it was a huge upgrade from the disposables that I was using earlier.Stairs to a Beach in California, Nikon L35AF on Kodak Pro Image 100A little while after purchasing the L35AF I picked up a much cheaper Fuji Discovery Mini. After realizing how good the L35AF actually was I wanted to get something cheaper and more.. disposable.. if that makes sense. Basically I just wanted a camera that I wouldn’t care about if it breaks or gets spilled on.There are a few things that I suffer from regarding camera gear, the first is babying my gear and the second is gear acquisition syndrome. They REALLY don’t work well together because the first is a tendency keep my cameras pristine and safe and the second is a tendency to buy more gear, so, what happens is I buy a camera that I really like but don’t want to break it so I keep the camera locked up and need to buy another camera or the same one again so that I won’t feel as bad using it knowing that I have another one tucked away. It’s like a scarcity instinct or something, but it basically means that if I buy a camera that I like I will usually end up shopping for a lesser version of it for peace of mind.Marcus and Grace, Fuji Discovery Mini on Kodak Gold 200Whatever it is, gear acquisition, scarcity, or caution, it is a terrible habit because I end up spending more on crappier cameras and then I don’t even use the good one that I fell in love with. But oh well, I guess I’ll be glad if the Fuji breaks at a party that it wasn’t the L35AF, and I still do really like the shots from the Fuji. It has that softness like a disposable camera that is playful and unserious whereas the L35AF delivers sharp and technically good photos.Snow in the Morning, Fuji Discovery Mini on Kodak Gold 200I hope you enjoyed those little point and shoot shots! After the L35AF and the Fuji Discovery my point and shoot obsession kind of exploded, but I really believe that every film photographer needs a good point and shoot. They just perfectly fill the shortcomings of an SLR, they’re small, fast, have a built in flash and super unintimidating. MORE THINGS instagramwebsitearchive
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MAY 6 2022
After my trip into the Uintas I got really interested in Landscape photography and tried to photograph a few landscapes around my home in SLC. For a little while I was really motivated to wake up early and hike for sunrise and I did this a couple of times until I finally saw my results…There were three ‘landscape’ shoots that I remember well, one up Ensign Peak, one up Mount Van Cott and one up Kessler Peak. The one up Kessler was the longest and farthest from my home so it was THE big landscape shoot that I did before I kind of stopped shooting landscapes.Kessler Peak, Nikon FM2 with Nikkor 35mm f2.8 on Kodak Ultramax 400I didn’t really give landscape photography the attempt that it deserved but after a few tries I determined that it wasn’t for me. This ‘ruling’ out of landscape photography is purely subjective and even I know that I don’t have enough experience to make this decision so I wouldn’t read this blog as advise… it’s more like me sharing my experiences and just writing about photography.Mount Van Cott, Nikon FM2 with Nikkor 50mm f1.8 on Kodak Ultramax 400Before I get into it lets talk about how I define landscape photography. I tend to define landscape photography as basically any photo where nature is the primary subject. So, a photo of a bunch of mountains is a landscape photo but a photo of a bunch of buildings is not. A photo of a bunch of trees would be a landscape and a close up of those trees would still be a landscape although maybe more like a portrait of nature… same for macro shots of flowers. They’re like portraits of natural things… but I guess nature is still the subject, so it fits into how I view landscape photography. AND NOTE my definition is nowhere near correct, it’s just how I think of things, so I wanted to clear it up before I get into talking about why landscape photography became not my cup of tea.I tried to define my style once already in this blog in this post here, if you’re interested you can read that post, but I defined my style as “a landscape photographer that seeks melancholy, loneliness/emptiness, and solitude in their environments.” And now you might be thinking WHAT!?!?!? Here you are writing about not liking landscape photography, but you call your self a landscape photographer!? How does that work. And the answer is, it doesn’t really work, but it’s complicated. In how I define my style I use the word “landscape” as an umbrella term to include photography of nature and man-made landscapes. I often shoot man made landscapes more so that I should say I am an urban photographer, but I prefer the broader term when I define my style and when I tell people what I like to photograph.Ensign Peak, Nikon FM2 with Nikkor 50mm f1.8 on Kodak Ultramax 400In this post it’s confusing because I’m sort of mixing the definitions of landscape photography. My definition where only natural subjects constitute a landscape photographer, and a more common broader definition of landscape photography that includes man-made subjects and therefore the travel and urban types of photography that I usually do… If that makes sense, I hope it does.Now, with my more narrow definition of landscape photography in mind, we can talk about why I actually don’t like it :) and I don’t like it because I’m bad at it! Big surprise right :)Mount Van Cott, Nikon FM2 with Nikkor 50mm f1.8 on Kodak Ultramax 400I haven’t put in enough time to learning landscape photography to expect good results but when I got my photos back the images were so bleh compared to the beautiful environment that they were taken in that I was quite disappointed with myself and shooting landscapes in general.I think from my little landscape photograpy spree following my trip to the Uinta’s I think there were only two pictures that I actually liked. The rest were just meh and not worth the film that they were shot on. I really liked the ones that I took, enough so to keep shooting landscapes if I could continue to get similar results, but a few things deterred me from landscapes outside of the photos themselves.the two photos that I actually likedYashica MG-1 on Kodak Gold 200I still sold it afterwards though.Well that’s it for this week! A much shorter blog but I wasn’t rambling on about portraiture this time so hopefully you enjoyed it! See you next week and thanks for reading! MORE THINGS instagramwebsitearchive
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FILM IN THE MOUNTAINS: KINGS PEAK
APRIL 30 2022
Another in the whatever subtopic on this blog! I gotta be kidding right!? Well I’m not, and I probably won’t stop with this one. You may have started to notice that I don’t really have a specific subject that I’m trying to capture. I mostly take pictures because I enjoy taking photos and looking at the results, not necessarily because I have a goal or vision that I am trying to produce. This means that I take my camera everywhere and have a catalog full of different types of photography. So today we’re going to dive into some of the landscape photos that I took while on a backpacking trip to Kings Peak in the Uinta’s.Yashica MG-1 on Kodak Gold 200Before I start talking about pictures, I’ll quickly talk about Kings Peak. It is Utah’s highest peak at 13,528 ft. I’ve never done it before, only heard about it so with an unplanned birthday weekend coming up I figured why not give it a shot. The hike itself wasn’t too bad, my dad and I did it 4 days/ 3 nights which was perfect in my opinion, although it could probably be done quicker. Getting to the top of kings peak was rocky jagged and exposed but really cool up top because you could see forever… expect for the fact that California was on fire when we did it so the sky was full of smoke. But still a good view. Our only issue was a storm on the 3rd day which wasn’t terrible, just some hiking in the rain and snow, the only concerning thing was keeping my camera dry.Yashica MG-1 on Kodak Gold 200As far as gear goes I only brought my Yashica MG-1 with me and three rolls of expired film. I was still relatively new to film photography at the time of this trip so I wasn’t super picky with what I brought. I actually only brought the MG-1 because it was the only camera that I didn’t care about if it broke and back then all I had was expired film so that’s what came with me :)Like I said I wasn’t very picky about my gear or really the photos I took. I mostly just wanted to take photos because I knew it would be a pretty landscape. I was happy with a lot of the photos that I took but there were certain limitations with the gear that I brought so I might as well mention them.Yashica MG-1 on Kodak Gold 200The first thing was that I was using expired film, which I LOVE expired film, but it’s not always the most reliable and when it works it’s usually very grainy, foggy or the colors aren’t right. Basically things that you don’t want when shooting a landscape.That photo above is with expired Kodak Gold 200 and you can see that it is really foggy (a little bit lighter and less contrasty than usual) and the shadows in the trees are muddy and lacking detail. I also had to edit that one because the sky was yellowy, and the mountains were greenish when I first scanned it.Below is a picture of the same landscape with the same film that was unedited, and you can see effects that the expired film had. It’s not terrible but it isn’t ideal for landscapes.Yashica MG-1 on Kodak Gold 200The second thing, which is probably a worse thing for landscapes, is that the Yashica MG-1 has a fixed 45mm lens. By most standards this isn’t wide enough for shooting landscapes and a lot of times I found that I would have to back up to take the pictures that I wanted to take, but I’m listing it second because it wasn’t a huge limitation.Yashica MG-1 on Fuji Superia 400Using a standard focal length lens wasn’t an issue because I was still able to take the pictures that I wanted to take, and although it felt too tight a lot of the time, I really like how it preserved the scale of certain features. For example, the lake in the photo above would have appeared a lot smaller with a wide lens. I suppose this is the sacrifice of using different focal lengths. You can get more in the photo with a wide lens but things look smaller or you can get less of the scene but items look more or less the correct size.Yashica MG-1 on Kodak Gold 200In the end I didn’t really mind that the lens felt tight, and I was happy with most of my photos… so I guess the real limitation was that the yashica mg-1 had a fixed lens rather than the lens itself. Because if I had the 45mm and a wider 28mm with me I would have happily used them both.But like I said at the beginning of the post I brought the mg-1 with me because it was a camera that I wouldn’t be too sad about if it broke. I never really liked the fixed lens on it which is why I didn’t really care if it broke. But it didn’t break, made some awesome pictures and survived a blizzard so I’d say it was an excellent choice.Yashica MG-1 on Kodak Gold 200I still sold it afterwards though.Well that’s it for this week! A much shorter blog but I wasn’t rambling on about portraiture this time so hopefully you enjoyed it! See you next week and thanks for reading! MORE THINGS instagramwebsitearchive
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PORTRAITS: TAKING PICTURES FOR PEOPLE
APRIL 22 2022
So let’s dive right into the topic for today, why there is pressure taking pictures of people and how it has become a deterrent for me. I struggled with this topic last week and if you made it through that blog then you’ll know I have to deliver on my promise by trying to write about it more clearly today. So, I’ll try to structure this and stay focused on the topic at hand, no sidetracks this time. What I’ll talk about today is my style of photography and how that plays into portraiture, how my style has led to a ‘too critical’ eye that challenges me when I try to shoot the carefree portraits that I used to shoot, and how I’ve begun to feel pressure when photographing other people.This definitely won’t be enough to cover my recent loss of interest in portraiture or the reason that I’ve lost my enjoyment in taking them but it will be a good start and I’ll at least do a better job describing this ‘pressure of taking portraits’.
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APRIL 13 2022
This is the first time that I’ve written about portraits on the blog and I’ve decided to give it a theme. The title for https://www.gusdstevens.com/blog/posts about portraits will have PORTRAITS in it preceding the content of the post much like my other themed https://www.gusdstevens.com/blog/posts in the blog (film in the desert, film in the mountains, cameras..). The content of this post is the beginning which means my interest in taking portraits when I first started shooting film and before I lost it.
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APRIL 5 2022
Last week I talked about how and where I take most of my photos, and more often than not they are captured close to home. I mentioned I’ve never really been on a “photo trip” up until that point and most of the time I’m just bringing my camera along for family trips or trips with my friends. However, since the blog is still in the past tense I’m going to quickly write about my first dedicated photo trip even though it didn’t actually happen immediately after I had the awareness that most of my shots are from a round SLC.Anyway, with that little forword out of the way lets talk about my first reel, albeit little, photo trip to Tooele.
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MARCH 30 2022
I want to start writing about shooting film at a location or trips where I bring my film camera with me, but I should say that 90% of my photos are from walking my neighborhood or close to where. I wanted to make this post first to kind of explain how I get most of my photos so it doesn’t seem like I’m driving out to spots all the time.
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MARCH 23 2022
I won’t talk about Instagram reels too often on my blog because, between you and me, they’re not my favorite… I might be old school but I liked Instagram when it was just about sharing photos and not short attention grabbing videos, but there’s no denying that Instagram has been pushing reels for a while now and I do think it helped my account and growth to start sharing reels early on. I shared my first reel on November 20 2020 and it wasn’t spectacular, it only got 116 likes, but I remember it really well because I remember getting the notification that 1,000 people had viewed it and it blew me away. Until that point none of my content had really ever passed the 300 likes mark, so 1,000 was crazy and later when I was sent a notification for 3,000 views I was pretty set on the whole reels thing.
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NIKON L35AF: THE PERFECT POINT AND SHOOT
MARCH 16 2022
I might be biased to the L35AF because I am a huge Nikon fan, but I honestly think it is the perfect point and shoot, for me at least. If you’ve been shooting film for a while, you know how significant the search for the perfect point and shoot is. You need one that compliments the rest of your kit, one that looks nice and is easy to carry around with friends, one that takes good photos but is also easy to use, and most importantly one that you like and want to shoot. It’s hard to check off all the boxes and I have been through my share of point and shoots before I found the ONE that really draws me to it, the Nikon L35AF.I recently took my L35AF on a trip with me to New Orleans that I’ll talk about in the future, but it was the only other camera that I had with me to accompany my FM2 and it did a fantastic job so I figured it was time to give it a proper little review.Nikon L35AF on Kodak Ultramax 400Like I said, I really like Nikon so I was always drawn to the Nikon L35AF but it was hard to find and expensive, or at least what I though was expensive for a point and shoot. Before the L35AF I used a Nikon One Touch which is the second generation of the point an shoot and slightly cheaper because it lacks some features of its older brother. The camera was fine but now having used the L35AF the build and usability was nowhere near the infamous “pikaichi” BUILD Lets start off on the outside with the build. The camera is plastic and has that retro 80’s look to it. It’s basically designed like a rectangle with a lens on it but it’s nice to hold and great to have around the neck with the two side lugs. The plastic feels pretty sturdy, and I’m not worried about it with proper care but I’m not confident that it could survive a drop or hard knock. If you’ve held a Wii remote or a Nintendo DS the plastic feels just like that, sturdy but not strong enough to protect the electronics from a strong impact.The worst part about the build is the battery door. It’s a super flimsy piece of soft plastic (not really rubber but I don’t know what to call it). It can pop open easily and it shifts around a lot so I usually just tape it down but then it’s good to go!One of the best things about the build is that the lens has 46mm filter rings which is pretty rare on a point and shoot. This is great if you’re like me and want a UV filter over every piece of glass you own 😊 or if you actually use filters then I suppose it’s a nice feature too.But the BEST BEST thing about this camera, and the reason that it’s my perfect point and shoot is the ISO dial around the lens. I shoot a lot of expired film so it is really nice to be able to change the ISO and rate film differently by it’s expiry date. It’s also a great feature if you love to shoot Portra 400 at 200… for tha tones you knowNikon L35AF on Expired Kodak Max 800 rated at 200IMAGE QUALITYImage quality is probably one of the more important things to a camera review, and the Nikon L35AF does not disappoint. I’ve shot a handful of point and shoots and a lot of them have a point and shoot esque characteristic to them.. it’s hard to describe but I find that with a lot of cameras you can kind of tell it came from a point and shoot. With the L35AF I find that this isn’t the case, the images are look on par if not better than some of my SLR photos.Note I have NOT shot with any point and shoot with Zeiss glass, I’m sure that those results are very very good, for this blog when I’m referring to other point and shoots it is usually those of similar or lesser value to the L35AF.Nikon L35AF (left) Olympus Styuls (right) with Kodak Pro Image 100It might not be the best example, and unfortunately, I do not have any side-by-side pictures from the L35AF and another camera, but if you look at the images above the Stylus epic seems to squeeze the subject and change the proportions of the image. Since it is squeezing the center of the image this is pincushion distortion which makes the photo appear unrealistic and toyish. The image from the L35AF is much more true to the scene, the proportions are persevered and the photo appears correct. Like an SLR with a professional lens the L35AF captures the scene as correctly as possible, and this is why I choose to carry it with me most often. With the L35AF I’m confident in the results, and although I do enjoy the warped and antiquated look of some of my point and shoots that suffer from distortion, I would much rather have the L35AF on me than the others.And as far as sharpness goes the lens is really sharp! It always produces plenty of detail. The results are never too soft and it is perfectly contrasty, not to harsh but enough to separate the elements in the frame beautifully.Nikon L35AF with Kodak Ultramax 400Nikon L35AF on Kodak T-Max 100THE END OF THE REVIEW?I’ve never really done a proper camera review and I’m not so much a technical person so I don’t know what else there is to talk about… The electronics in the camera seem find, I haven’t had a problem with mine however there was some corrosion in the batter that I had to clean off when I first got it. Um.. What else.. I guess it’s just a fantastic camera, my all time favorite and I highly recommend that you try it out, especially if you are still on your quest for your perfect point and shoot.Thanks for reading and hanging along through my first gear review :) I’m planning on doing some more of these with the other cameras that I’ve owned!! So with that I’ll see you next week and I’ll leave you with my favorite picture that I’ve taken with the L35AFNikon L35AF on Kodak Pro Image 100 MORE THINGS instagramwebsitearchive
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MARCH 11 2022
Well my goal to post once a week lasted for a long time… I really only got two https://www.gusdstevens.com/blog/posts on time and then fell off the weekly schedule hard. Anyway, picking up where I left of two weeks ago I talked about why film. My why film was for the mechanical cameras and analog experience. I wanted to build off that theme and talk about another aspect of film that is really important to me; the irregularity of film.Minolta x-700 with Minolta MD 50mm f1.7 on Lomo 100When I first started shooting film I disliked how “unclean” the images were. I hated any dust or scratches in my images, and I tried to manage grain as much as possible (even so far as to using the noise reduction slider in Lightroom). I didn’t like risking the outcome of a photo or scene to the physical characteristics of the film… With a digital sensor capturing an image writes data to a sensor and preserves the scene as cleanly and as “correctly” as possible. Capturing a scene with film still records the visual information to a medium but before the image is created there is so much that needs to be that could impact the final outcome. I’ve had images ruined.. or maybe a better word is “altered” in every stage that comes between clicking the shutter to scanning in the final image… Light leaks, burnt negatives, scratched negatives, stretched negatives to name a few. Nikon F3 with Nikkor 105mm f2.5 on Portra 400I spent my first 3 months trying to minimize the artifacts that film would leave behind, removing scratches, minimizing grain cropping out light leaks etc.. but lately I’ve just been leaving them. Partly because I hate spending so much time editing my images but also because I like the completely uniqueness of it all. I have started to accept that any artifacts of the film are as much part of the image as the image itself.Voigtlander Bessa R3M with Voigtlander 50mm f1.4 on Kodak Ektar 100Learning to like these features of film is one of the things that keeps pushing me away from digital. The variations in film are so random and unique and authentic that it feels almost impossible to replicate on any digital image. Even if we ignore the scratches and light leaks and dust spots on an image the grain itself is unique to that image... Trust me the grain slider on Lightroom is nothing like the grain in tmax that transitions perfectly between the dark out of focus shadows to the light subject of the image.Nikon FG with Nikkor 50mm f2 on Kodak Tmax 100 MORE THINGS instagramwebsitearchive
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February 23 2022
There’s a very good chance that I won’t be able to answer this question in this post and I’m almost positive that I’ll talk about this question more later. But I figured while I’m refreshing the blog I might as well try to tackle it now. Why film? For any modern film photographer this question has surely crossed your mind and for me it’s something that I think about all the time.Nikon FM2 with Nikkor 50mm f1.8 on Portra 400figcaption>With so many good digital alternatives why do I keep shooting film - is how I phrase the question. Is it the grain? The analog process? The uncertainty and surprise of a film photo? Why not get a Fuji X-pro or even a digital Leica and edit the photos to get the look that I want… I’ve thought a lot of selling off my film gear and switching to digital but it always boils down to why film and usually the answer is I can’t stop shooting it.If you ask me Why Film today, I’d give you an answer that would change tomorrow. There are too many things that I love about film but none are the single reason that I love shooting it (hopefully that makes sense). For example, right now I love film because of the cameras, but a few months ago I loved film because of the grain and grittiness of the photos. Like I said it changes a lot and that is probably why I will talk about this question a lot in my blog.Minolta x-700 with Minlta MD 28mm f2.8 on Lomo 100Liking film because of the gear is a pretty unfulfilling answer. It’s like liking tennis because you like tennis rackets. There’s no problem liking gear, but the racket is just a tool and that is what a lot of people would say that a camera is. The love for photography should be about the photos that you and others have create, but I’ll admit that right now my love for photograph is slightly rooted in gear… sorry…Nikon F3 with Nikkor 28mm f2.8 on Kodak Portra 400I’ve only shot with a handful of digital cameras and there’s a good change there is a digital body out there that provides a similar experience to analog cameras, but for the time being I’ve committed to film. I used to have an X100T but I sold that so now I only have film cameras and a really old Canon Rebel that my grandparents gave me.Even when I had a digital camera I found that when I went to shoot I would ALWAYS reach for a film camera first. For my style I love having a camera with dials and clicks that you can really ‘feel’. I don’t need something to take photos quickly and I rarely take more than 24 photos in an hour so aside from the price of film a film camera is perfect. And I’m a huge sucker for the sounds and clicks that they make :)Olympus Stylus on Kodak Gold 2200I’ll probably find a different appreciation for film and talk about that later, like I said there are many, but for now the mechanical clicks and dials and feel of film cameras is my answer for ‘Why Film’. If you’ve found my blog as a fellow film photographer, I’d be curios what’s your answer? Why do you choose to shoot film? MORE THINGS instagramwebsitearchive
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February 20 2022
Well, it’s been a while since I’ve last posted. A little over 2 months to be exact. In the fall I had a goal of posting weekly and clearly that didn’t work out since my last post was December… Since starting this blog I’ve found that writing and storytelling are challenging for me. I struggle to come up with new topics and I lose motivation to post quickly. With that said I’m reinstating my goal to post once a week, and even if my https://www.gusdstevens.com/blog/posts are brief, I hope that getting something out there for you all to read will be better than nothing. So per the title of this post, I’m going to reset and re-introduce myself to kick off the new CONSISTENT chapter of the blog.Pentax K1000 with Pentax-m 50mm f1.7 on Kodak Gold 200That’s me and it’s the picture that I use for my Instagram profile and is probably one of my favorite photos of myself. My younger sister took it when she first started getting into film photography, a little over 1.5 yrs ago.Nikon FG with Nikkor 50mm f2 on Kodak Ultramax 400I got into film photography 2ish years ago. Maybe a little earlier and I have been in love with it ever since. That photo is one of the first that I distinctly remember taking, it was shot with my (not so trusty) Nikon FG during a huge snowstorm in SLC. Since that photo I have taken 1,000’s of other photos on a handful of different film cameras. I created this blog last year to talk about my journey and experiences within the film world. Here is my first post that explains my initial goals for the blog POST 001That post talks about getting into film, my first camera, why I wanted to start a blog etc… This post will serve as another introduction, but I don’t want to say the exact same thing as my first post, so I’ll focus on myself and what I like to shoot. This will be a more encompassing introduction of myself within film rather than an introduction of my first experiences with film.Nikon F3 with Nikon Series e 28mm f2.8 on Kodak Portra 400I live in Salt Lake City, Utah, ever since I discovered photography, I have been fascinated by street photography, the works of Bruce Gilden, Saul Leiter, Joel Meyerowitz and so many of the other greats. But SLC’s meager downtown proved to be uneventful, small and most of the time uninteresting. This definitely is a poor excuse NOT to pursue street photography, but I’ve found that while I’m in SLC my focus and style tends to be towards suburban and rural scenes. For me the places outside and around downtown SLC are more interesting, and this type of suburban photography is how I would define my style.Nikon F3 with Nikon Series e 28mm f2.8 on Kodak Portra 400Now I should say that I have never photographed NYC or a major city for that matter, but I am looking for the opportunity to take my photography to a more urban setting. For now, my photography consists of photo walks alone or with friends and moments with friends shot through a point and shoot.Fuji Discovery Mini on Kodak Gold 200I don’t have a long term goal with photography. I love being a part of photography communities on Instagram and twitter and I enjoy sharing my work on social platforms, and recently I have been ~enjoying~ sharing my work in blog https://www.gusdstevens.com/blog/posts. I put enjoying in these things ‘~’ because as difficult as it has been to write these https://www.gusdstevens.com/blog/posts I really really like taking the time to share my work. Perhaps it is a detriment to not have clear long term goals with photography but I’m still just enjoying the journey and don’t see a reason to put pressure on something that I find fun!Pretty much my only goal at this point is to post a blog once a week to share more with you guys… and to get 25k IG followers so I can justify a NYC trip (but that’s kind of my low key selfish goal).Minolta X-700 with Minolta MD 50mm f1.7 on Kodak Ultramax 400Oh and I can’t forget that I ALWAYS love road trip photography. This is hands down my favorite ways to take photos. And I cannot wait to share those adventures with you guys!As always thanks for reading! And see you next week (for sure this time). MORE THINGS instagramwebsitearchive
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CREATING A VIDEO WITH THE NIKON F5
December 19 2021
Believe it or not that little video was shot on a 35mm film camera.To create that effect, I used an F5, which, for this project was basically just slow video camera. Essentially videos are just a sequence of images displayed quickly, so if a camera can capture those images quick enough then the sequence of images will look like normal motion when played back to use. For the most part if a camera takes 30 pictures per second than motion will look smooth. Most modern cameras do this easily and high-end cameras go above and beyond shooting ~120 frames per second depending on resolution. For reference the old Super 8 family videos that you have lying around where shot at something around 18fps… The Nikon F5 boasts a blazingly fast for the time 8fps if you used a battery pack. Mine doesn’t have a battery pack so it shot at about 6-7fps. Below are 3 frames shot back-to-back as you can see it skips a lot of intermediate movements which is why the gif looks “choppy”.Nikon F5 with Nikkor 35mm f2.8 on Kodak Ultramax 400Nikon F5 with Nikkor 35mm f2.8 on Kodak Ultramax 400Nikon F5 with Nikkor 35mm f2.8 on Kodak Ultramax 400I was more interested in trying to make a movie then the content, so I just had my sister walk into the frame and sit down… nothing too fancy. We found a walkway in SLC and used that as the setting. There wasn’t much direction because the actual ‘filming’ only lasted about 4 seconds so it mostly dependent on me pressing the shutter at the right time than my sister doing things on queue.Luckily the timing worked out pretty well and I got my sister sitting and running her hand through her hair... I fully expected that I would start shooting to early and end up with some random gif of her walking.Nikon F5 with Nikkor 35mm f2.8 on Kodak Ultramax 400Nikon F5 with Nikkor 35mm f2.8 on Kodak Ultramax 400For all of my 35mm and 120 work I use a Plustek Scanner with Negative Lab Pro. The key player is Negative Lab Pro. It is absolutely amazing and if you haven’t looked into it I highly recommend that you do. It’s fantastic for converting individual images, however, I found that it struggled to covert the set of 24 frames the same way. For example, some photos came out too green and others were to cool, even with synced NLP settings. See how all the pictures in this blog have slightly different colors. I’m pretty sure this is because NLP converted each image individually rather than converting the entire batch the same way. There’s probably some setting that I could have changed for a better outcome, but in the end it wasn’t too hard to tweak each image so that they all looked similar.iPhoneAs far as settings and equipment I used a Nikon F5 with a 35mm f2.8 lens and Kodak Ultramax 400, I also used a crappy Amazon Basics tripod that’s barely worth mentioning. I’m pretty sure the lens was at f5.6 or f8 and the shutter speed was at 1/80 of a second. If you have the Nikon battery pack for the Nikon F5 then you can get a full 8fps but I only had AA batteries so my ‘movie mode’ wasn’t as fast.iPhoneTo get the shot I set up on the tripod, had my sister sit approximately where she would end up then did a couple practice takes and sent it. As you can tell from the final gif it worked out well. WAY better than I was expecting.And if you think I had the idea to do this all on my own well I didn’t :/ take a look at this cool old advertisement for the F5 when it first came out.No wonder Nikon said it was “Imported from the future”. As always thanks for reading and tune back in next week (if I can get on top of my posting schedule) for the next one! MORE THINGS instagramwebsitearchive
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November 17 2021
Most of my photos from the last post, in Flaming Gorge, where shot on the Nikon FM2 so I wanted to talk about it because it is an INCREDIBLE camera. I purchased the Nikon FM2 locally and it was my 3rd proper film SLR. I found this camera on a local classifieds app and basically bought it immediately.I’m constantly worried that the electronics will fail on my F3 because it’s basically a death sentence since I don’t really have the money to send it for repairs… I mean if I stopped buying cameras then I would… but no one wants to stop buying cameras. The FM2 is fully manual so it should be a lot less likely to fail and if it does it ‘should’ be easier to repair (an FM2 hasn’t failed on me yet, knock on wood)
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FILM ON THE ROAD: FLAMING GORGE
November 14 2021
A few months after I really started getting into film my friends invited me on a spontaneous camping trip to Flaming Gorge. Flaming Gorge is a reservoir on the border of North-East Utah and Wyoming, it’s only 4 hours away from Salt Lake City so we were planning on driving there and just sleeping in our cars. I would be driving alone so I figured it would be a great time to bring as much photo gear as possible so that I could stop at every remotely interesting location along the way.
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FUJI X100T: A DIGITAL COMPANION
November 9 2021
Well this is a post that I dreaded writing and have re-written a few times by now. This post almost made me not want to continue blogging. BUT, I really want to discuss my whole venture into film photography and all things related so I figure it’s time to bite the bullet and sit down and write about a digital camera. Let’s see... It’s 5:50PM right now and I’ll write the time when I finish and hopefully it won’t be longer than ~30 minutes… I really want to be done with this post to move onto more exciting topics, I’ve stalled on it for way too longThe topic of todays post is of course my old Fuji X100T. It’s a fantastic camera that didn’t work out.
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October 16 2021
This type of post is a first from me because I’m writing it the day of. This is new for me mainly because I’ve been trying to catch up and write https://www.gusdstevens.com/blog/posts from a little while ago when I first started shooting film. If you’re wondering I still haven’t caught up, this is just a little pause and jump to the present. This kind of post is also new and probably kind of rare because all my photos from today were digital, so I didn’t have to wait for development and scanning. All I had to do was edit them! Which… even with me that can take a few weeks, so I’m stoked that I got these all done today.
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September 28 2021
Hopefully you have seen my Instagram by now, if not I will shamelessly plug it and put a link here (go to my Instagram). If you scroll through it you will see a lot of color and every now and then black and white. Black and white doesn’t get a ton of representation on my feed mainly because I try to keep my gallery color coordinated but also because I don’t shoot it as much as I should.
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EARLY SIGNS OF GEAR ACQUISITION SYNDROME
September 28 2021
I’ve written as if I really had only two cameras in my past https://www.gusdstevens.com/blog/posts. The Nikon FG and Nikon F3, but if you read the image captions, you’d know I do in fact own a few others. One of the plagues of a gear intensive hobby like photography is an obsession with new equipment. Gear Acquisition Syndrome (GAS) happens when you can’t stop buying new gear either for the improvement of new tech or the excitement of using something different. There’s really no end to gear acquisition syndrome, and with decades worth of secondhand analogue bodies it’s a very dangerous thing to acquire. Right around the time of my trips to Escalante I had four 35mm bodies and a digital camera, I had an arsenol of Nikon F mounts and I was beginning to check eBay and KSL on a regular basis.The analog cameras that I had were the Nikon FG, Nikon FA, Nikon FM2 and Nikon F3. My digital camera was the Fuji X100T and my lenses were a Nikkor 50mm, Nikkor 35mm, Series E 28mm, and Series E 100mm. At the time that I purchased all those things I thought that I had a specific need for it… I wasn’t satisfied with the consumer functionality of the FG, so I felt like I needed to upgrade to an F3. Since I was departing the cheap FG I need a cheaper backup body for the F3 so I got the FA, and realizing that both my F3 and FA were dependent on batteries I bought the FM2. And for lenses I felt like I needed to cover the main focal lengths (28,35,50) and then I had to get a telephoto in case I wanted to do portraits.
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FILM IN THE DESERET: ESCALANTE Pt. 2
September 22 2021
Last time I shared some landscape photos from Escalante, which are what you would expect to from a beautiful desert location. But one of the other fun things about Escalante, and small towns in general, is the antiquated and untouched rural architecture.
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FILM IN THE DESERET: ESCALANTE Pt. 1
September 5 2021
There are a ton of deserts around Salt Lake City and it’s pretty easy to get to cool sandy environments if you just drive a little south. I figure I will have a lot of pictures from deserts and/or trips into deserts that I will write about so I’m going to start this as a series: ‘FILM IN THE DESERT: …’. I’ll kick it off with photos from Escalante, I have been down there a few times and have a handful of photos from each visit, so I’ll split up this post into parts, but in the future, I want to have only one post per trip.
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August 22 2021
I wasn’t sure how to title this post because, although I love shooting with my dslr, owning one feels more like a necessity than a joy. This is because the only reason that I have a digital camera is so that I can take pictures without wasting film. If cost wasn’t a concern, I can’t think of one reason that I would prefer a digital image over a film one. However, cost is a huge concern and is ultimately the reason digital beat film.Of course digital cameras do have major advantages in a lot of areas like resolution, speed and the slew of benefits from digital files. For me though I don’t really need a fast camera that can store hundreds of photos, so for me, if I have the choice, I will always choose film.
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A DEEPER DIVE WITH EXPIRED FILM
August 9 2021
When I first started out with film I rotated between expired film from amazon, the wayward pack of Kodak Gold that I found in Smiths or the Fujifilm Superia that Walmart surprisingly kept in stock. It wasn’t until I stumbled into the ‘Film’ section of eBay’s ‘Film Photography’ category that I realized the depth of available film options. This category provided an endless selection of film from deadstock Kodak emulsions to random canisters of black and white from the 1960’s. Upon this discovery I shot almost exclusively on expired film for months.
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A PROPER FILM CAMERA: THE NIKON F3
July 20 2021
My first camera, the Nikon FG, I bought as fast as I could, just to get something to shoot film with. I ordered it from eBay and I definitely overpaid. The FG is a plasticky consumer slr camera with a dedicated program mode and minimal manual controls, but it was a good enough to shoot a few rolls while I waited to get a ‘real’ film camera. I call the Nikon F3 a ‘real’ film camera because it is all metal, built for pros and will last for a lifetime. Simply put the F3 is better than the FG. In my opinion of course. It also doesn’t help that I broke the FG a few weeks after getting the F3.
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July 18 2021
I really started shooting film in the spring of 2020. My first film photo in my Lightroom catalog is dated March 4, 2020, so I’ll count that as the start of my film obsession. Of course, that photo was not my first on film. My very first images were taken on a cheap Fujifilm disposable that my parents had bought me for a family trip to Nicaragua in 2007. Most of that roll contained pictures of my sister showing off her stuffed animal collection and blurry scenes through the rental car window.