Long exposures with CineStill 400D

Seattle and Port Townsend

Museum of Vancouver

Last night I was looking for a place with classic cars and neon signs to photograph in the CineStill 800T film stock, and came across Museum of Vancouver that has a classic car and a handful of neon signs. I wanted to spend only a few minutes here today but we ended up spending several hours going through the exhibits and educating ourselves with the rich history of this beautiful city on the west coast of Canada.

I look forward to developing the film roll I shot today!

36 documented photographs (Lomography 400 Color Negative)

Nikon FM2 | Lomography Color Negative ISO 400

#1

1/500 sec at f/8

#2

1/125 sec at f/2.8

#3

1/250 sec at f/8

#4

1/250 sec at f/8

#5

1/250 sec at f/8

#6

1/125 sec at f/8

#7

1/125 sec at f/8

#8

1/125 sec at f/8

#9

1/250 sec at f/8

#10

1/250 sec at f/8

#11

1/250 sec at f/8

#12

1/60 sec at f/8

#13

1/125 sec at f/8

#14

1/125 sec at f/8

#15

1/250 sec at f/8

#16

1/125 sec at f/4

#17

1/60 sec at f/4

#18

1/125 sec at f/4

#19

1/125 sec at f/8

#20

1/250 sec at f/8

#21

1/500 sec at f/8

#22

1/500 sec at f/8

#23

1/500 sec at f/8

#24

1/500 sec at f/8

#25

1/250 sec at f/8

#26

1/250 sec at f/8

#27

1/125 sec at f/8

#28

1/250 sec at f/8

#29

1/500 sec at f/8

#30

1/125 sec at f/4

#31

1/500 sec at f/8

#32

1/500 sec at f/8

#33

1/250 sec at f/4

#34

1/125 sec at f/4

#35

1/250 sec at f/1.8

#36

1/1000 sec at f/1.8

The edge of Fidalgo island with a new analog camera

I have been shooting 120 film for a while but did not have a 135 film camera until now. Well, I started photography with a K1000 but that was long time ago - a period I would like to erase if I can.

To fill the 135 format gap I bought a Canon AE-1 Program and shot two rolls (few photographs here) with it. It’s a really nice camera that featured a “point and shoot” mode as well. Then I found a Nikon FM2N in excellent condition - I had to get it. Paired with a 50mm f/1.8 AIS pancake lens and a roll of Kodak Portra 400, drove to Washington Park in Anacortes to test it out.

Old trees

Yoshino cherry trees (December, 2022)

Winter day in the sun (Seattle)

An unusually bright sunny day in the first Saturday of December, 2022 - I could have driven to the mountains away from the city. But instead took a short trip to the city.

Mt. Baker and the North Cascades (from the air)

It was the last day of sun in a span of a week that was ending with overcast weather and then rain in the following days. This crisp fall weather in the Pacific Northwest has always been my favorite time of the year to go shooting in the mountains for reasons including early golden hour and the wilderness generally lacking people.

Photographing the ground from airplanes, helicopters and even unmanned aircrafts over the past 15+ years has been not quite satisfactory for reasons such as (but not limited to) resolution, image quality (filming through perspex or glass windows) and image stabilization. Switching to a larger sensor addressed problems around resolution however, there were miles to go before it could be deemed satisfactory. Enter into the area the new Hasselblad X2D with a gargantuan 100 MP sensor and 7 stop IBIS: A camera worthy of arial photoshoot with the issues I mentioned in the first two sentences of this paragraph. There are two main benefits of shooting with this camera: Fist the obvious advantage of 7-stops IBIS that is key to appropriately eliminating vibrations while shooting from inside a small aircraft, and second but not least is the vast 100 megapixel canvas to crop the desired composition, and remove things such as the aircraft wings or sun glare on the perspex window from the shot.

Day after the storm

Beautiful winter day in the sun

The Milky Way over Mt. Baker

Late summer is probably the best time to shoot astro - early nightfall, the temperatures are not below freezing and the skies are void of fall and winter clouds.

Smoky sunset in the woods

Dense forest fire smoke from Bolt Creek fire started pouring over Western Washington on September 10th, 2022 but the air quality wasn’t great for a while - possibly due to smoke traveling from other fires in the region. These photographs were taken on the 9th during an evening walk in the forest - I was not expecting to find smoke trapped in the trees and in the sky above, rendering fog-like scene especially at sunset.

Baker over Ferry

The Northwest face of Mt. Baker over Strait of Georgia.

Lavender farms

I’ve lived in Washington state for over fifteen years and yet I had not photographed a lavender farm until 2022.

Hidden creek

An unknown creek in the lower Cascades

Old Robe Trail

Huckleberries dominated the upper parts of the canyon, and salmonberries took the lower parts of the trail near the river (South Fork Stillaguamish).

When the sun bleeds through the clouds

Every photograph has its story, but I can remember only a handful of them weeks and months later and this is one of those untold stories.

This photograph is a composite of three exposures, an HDR image that I created in Lightroom then color graded (also in LR). I am not a fan of auto-bracketing since my cameras don’t allow me to select a multi-point metering matrix for it to auto-bracket. A linear exposure stops bracketing rarely gets it right.

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The three photographs with manually bracketed exposures were shot on June 18th, 2022 around 9:00 PM Pacific at Picnic Pt. Park. The month of June in 2022 has been unnaturally cold, with clouds and rain lingering around for an extended Spring and deep into summer, creating great opportunities for shooting sunsets. We arrived at the park about an hour to sunset - we knew the area fairly well because we had been to the place many times. I started off shooting a beautiful algae bloom over the beach but the sun was too bright for photography - the kind off lighting that I was hoping to find in that cloudy day. It made sense to wait till the sun is at the horizon or below it, for it could light the clouds over the horizon.

Minutes before sunset the sun peeked out from the clouds and suddenly the clouds started to catch the light. I had very limited time to capture it. I wanted to put the pier ruins in front of the island at distance and below the sun at the horizon but also make sure the pier stumps are not over the dark island mass in the background. The tide seemed high, so I had to shoot from a distance, an unusual spot that I was not familiar with and had not explored before. Once I was at a convenient spot with the view I desired, switched from 21mm to 45mm lens because I was far from the subject and quickly started shooting.

Fast forward to today, July 3rd evening when I was culling through my Lightroom catalog came across these bracketed RAWs. I quickly put them together, searched for a BTS photo on my phone and wrote this blog post.

Over the hills and far away

The Memorial Day long weekend of 2022 was unnaturally cold and wet, even east of the Cascades. While we braved two nights in camping, took these photographs across the Upper Cascades as we drove around in search of dry weather.

I have to admit - I love to take photos under an overcast sky, and with waterproof/weatherproof gear, could care less about the rain…

Diablo lake was not milky teal but those clouds hugging the mountains across the water was a treat for the few folks who stopped by the famed vista point in this weather.

On the other side of the pass the sky was still not blue but the rain became thinner and the air drier. As we lost altitude, started noticing beautiful spotted white trunks of birch trees and lush spring green leaves filling the gaps in between the trunks.

Our final stop was a ghost town in the Far East and North. Still cloudy and occasional rain kept us indoors/in the car but I managed to take a few photographs when it was dry.

A familiar coast

Not far from home

The colors from the 80's

It is still a bit cold for the animals in hibernation and the cold blooded crawlers to be out on these trails in Central Washington but not cold enough for the creeks and small lakes to be frozen. It almost feels like the end of winter but the lack of a lush green skin on the hills will remind one of the remaining days of winter with warmer days just around the corner.

It is the time of the year when nature in this region is engulfed in pastel colors.