Print: Dartmouth

Here's a photograph depicting Dartmouth Street in Wilmette. It's 32 exposures of 32 different houses on the block. I used my Nikon F2 with a 20mm f/2.8 Nikkor lens, and Portra 160 film.

Print: Elmwood

Continuing my series of Wilmette blocks, here is Elmwood Avenue. This photograph is made up of 32 exposures of 32 different houses on the street. I used my Nikon F2 with a 20mm f/2.8 Nikkor lens, and shot on Kodak Portra 160 film.

Print: Beach Haven

For our anniversary trip, Katie and I stayed at my parent's cottage in Union Pier, Michigan. Their place is part of a row of cottages named "Beach Haven". This is a multiple-exposure photograph of all 7 cottages in the row. I used my Nikon F2 with a 20mm f/2.8 Nikkor lens and Portra 160 film.

Roll: Katie's Half Marathon!

Last weekend my wife, Katie, ran her first half marathon. That's 13.1 freakin' miles! She's pretty incredible. I'm not so incredible, so I just documented the event. Normally I would have used my DSLR for this kind of thing, but my digital Nikon DF was away being repaired at the time, so I decided to shoot film. I used my Nikon F with 50mm f/1.4 and 105mm f/2.5 Nikkor lenses and Ilford Delta 400 film. It'd been awhile since I'd shot fast moving subjects using manual focus, so some photos were a bit soft, but I think I still got some good ones.

Here's Katie at her big race!

It was TOO cold, and TOO early. 

We had to take a (school) bus to the starting line

Stretching!

The look of determination seconds before she started

Go!

Lil' Gladiator

The race was in a pretty scenic forest preserve

The big finish!

Stretching after a run is important.

THE PRIZE

I had a great time watching my babe complete her first half marathon. It was also a fun challenge using a completely manual camera to cover an event. Thanks for looking!

Spotlight: Nikon 50mm f1.2 AI Lens

About a month ago, I bought a bag of Nikon gear from a guy off Craigslist to re-sell. One of the items was a beautiful Nikon 50mm f/1.2 AI lens. This is the fastest 50mm f-mount lens Nikon ever made, and is the fastest lens I've ever had the pleasure of using. The lens is pretty massive. Just look at that front element! It's much wider and heavier than the 50mm f/1.4 that I usually have on my F2. While I've since sold this gorgeous lens (gotta make money), I took the time to shoot some photos with it during our anniversary weekend in Michigan. The following photographs were all shot wide-open at f1.2. I mean, you don't own an f1.2 lens to shoot at f4!

I loved using this lens. The results are a bit soft, but super dreamy. You get crazy-awesome subject isolation. Thanks for looking!

The Monstrosity

To pay rent, I buy and sell film cameras. I have a bunch of ads for my business up on billboards in various stores and coffeshops around town. A guy responded to one of my ads and said he had a Hasselblad 500c for sale. I grew excited, and met him the next day to view the camera. What he had was one of the weirdest combinations of accessories I'd ever seen on a camera. He had a normal 500c body, but it was paired with a 150mm lens, magnifier focusing hood, and a polaroid back. With a standard lens, waist level finder, and 120 back, the 500c is a gorgeous compact medium format machine. With all these weird accessories, it looked like a hideous monster!

I still bought the camera for a good price, and took it home. I noticed the polaroid back still had some (very) old film in it, so I tested it out. Here are some of the results I got:

This was my first time using a Hasselblad. I'd love to shoot with it again, once I find some normal parts...