So I had brought my Graflex Crown Graphic to campus to shoot some photos. It's not really a "pocket camera", but I hauled it around all day on an oversized series 5 Gitzo tripod (not the new carbon fiber ones, but the overweight metal ones). The original intent was just for the Master of Sacred Music photo in Perkins Chapel.
Graflex Crown Graphic, Kodak Ektar 127mm f/4.7, Ilford HP5 Plus 400
The image turned out quite nice. Just a little bit of fogging on the one side, but hey, for a 70 year-old camera, it's pretty great. What I really love is the level of detail from large format. Scanning the negatives at 3200 dpi results in a 15266 × 11808 pixel image (approx. 180 megapixels!). File sizes are massive though. A 16-bit black and white tiff is about 3GB per image.
Anyway, back to the story.
So I'm leaving for the night, and what do I hear at 10pm but some crazy awesome electronic music. Sure enough, Uda Essim Triangle was performing out in the courtyard. Only having 2 exposures left, I shot a mix of film and digital. Due to the slowness of the lens and film, I had to shoot some longer exposures, but I'm happy with the results.
Long Exposures are fun. Graflex Crown Graphic, Kodak Ektar 127mm f/4.7, Ilford HP5 Plus 400, 5 second exposure.
The next image is a bit more reasonable of an exposure length, only one second, going for a little less motion blur. This is probably one of my favorite images I've taken with this camera so far. This is one of those times where the look of large format is very obvious. The shallow depth of field and very quick fall off result in gorgeous images. In addition, one can tilt and shift the lens resulting in changed perspectives, and even better control over the depth of field.
Graflex Crown Graphic, Kodak Ektar 127mm f/4.7, Ilford HP5 Plus 400, 1 second exposure.
Moving onto the digital side, shooting with the Canon 5D Mark III and the Canon 35mm f/1.4L. Unlike film, digital has the convenience of being able to push the ISO to insane amounts in order to get good shutter speeds. I'm still very impressed with the way the 5DIII performs. ISO 25600 is pretty insane, and really doesn't look all that bad.
One hell of a rig. Canon 5D Mark III, Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L USM, ISO 25600.
Canon 5D Mark III, Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L USM, ISO 25600.
Canon 5D Mark III, Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L USM, ISO 25600.
That about wraps up this post. If you like experimental electronic music, check out Uda Essim Triangle's website: http://udaessimtriangle.weebly.com/. They have some really great recordings on their Soundcloud and Bandcamp pages (links on their website). They do some amazing stuff, and are fantastic live.
