One of my favorite things to do is to wake up early in the morning before the sun rises and go down to Crissy Field and watch the sunrise over the San Francisco Bay. In doing so, you sometimes experience some of the most amazing lighting you will ever see. I took the Yashica D and loaded it up with some Kodak Ektar, and off I went.
One of the tricky things about shooting film once you’ve gotten used to digital is that you only have a limited amount of shots. With 35mm film it’s not such a bad thing, as you can buy rolls of 36 exposures. With 120 film, however, it’s different story. You only have 12 shots per roll, but it costs about the same as a roll of 35mm to develop. Under normal circumstances, you would want to be stingier with your shots. However, I couldn’t pass up the chance to take multiple shots of the amazing rays of light behind the cityscape.
The Yashica D, as explained last time, has no light meter, so taking photos is a matter of guessing, or as in this past case, using your own external light meter. Luckily I went to film school and had a girlfriend who went through film school too, so we’re covered.
Of the three shots I took of the view, I think this one is my absolute favorite. The rays of light are clearly defined, and there’s just the hint of orange in the blue clouds.
I should have stopped this down further as it is a bit difficult to see, but you can sort of make out a single ray of sunshine hitting Alcatraz.
After the initial excitement at the beautiful lighting at sunrise, I went around the rest of Crissy Field, testing out the camera.
Ektar, I think, remains one of my favorite film stocks, and I love it even more in 120 format. There’s a richness and vibrancy that you get out of this stock that you just don’t get anywhere else. The fact that Kodak films tend to favor reds also help with our local landmark.
However, I am finding that getting the horizons aligned is very difficult with the waist level finder. Not only do you have to look down instead of straight but because the camera is sitting essentially at your waist, you have to balance it out. A brief, non-film interlude:
That is what it looks like through the waist level finder. You get guidelines, but they don’t really help much. The other thing is that you can’t gauge exposure through the finder, I’ve found, so things always look much darker than they really are.
This is a prime example. Looking through the finder I was actually paranoid that it was going to be under exposed as it looked very dark.
The other difficulty, of course, is balancing the thing vertically while crouching isn’t exactly the easiest thing in the world.
When everything works together, though, you get something unexpectedly amazing.
This particular shot doesn’t really have any artistic merit, but come on, how could I not take a picture of a minivan with sharks on it? Speaking of which…
SHARK!
The bench just fit perfectly in the frame, so I had to take a shot of it.
All in all, I enjoyed my second time out with the Yashica D, but I think I’m going back to 35mm photography for a while. The TLR is fun, and 120 film is amazing, but ultimately shooting on a camera with manual everything is really only when you can spend the time to get something looking really nice and doesn’t lend itself to spontaneity like the Elan7 does. It’s a shame, too, as I really like the way the images come out.
