Scattered Thoughts . . .

K enzie and I did a short mini photo session this afternoon.  She did some shooting with her Fuji Evo Hybrid Instax camera while I shot a few photos with my Mint TL70 twin lens reflex (TLR) Instax camera.  It was nice to see the side-by-side comparisons.  This blog entry is really only about my Mint TL70 though. This Mint TL70 camera is closer to being a medium format camera than a typical instant camera.  Most instant cameras have a pinhole for an aperture (or close to a pinhole) but this camera has a pretty nice lens with a manual aperture ranging from f5.6 to f22.  It captures an image right on the film so it is comparable to medium format film.   This camera has a nice lens and a huge and fairly bright waist-level viewfinder that you look down into from above.  The tonal quality of the Instax prints is really quite nice although that is not really seen accurately in photographs.  I should find a better way to show those prints on my blog because my photos of these prints are not do

Kenzie and I played around with her Fuji Evo Hybrid Instax camera today and came away with a few nice prints.  We also learned a little more about her new Instax camera that she received this past Christmas. I set up one studio light for our little photo session this afternoon.  We started with her hybrid Instax camera.  It is a "hybrid" camera because it has both digital and film capabilities.  It captures photos and saves them to a memory card in the camera.  The photos can be viewed on the rear LCD screen like most other digital cameras.  What makes this camera different is that it has Instax instant film loaded inside it too.  If you want to print a particular photo to the Instax film, then you simply crank the "print" lever which is the same sort of lever used to advance the film on old film cameras.  The image is then developed onto the Instax instant film and the photo is ejected out the side of the camera just like on the old Polaroid cameras.   I actually s

The kids and Nan and Pop decided to stop by Sunday morning to bring us some cider donuts for breakfast.  I warmed up the grill while Sheila pulled out the cinnamon sugar so we'd be ready when they arrived.   We warmed up the donuts on the grill and they were delicious!  We had some apple cider as well.   Since the skies were clear in the morning, I set up one of my solar telescopes so we could view the sun.  There were no sunspots so the sun was a featureless disk but it was nice to peer through the scope anyway... As always, Lukey and Kenzie took turns shooting with two of my cameras and they did a pretty good job.  This particular day was a bit more difficult for them though since the sun was high and bright.  They managed to get a few keepers though... I'm not sure when this was but, apparently, mommy took a short nap... Donuts for breakfast led to some hot dogs on the grill for lunch.  Sometime after lunch, I thought it might be a good

A new photography product arrived on my doorstep the other day.  I was eager to test it and play with it for a bit.  I have to say that my initial testing was rather painless, quite easy and fun! Let me point out that many of the photographic prints hanging in our house are actual lab processed prints developed in chemicals the same way that prints were produced from film back when I was a child decades ago.  I learned photography when I was a child   shooting film  and I processed my own photos in a darkroom...  well, sometimes and I sometimes sent them out for processing and printing.  I learned photography using cameras with no automatic focus, no automatic exposure, no automatic prints and I knew my way around a darkroom as well as how to effectively handle an all-manual camera.  In my opinion, these types of darkroom lab prints are far superior to modern inkjet prints.  Truth be told, I feel that typical home photo "printers" are a rather poor medium for showcasing