At last count, I have far too many cameras, most of which don't take great photos. At least, not great if you are looking for an accurate representation of a scene. I am more interested in the magic that sometimes happens with simple cameras, old cameras, and my beloved pinhole cameras. The Ranica MIR 3 is medium format (120 film), but takes half-frame photos. This makes much more sense to me than the 35mm half-frame cameras which were a trend for a minute... where it makes a small negative even tinier.
With 120 film cameras, you typically get 6, 9, or 12 photos. This one gets you 24. I thought I would love the horizontal images, but it was the verticals that came out the best. I absolutely adore this camera—it fits in my fishing pack and, even with a small tripod, it's light, it's quirky, and it provides a whole new way of thinking about how to frame an image. Now that I have seen how it splits the frame quite closely, it could be fun to create diptychs on the negative.
Clovers, grass, and RK fishing on the Metolious River
Most pinhole cameras have a mechanism for opening and closing the pinhole near the front of the camera. Ranica cameras have ingenious devices for this, meaning I didn't take any photos of my finger tips.
This first roll was shot on Kodak Ektar 100. I also found a new image editor, Aphera, which is thoughtfully designed, affordable, and free from all the things I hate about Adobe (I won't go into this, but if you use Adobe, you know).
Trees and waterfall on the Olympic Peninsula
Not everyone likes photos with distortion, blur, and ambiguous focal points that happen with pinhole cameras. But I find the softness more similar to memory.
Other things
I just finished reading Cape Fever, which I enjoyed quite a bit, though it's creepy enough I wish I hadn't finished it right before falling asleep last night. It's a quick read, a sort of ghost story, a little weird, and quite gratifying.
I've started writing a one-sentence journal after listening to Brendan Leonard's podcast interview with Chris La Tray. Turns out, constructing one thought per day is just about exactly what my brain wants to do these days—notice a thing and why it is interesting to me and then make it all work together as one sentence. I'm not the best with the intricacies of grammar, but I can use commas, em-dashes, and ellipses to string it all together. I'll likely share some of them if it becomes a true habit.
Wishing you all a very happy last few days of summer.
