Cameras.

I go through photo phases sometimes (during which I take a lot of photographs.)  I post a lot of them and my other drawings (and such) here.

I have four cameras: an Argus C3 (known as “the brick”), a Holga, a Canon powershot from my dad which he used in the early 90s to document our family vacations, and an slr that my high school boyfriend bought for me from Walmart.  Recently I tested them all out by photographing the same thing (mostly my friends, because this “test” was a good way to con them into sitting for portraits) once with each camera.

The idea was to see how the cameras performed in different lighting/distance situations.

The photographs above go in order of how old the camera is (Argus-50s or 60s, Holga–80s, “fam cam”–90s, slr–almost exactly the year 2000); this set is a pretty good indoor lighting test– there was a lot of natural light from the skylight and all the cameras had 400 film, except the Holga (almost goes without saying.)

Once I got to test how well the cameras see in the fog:

What surprised me was the difference in focal length, since none of the cameras were zoomed (only one of them can anyways).  The fam cam veers a little pink and a little washed out, the slr is hyper for contrast, the Argus is often soft-focused (but I’m not a pro with rangefinders), and the Holga is usually messed up the way it’s supposed to be–some light vignetting and not much in the way of light leaks on mine, except in this roll, where the sponges came off.  I’m not as good with a 6×6 square as I thought I would be.  I sometimes do not focus correctly.  A that’s more or less what I learned.

Sometimes I’d rather not use words.

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