The information here is way outdated, long in-progress/unfinished/contradictory, and sometimes abandoned (hmmm, like most of the film I use!!); go straight here to see some photos [good, bad, weird, experimental] - also written all out of sequence so that parts are 'modern', others 'olden', and you might get confused. In short, it's a disaster and I ought to get it together (...).

I have managed to keep a more or less up to date update on the list of cameras (not lenses or other etc.) I've got (see lower down this page, that oughta move to a whole new page just about cameras at some point I guess).

In the pages of photos you may note that the quality ranges from good to not as good (!). That's because it ranges from careful, high quality film scans where I knew what the hell I was doing (see here if you don't know what a film scanner is - it's not a flatbed scanner) to a few hastily flatbed scanned from prints 10-15 years ago (and now some digital camera stuff too).

The tale of the film scanner:
In 2002 I bought my first film scanner, a Polaroid SS4000. I was mighty impressed - good hardware, and the scans were great. No IR scratch removal which was appearing at that time, but since I kept my film mostly in good shape that wasn't important. I scanned a few hundred frames over the 4 months I had this, then went to Alaska for a while to work, but left the scanner in storage in Georgia, where I was in grad school. When I finally got back to it after a year and a half I scanned a dozen or so frames and the last scan faded from 'regular' to dark over the image, and that was that. Lamp went bad? Bad connection somewhere inside? Don't know, since I migrated back to Alaska a couple months later, left the 4000 back in storage, and haven't gotten that stuff out of storage since! Maybe someday...

Here's a little bit that I wrote here years ago RE the scanner situation and excusing myself for not having new photos up:
Unfortunately, the #$%@!! $700 scanner seems to have broken as of autumn 2003, after only ~5 months of use. Hence nothing new for a while... Second (worst) - many photos here are from department store prints that were scanned on any of many shitty flatbed scanners available to me (mostly HP, with their characteristic permanently fogged glass from plastic decay...). If the colors look way, way off, or there's a color range of about 4 colors and 20 shades of black, or you see wrinkles, coffee rings, etc. it's probably one of these. One day, I'll get a new scanner and get this all straightened out - maybe.

I probably would have got another scanner earlier, but delayed because of moving around, fieldwork, low money, etc., and then I got into medium format and decided I *needed* to be able to scan 6x7 too, thus doubling the cost of a scanner (at the time the prices were ~$1100 and ~$2200; now the prices of the same items used is more than double than they were new when I was looking!)... So that delayed things more.

So I finally broke down and bought, late summer 2008, a Nikon CoolScan 5000, after waiting for too long trying to get a 9000 without luck (the couple times they showed up in the years I waited happened to coincide with me being too poor at the moment). Of course a month or two after I finally bought the 5000 (as I never knew if/when I'd see that one again either), a few 9000s appeared). Good scanner, awful, buggy software.

In mid-2010 Nikon discontinued their film scanners entirely, and now the options are a cheap $100 hunkajunk or at $10,000+ Hasselblad and on up. Too bad I was too poor in the last couple years; I'd thought about buying a 9000, or at least another 5000 to hoard when they were occasionally available, but didn't. I often compare trying to buy a film scanner after 2005 with trying to buy a car in the Soviet Union -- you wait years (in this case months and months and months) and get whatever model they have at last available.

So there are 'old' and 'new' sets from whole different eras in the scans. Plus, some days I'm 'good' at scanning and postprocessing, other days I can't get it 'right' - just like photography! Some look pretty good, and out of the huge amount of film (and now digital too) I have, there is a lot of all quality, and the stuff on the website isn't necessarily the best, just the best of what I've gotten around to scanning and/or processing. But I guess you just have to believe me. I like to think I've made some improvements since the 1980s, when the older of the photos on this website were made and since the earlier ones were scanned.

I added finally a bunch of new photos in early 2010, after lapsing for many years since the first scanning years earlier, and have added a few since then - but still scanning much more than postprocessing to make web-able. Dang, I have to get things pipelined and load this site up with photos! Alaska, the UP! Siberia, Russia, Crimea ... Baikal! Superior! The USSR!!

Favo(u)rite photographers: There are many. Looking through flicker, or nearly any newspaper I get distraught that there are so many fine photographs (thus presumably competent photographers) and thus I am insignificant in such a vast sea.

My favorite photographers include Eliot Porter [1], Ansel Adams (really a genius), the Blacklocks; especially Nadine [1], RG Ktechum, Galen Rowell, Ernst Haas, Bruce Davidson, Vassily Peskov [ 0 1 2 ], George Tice, Charles Steinhacker, Wayland Drew, Gisele Lameraux, Masahisa Fukase [1 2], recently noticed some early 70s John Chang McCurdy that I'd somehow overlooked for too long. There are others, too.

There are some less famous 'contemporary' landscape photographers I like too; Steve Brimm [1] for one.

On the other hand, there are/were few 'giants' of photography who have made such great work, and though I am continually trying to follow their examples a little bit, there is a slew of bad photographers trying to get noticed nowadays. They often use ridiculously oversaturated or manipulated colors or other perversions of reality - rather like the tammy baker of photographs. There are zillions of the over 'made' photos, and its getting harder to see anything resembling subtlety or nuance in recent photography, esp. on the web... And editors (lax, in my opinion) are starting to use really bad photos in books! The disastrous fad of 'hdr' (photoshopping areas of a scene together with entirely different exposures to pretend that everything could be exposed similarly at the same instant), and its hellishly freakish results is a good example. of course the ultimate 'hdr' photo would look like a gray card...

Here is some general info on equipment and techniques I use:

Films: I shoot analog, emulsion, film (at least most of the time) . Why?

• I understand film to some degree, and I know how to use the medium and what to expect,
• I like the way each film responds differently to various qualities of light,
• I like the possibility to get 'off band' results using aged, damaged, or nonstandardly processed film,
• I like film grain in all its variations and consider that grain, if absolutely everything else was equal, is a dealbreaker for film compared to digital,
• Because, like the quality obtained when sound passes through a series of physical media in LP records, the quality of light passing through the physical and chemical medium of film gives a unique and magical result (I've also just finally gotten back to records after 20 stupid years of not).
• When you shoot film, you actually have something in the end that takes some effort to 'delete',
• When you develop yourself and unroll that film wet from the tank, there are your pictures, like magic! ... and when you send out your Kodachrome slides and they come back, and you lay them out on the light table - wow!
• Because the delay between shooting and image viewing in analog photography demands some patience and skill - to remember how things work, predict results, and operate the equipment to get the results you want (and deliberation in photography is important),
• Because film actually costs something, deliberation is further promoted because each frame shot is finite and committed, as opposed to the snap and delete activity too common in digiphotography,
• Dream cameras of 20 or 40 years ago are now available for a song, everywhere, yet the faddiest digicam of today is destined (and designed) to become obsolete in mere months,
• The quality of construction of cameras (and most everything else) peaked about 1983 and those old cameras will last many, many more decades than the average product of today,
• And.. I shoot film because I like film, and I like to shoot film.

• There are more reasons, but they can all be distilled (explained?) in this analogy: the invention of oil paints didn't make drawing obsolete, and the invention of photography didn't make oil painting obsolete. Marketing is trying to make film obsolete, since film cameras don't go obsolete like digicams and therefore don't fit with our 21st century 'buy and dispose often' culture, but I and (many others) pay no heed to this call since it's insane.

  Film:
  I have used a wide variety of films... I've often been limited by price, availability, or other conditions, and so have made do as opportunity presents, buying cheaper, bulk, or expired film. This is as common now as ever, since so many good old films are disappearing, yet it's also possible to look wider for some of the rarer stuff. From about 2005 until Thanksgiving Day 2010, for example, I shot probably 75% of my photos in Kodachrome; most of that was KR64, some KM25... and I shot the last of my KL200 in 2009. I used a lot of long-expired Kodachrome in that period with mostly good results, some from as long ago as the 1980s!

  Most of the 'nice' pictures were shot on slide films (Kodachrome, Ektachrome or Fujichrome series usually; but also Orwo [DDR], etc.), and some, especially the 'weird' ones, were shot with color print film - Kodak or any of many cheaper films like Agfa, 3M, Konica, Samsung, Fuji, etc. The B/W was shot on Ilford, Smena [USSR], Kodak, and other films. Most of the E6, and some of the Orwo [slide]; c-41 (color print); and most of the B/W films were developed by me at home or abroad in makeshift labs. The K14 [Kodachrome], much of the Orwo, and most C41 [color print] films were done at labs of variable quality in a few scattered countries.
  
  

  I'm trying to shoot as much Kodachrome now as I can, while I still can. Recently came into a little bit of KM-25, too. I shot my last 3 rolls of Kodachrome 200 in May 2009 on a UP bicycle tour. As I write this it's about a day since Kodak announced the discontinuation of Kodachrome forever... So I have - allegedly - a year and a half to shoot my existing 60-70 rolls I have on hand by then. I've also been shooting more professional color print film last couple years - the Portra variants, the new Ektar 100, 100UC, some Fuji 160, etc. And a couple rolls Ektar 25! In winter 2009 I shot a lot of b/w for a class I took at UAF; mostly Ilford HP5, but a lot of other stuff - including the abovementioned Pan-X, some Agfa APX25, etc.

  Also, I like post-expiry dated films. I dipped into some fortuitously sourced Ekrachrome 64 and Ektachrome 64p in recent years that expired between 1981 and the mid-90s. The EPR64, in particular, has very pleasing browns, and if I were in the deciduous eastern forest I'd've have shot dozens of rolls on the leafy forest floor. Sometimes the film expires long after I shoot it and it's in my freezer... I have sometimes, through accident or design, waited as long as *10 years* before developing some film that I acquired while still 'fresh' - and in 2004 I developed a roll of Kodacolor that I accidentally started shooting at 1600 instead of 100... in 1992! Even better, in spring 2009 I shot and developed (to great result) a roll of Panatomic-X that expired in June 1981 - not cold stored, and it looks fantastic! So that's a tie with the EPR64 rolls that also expired that month so many decades back. And I have at least a few rolls of film that have accidentally gone through checked baggage on multi-segment transatlantic flights, with only subtle changes resulting.

  Another effect I've used (initially from necessity) and liked is developing in nearly exhausted E6 chemistry... I'll put some of these on later, I think . Try that with a digital camera!

   Digital side - Most photos are from emulsion film - no digital cameras used until I bought a Nikon D700 in late 2010; digi-photos are marked as such. For digital transfer, two methods were used for images on this site: First (best) - films were scanned on my Polaroid SS4000 or Nikon 5000 film scanners at 4000 dpi, and then lightly adjusted and resized in various programs like Photoshop, etc. Nothing's too hopped up - mostly I remove a few scratches or dust, adjust curves to something that looks natural on my setup, and resize for web posting. I try to get them to look as they did to me when I was at the scenen, not what is possible to do with photoshop. Some are long exposures, especially the starry sky and aurora stuff and the lomo photos, but most is similar to what I was seeing at the instant. Most surely there have been technical and artistic 'mistakes' made at many steps along the way - but that's a lot of the fun!

  And I've scanned a half-dozen hundred frames in the last 6 months or so, but have to get a few tweaks done to them and then start loading my website up!

Cameras - Have used various cameras, including several Canon, Nikon, Olympus SLRs, Kiev 88TTL and Mamiya RB67 medium-formats, a Contax G1, and various mini cameras like the Lomo LC-A, Olympus XA, Minox ML, Kiev 35A, Cosina CX2, some rangefinders, etc., etc.  

Some cameras used to date, in order of acquisition from first to most recent [if you're curious about the camera there are reference links at end of blurb that will open in a new browser tab]. This is a poorly maintained page; much info missing and some of the links are probably extinct; you can figure it out. This page is also one of the most hit here at rjl.us tanks to the many searched-for terms, so if you're one of those people and were hoping for a little more-ahem-complete information and cannot find it elsewhere (or would like personal opinion and experiences) feel free to contact me.

Many cameras in my 'prehistory' - 126 and 110 instamatics, old 8mm film cameras, weird or cheap old bakelite things from the 50s and 60s never used... Few were used to any pleasing effect, most were only looked at and dreamed about - I was too poor to buy film in those days.

First cameras - Keystone 126 and Kmart 110 snapshot cameras.

Some pinhole cameras also made and used in jr. high school photography class [at this time I began to drool over pix of SLRs I could not afford - see cameras owned now, below]

Yashica rangefinder (probably an Electro 35 variant, but cannot remember); ca. 1981-1984; stupidly I lost all photos made with this one - my first precision camera.

Canon A-1 [two of them; 1984-1993 and 1993-present. First one fatally damaged in tragic Leningrad mayonnaise mishap ; still, it hung on for about a year before the mayonnaise hardened... ] 24, 28 macro, 50, 70-210 macro lenses at the time.

Canon AE-1 Now sadly deceased, but I got some nice B/W photos with this during 1995 in the xUSSR... 50, 28 macro, and 70-210 lenses used at the time.

Lomo LC-A [Kompakt-avtomat] (several of them; the name ìÏÍÏ [LOMO] stands for "Leningrad Optical-Mechanical Factory" in Russian; more appropriately, a Russian verb for "to break" is "КНЛЮРЭ" ['lomat']!: here's the definition of the word from my Abbyy Lingvo Russian-English dictionary programme (I may need to fix the Cyrillic as my html checker often busts it):

ймкчпщ леъмаео. - ймкчпщ; ъмаео. - нмймкчпщ, ъймкчпщ (имжм-й./бпм-й.) 1) break; fracture (м лмже, ояие у п.н. {м рмпмчнчочпе Lomo, пмте! - rjl} 2) пмйщим леъмаео. (дмюьачпщ ичкелщ) quarry 3) пмйщим леъмаео.; очцж. (мю мшяшелуу ймкмпь) rack; cause to ache келз аъежм ймкчйм юецй. ? I was aching all over 4) пмйщим леъмаео.; неоел.: ймкчпщ ъеюе жмймая (лчд) ? to rack one's brains (over), to puzzle (over) ймкчпщ дяочич ? to play the fool ймкчпщ ояиу ? to wring one's hands ймкчпщ эчния (неоед) ? to bow obsequiously (to)

What the hell does this mean?? It means that they are great FUN cameras but don't always last long! Mine have lasted anything from a few weeks to a few years. Their price on the web is very, very greatly overrated (you can find better rants than I have time to write). Great design, real nice heavy feel, but quality control abysmal (well, Soviet), like many Soviet products. A shame, since other aspects are great. I've gone so far as to make a pilgrimage to the Lomo factory; saw examples of their numerous products and prototypes, but no Lomo cameras for sale, frown. All sold to the West for sale at high markup. Best bet for this is to go to the xUSSR and buy an old lomo second-hand at a camera shop for about $15 [but they are all being bought up there for sale on e-bay @ $US90! Search out an old Cosina instead, or a Minox - you can get one of these great cameras for less that the $150 (ow!) some people are trying to sell the Lomo for. I've been through 3-4 Lomos over about 10 years. But god, they're fantastic - when they still work! Bought the last one in Ukraine, August 2001 [paid $25 - the most ever!]... I think it conked out in 2002 as I recall. Design and ergonomics almost perfect! [but remember they are a 95% copy of the Cosina CX; if the USSR had been sued by Cosina, they would have lost hands down! Ditto for the Kiev 35, the early FEDs, The Kiev 30, etc., etc...

FED-2 1 Soviet camera. Initials stand for "Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky"; he was founder of the original; Soviet Secret police; the predecessor of the famous KGB. Sheesh - Only in the USSR! (speaking of Feliks Edmundovich, remind me to tell you sometime about when I worked on a classified project in the "Club Dzerzhinsky", in the KGB HQ, when I lived in Minsk in the early 90s)

Kiev 35A. Soviet, later Ukrainian copy of Minox 35x. Reliability, results, and number owned similar to Lomo. [1 2 3]. Kiev is the Russian name for Kyiv, the Capital City of Ukraine! I have also been to this factory in search of parts, etc.

Kiev 30 - 2 of them [1 2]

Kiev 88 ttl [1 2 3 4] 60, 80, 200mm lenses used.

Chaika [1 1], a 'darling' little 35mm half-frame camera. Interesting 1960s modern styling, but the optics on mine weren't so great. Probably a truly original Soviet design; that in itself a rarity. Chaika is the Russian word for seagull.

Contax G1 [ 0 1 2] Bought in 1999 as a more convenient setup for my USSR travel than the larger Canons and FD lenses. For landscape and scientific photography it's a perfect little travel kit: G1, and 28, 45, 90 mm Carl Zeiss T* lenses. It all fits in a small Tamrac bag - until I added the 21mm! Though it's small, decent lenses (though i get a ton of flare even when using hoods and being careful), and solid, but the damned autofocus is a real shame and a great creative and ergonomic crippling. I've mentioned elsewhere on this website about my fundamental opposition to machines making decisions. Makes me want to get a leica m4.

FED 50 [1 2 3 4]

Lomo Smena-8: fantastic plastic, but with features available only in cameras costing hundreds of dollars more (mine cost the equivalent of $7 in Ukraine, summer 2001) (haven't seen that camera in years; can't remember why I wrote so highly of it)

Cosina CX-2 . Actually, the Lomo LC-A is not an original Soviet design [as I had thought for years], but a 97% soviet copy of the Cosina CX-2 [there is one change; the way the lens and viewfinder covers open - clever as hell on both, though I like the Lomo variant a little more for ergonomics and the Cosina a little more for cleverness]. Anyway, I bought a CX-2 on ebay in fall 2001. The Cosina CX-2 is the successor to the CX-1, and every bit as perfect as the Lomo [photographically and ergonomically] [ 1 ] [ 2 ]

Minox 35 ML The 'model' for the Kiev 35 copy. Curiously, I had better photographic and camera longevity results with the Kiev than with the single used Minox 35 I own. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ]
Using a Olympus XA -1 1 2 3 4 5] for snapshot needs these days mostly; after trying all the Lomo-like variants listed above (and a few more), this one seems best: hasn't broken yet either!

Also, got an autofocus early '90s Olympus >>Stylus Zoom<< in 2006; a fine snapshot camera with decent optics, flash, a zoom lens, etc...

Recent cameras, now by year:

in 2007 I bought:

A Nikon F3hp [ -3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3 4 5 6]

a Nikon FG [1 2]

a Nikkormat FTn [ref 1 2] (and a ton of lenses to go with them; the FTn is one of my favorite 35mms now)

two Mamiya RB67s [ref 1 2 3 4] (I like the RB67!)

a Yashica Dental-eye [degroot ref] III (a camera made for dental photography with a 100mm macro ring flash lens!) [ref 1 2 3]

and probably a few others.

In 2008 I bought:

an Olympus OM-2Sp [ref 1 2 3 4]

a Contax RTS (I) [ref 1 2 3]

an Asahi Pentax Spotmatic SP [refs 1 2 3 4 ]

a Canon F1 (original) [ref 1 2]

A 1963 (within a month or so of Kennedy's assassination) Nikon F with bashed standard (non-photomic) prism) [0 1 2 3]

... and some assorted Pentax ME Supers [ref 1] (initial buying excuse: for the lenses I might use on a future K1000), but later shot some through one and it's got a feel... (all from yard sales, junk shops...)

In 2009 thus far I have bought:

a KowaSix mm [ref 1],

a Nikomat FTN [ref 1 Nikomat ref],

a Nikkorex F [1 2],

a Ricoh XR-S [ref1], also a spare body non-operational.

a Minolta SRT201 [ref1],

a Nikon D700 -- digicam (!) -- Don't worry, the d700 isn't nearly the pleasure to use nor does it feel as precise, intuitive, or direct. But figured I'd better learns something about the digicam world, in case I might need such a machine. ...

a (1968, within a month or so of when i was born) black Nikon F with standard prism,

another 1968 F (silver, ca. July '68) with the FTn finder [ref 1 2]

a Yashica Electro 35 'GSN' for $7 at the local junkshop (no lens cap; else in apparently good shape [ -1 0 1 2 3 4 5 ]. Maybe in honor of long ago Yashica (see above), but actually just found it when I went in to get...

a Kodak Ektra 200 110 instamatic in original box (picture soon), that's why I liked it, AND an original GE flipflash only half used! 78 cents. Made in West Germany, July 1980, by the way, while the USSR was busy with the Moscow olympics. [ 0 ]

Thus the 2009 total seems sure to stay at a mere 10 (or so), though I'll keep my eyes open tomorrow (Dec. 31, 2009 when I wrote this) in case...

Have started peeking as 4x5s...

In 2010:
... In 2010 I think I only got one 'significant' camera - another Yashica DEIII. A friend did give me a small box of misc. stuff, inclufing a Zeiss Jena 90mm f3.5 M42 mount, though...

In 2011:

Not a big photography shooting or camera-getting year in 2011, either - Got another Olympus XA and a pretty decent Nikon FM2n

Merry xmas liebermann: On November 30th my house was robbed along with at least four others on the same road (the police treat the actual number as their secret and have revealed themselves to be a bunch of bumbling idiots, though they have their big embezzlement scandal to occupy themselves with anyway, so why should they worry about crime?), and I lost $6,000+ of equipment, so definitely losing ground now. Gone: my Nikon D700, FM2n (never got to use it), Nikkormat FTn, most of my good Nikon lenses, mt Sekonic light meter, filters... See a list and serial numbers here.

Currently (late 2009) using these films (in order of quantity):
Kodachrome KR 64 (expiry 1993 to 2010) and KM 25 (1993 to 2002); Ektar 100 in 35 and 120; various iterations of Portra in 120 and 35; 1984 expiry frozen Ektachrome EPR-64 in 35; a little (Ektachrome) Elite-chrome 100 and 200; some Kodak UC-100; some 1994 frozen EPR-100 in 120; a bit if Fuji Velvia 50 and Provia 100 and Astia 100 in 35; a little bit of Vericolor III in 120 and 35, expiry late '80s-mid 90s; a few rolls of Ektar 25 in 35 and 120, some HP-5 (current); a little bit of Panatomic-X (June 1981); other b/w of various expiries in 35 and 120 incl. Agfa APX-25, Ilford Pan-F, Delta 100, FP4; few rolls Tri-X; some Polaroid 667, and 669 on my RB-67; others in lesser quantities, etc. (Can you discern an 'etc.' from that? If so, good.)

Qualities preferred: order of types/brands/etc follows preference: in this half-witted table, left side = better; cannot remember any top-bottom order; the qualities are not in reference to the brands they are under...