SF 12-19-11, Ilford 50

[David]

I neglect my Canon cameras. My AE-1 is my least-used old-school SLR and my RT is lesser-used new-school SLR. In fairness, I only have one lens for the AE-1 and no EF-s lenses, meaning I can only use M42 lenses on the RT. That limits the RT's metering abilities and provides for mixed results in anything diverging from ideal lighting. On Monday I took out the RT, blew off the dust, and put my Vivitar 28mm on, only a UV filter (due to only having one 62mm filter.) The RT is an interesting camera. Because of the pellicle mirror, there's no blackout nor camera shake during the photograph. I'm still not entirely used to this, but I like it a great deal. It seems that if DSLRs came with pellicle mirrors, there's be no problem with mirrors breaking with certain lenses. But if the world ran as I want it to, I'd be married to three models and driving a Nissan GTR, and neither of those is likely to happen in the near future.

As always, here is the album link. That said, this album is pretty much a non-starter for me and I don't think this lens-camera-film combination worked well. https://picasaweb.google.com/102333270936007447976/SF122111



I've probably written before about my affinity for this statue. I like it. It portrays Mays as happy. In fact, of the four ball player statues neat AT&T park, this is the only one where the subject seems happy. I also think the craftsmanship on this is the best and that it captures its subject very well.


This was a one-second exposure at f16, I believe. I had to rescue the washed-out portions as much as could be done. The RT seemed to have difficulty with metering the 50 ISO film in whatever mode it uses for M42 lenses. The RT is my camera of which I know the least, so if I read the manual that came with it at some point I might be able to achieve better results. At any rate, I set the camera on the Muni stop handrail to capture the trolley's motion. I didn't expect to capture the threes on the trolley's far side, and I'm pleased with the result.


Again this shot was over-exposed, but salvageable. The sky was fairly bright on the 19th, so there was little to be done about rescuing that. The boat she'd side was mildly overexposed.

In short, not a camera-lens-film combination I expect to ever use again for any reason. But I do enjoy the RT and feel that I need to learn how to use it to its full ability.