Review of Rollei Digibase CN200 Color Film for Street Photography

By Eric Kim

Hong Kong, 2014

Recently I hooked up with my buddy Vishal from Hong Kong (he runs Camera Film Photo) and he hooked it up with some Rollei Digibase CN200 film. I was quite excited about the film (as it is new) — and decided to have a go. I shot around 2 rolls of film, and wanted to share some images and share some thoughts about the film.

First of all, I find ISO 200 a bit SLOW for me personally– (prefer Kodak Portra 400for the speed). However I can imagine when you’re shooting in a brighter environment (and want to use a flash) having ISO 200 film might be preferable.

I got the film developed and SCANNED at Dot Well Photo in Hong Kong — and here are some of my example photos (if you’re interested to see how the film looks).

I shot the film in a variety of lighting examples, some with flash and some natural light.

I actually really like the look, grain, color, and feeling of the film. Also the reason they call the film “Digibase” is because it is designed to SCAN very well.

These aren’t the best photos in the world, but I’m uploading them here for you to get a taste:

Urban Landscapes

Street Scenes

              

Portraits

I really like how sharp the photos are, the rich and deep blues (especially of skies), the highlight control, the accurate color reproduction (not too warm, not too cool).

The film is almost like a in-between film from Kodak Portra 400 (very warm, and saturated reds/oranges/yellows) and Fujifilm ProH400 (cooler images, with nice green/purple/blues).

Overall the photos have a rich color reproduction, and they make me feel damn good looking at them.

Considering I still have around 150 rolls of KODAK Portra 400 (I haven’t developed yet) and 75 rolls of Kodak Portra 400 (chilling and waiting to be shot) I don’t plan on switching my film anytime soon. In addition, I prefer having a consistent look.

However down the line once I decide to start new photography projects (or go back to Hong Kong), I will highly consider switching to Rollei Digibase CN200 (especially if Kodak discontinues Portra).

A lot of people ask me: What will you do when they stop making film?

Well, I don’t think film will ever die out. People like Vishal from Camera Film Photoand Bellamy Hunt (Japan Camera Hunter) prove there is still a lot of love, passion, and interest in shooting film. They are kind of like Vinyl’s and other “retro” stuff– coming back into fashion (I think a lot of young people are frustrated with everything digital, and want to go back to analogue).

I still shoot both digital and film (depending on my projects) — but ultimately I prefer shooting film for the SLOW process, the “beautiful mistakes”, as well as the zen and happiness I gain from it.

Viva la film!

This is the first of 3 articles via zorkiphoto
How to take great beach photos
zorkiphoto

(I wrote this piece for BBC.com’s excellent ARTS site BBC Culture this week, and am reprinting it here. Many thanks to Magnum Photos for allowing the re-use of the photos on this blog.)

To millions of us, the summer means the beach. We pack promenades of pebbles and sand in our millions, roasting on beach towels and standing knee deep in crowded surf. We trek by bus and train and overheated car to coastal resorts – Brighton, Coney Island, Bondi Beach – or scrimp and save to see the world,for a few short weeks at least, from the vantage point of a deck chair.

On the beach, all human life is on display, and it’s no coincidence that for many of us, our memories of childhood are linked to the seaside. The potential for bright sun meant the camera that might have spent months kept in a drawer saw the light of day; our photo albums all contain faded pictures of us in swimming costumes with fixed smiles.

For many photographers, the lure of the beach is strong. Here people are relaxed, carefree and oblivious to the crowd around them as they snooze or splash. There is an unguarded freedom. For anyone interested in taking candid pictures, the beach is rich with subjects and possibilities.

Many of the leading lights of the Magnum photo agency – one of the most prestigious photojournalism organisations in the world – have been among them. What can we learn from them for the next time we take the camera to the beach?

Quiet humour and common stories
Martin Parr is a divisive figure in CONTEMPORARY photography; his trademark ultra-saturated colours come from the use of a camera flash, something many documentary photographers frown on. But Parr’s rich archive – much preoccupied with English notions of class and leisure – contains many captivating moments. His series The Last Resort, shot in the seaside resort of New Brighton, near Liverpool, in the early 1980s, is one of his landmark projects.

New Brighton, From ‘The Last Resort’ by Martin Parr (Magnum Photos)

One of the highlights is this shot of a sunbather and child soaking in the rays on a patch of free ground – which happens to be just behind a massive digger. Parr, who used to work as a photographer at the Butlins holiday camps in England, imbues these scenes with knowing humour, putting fragments of life under the microscope and making them appear larger than life with saturated hues.

You might not want to walk around the beaches with a ringflash around your camera like Parr, but a little of his magpie eye for the humorous will go a long way. Beaches packed with people are often full of incongruous comedy; the socks and sandals on a hot day, the sleeping figures under newspapers, the bizarre BACKDROPS behind the swimsuits. Keep your eyes open, and all sorts of opportunities will appear.

Don’t forget late-day lightConstantine Manos is a Greek-American photographer who grew up in South Carolina and who has turned his lens on both the US and his family’s native Greece. His 1974 book The Greek Portfolio contains many ruminative black and white images and is a portrait of a country emerging from poverty, occupation and civil war. But in his 1995 book American Color, Manos partly turned to the beach, and America’s love affair with it.

USA, Daytona Beach, Florida, 1997 by Constantine Manos (Magnum Photos)

Manos’s approach is very different from Parr’s – his photos are full of colour, but it is the warm colour of late afternoon and evening, often using the long shadows cast by a setting sun. It’s a good technique to emulate. Brightly coloured beach huts, café walls and golden sand are all beautiful BACKDROPS as the sun dips. Stand with the sun to your back and use that reddish light to add texture and depth  – but be careful not to let your own shadow into the frame, especially if you’re using a wide-angle lens.

Black and white has its place
Ian Berry’s 1978 book The English is a classic of documentary photography; juxtapositions of class and culture in amid the tumult of 1970s Britain. Berry made his name as a photographer in South Africa – he was the only photographer present during the Sharpeville Massacre in 1960 – but frequently turned his lens on his home country during the 1970s. Berry took most of the pictures for The English on a visit to Britain in 1975  and the resulting collection rivals Robert Frank’s The Americans as a document of a people and a country frozen in time.

Beach cricket in 1974 by Ian Berry (Magnum Photos)

This image was taken in Whitby, North Yorkshire, on what looks to be a typical English summer day – banks of cloud and a stiff wind, with a game old lady dispatching a tennis ball to the boundary during a game of beach cricket. Berry’s expert eye has arranged the scene perfectly, with the beachgoers and the rowboat on the sea beyond adding further layers to the picture. But it’s also a scene that probably works best in black and white; the colours on this cloudy day would have been muted. Black and white adds a certain timelessness too, and allows the photographer to concentrate on form and composition without having to balance contrasting colours.

Walk away from the crowds
The beach isn’t always crowded. There’s a peculiarly melancholic feeling to winter images of Britain’s cheap and cheerful Victorian resorts –empty souvenir stands, banks of brooding clouds, a stiff wind from Siberia that can almost be felt.

We’re so used to seeing sands packed with bathers that seaside solitude can have a powerful emotional effect; look at the work of Bruce Davidson from the early 1960s, with figures tightly wrapped against the cold, trudging mournfully along the beach. Or Elliott Erwitt’s superb set of black and white pictures from the French resort of Deauville, his ever-present dogs snuffling in the beautifully deserted acres of sand.

Denis Stock’s Beach and Woman (seen above) SHOWS a moment of isolation on a sunny day; a woman reclines on a deckchair, a paperback in her hand, a line of brightly coloured changing huts arranged in a row like a line of giant gaudy robots. Stock’s composition is perfect. There is the hint of a crowd in the distance but it is a coloured blur; the woman feels stark and alone. Aim for the fringes, away from the crowds, who with careful framing will disappear.

It’s not just about the deckchairs

The beach is many things to many people – playground, gym, reading room, nightclub. The sand can serve as a football pitch or a volleyball court, the first stage to MARKET for fishermen hauling their catch from the briny deep, or a meeting place for classic car fans. But a chess club? This photo from Magnum’s Peter Marlow was taken on a beach in Latvia when it was still part of the Soviet Union in 1981.

Soviet beach chess by Peter Marlow (Magnum Photos)

Chess in eastern Europe is not just a game for overachieving kids, it’s a spectator sport. Study Abbas’ images of devotion and ritual on the beaches of India: in his pictures of Hindu devotees offering tributes to the god Ganesh, the beach becomes a temple.

We may all clamour for their heat and energy, but no two beaches are the same. Seek out the things that make them special.

Nikon FM2 review

Sep8by zorkiphoto

Tough, simple, reliable (Photo courtesy of Michael Nika)

In the days when press photographers shot on film, most of them fell into one or two camps; CANON or Nikon. The Canon shooters used high end cameras like the T90 or, when autofocus arrived, the all-singing and all-dancing EOS 1. Nikon shooters used the trusty Nikon F range of cameras, ending with the pro-series F5, an autofocus beast built for warzones and anything else the world can throw at it.
But even towards the end of the pro films days, Nikon press photographers usually had something else in their bags. It was a kind of last resort, something for when all the batteries were spent but pics still had to be captured. It was the Nikon FM2, and it was one of the best film cameras ever made.

The FM2 had no autofocus or auto-winding, had only the simplest of meters, and a mechanical shutter. All this was pretty standard for a camera in the 1960s, but decidedly old hat when the FM2 was first released in 1982.
The FM2 followed in a long line of classic SLRs in Nikon’s F series; the Nikon F was blooded in the Vietnam War, where a clutch of legendary photographers took history-making pics with the Nikon F. The Nikons were tough and reliable – just what you needed out in the field, sometimes for weeks at a time. Nikon lenses were RIGHTLY praised too.
So why’s it so good? Partly because of its simplicity. There’s nothing on an FM2 that doesn’t absolutely have to be there. Where the FM2 stands out is its fastest speed – 1/4000^th of a second- and a flash sync of 1/250^th, the kind of features normally found on pro-level cameras.
The Nikon FM2 was in production until 2001; it was replaced by theFM3A, a broadly similar camera which also had aperture-priority. The FM3a’s a beautiful – and increasingly expensive camera – but requires batteries to use properly. The great thing about the FM2 is that the camera requires the batteries for nothing more than the meter. That’s why it was so useful to have at the bottom of a camera bag. And the FM2 feels anything but cheap; there’s a sharp, smooth click and effortless winding on to the next frame.
I bought my first FM2 in 2001; a jet black model that I used for a couple of years before trading in. A few years later, I found one going very cheaply on eBay and bought it; I’m glad I did. Most of my SLR shooting is done on M42 mount cameras; mostly because it costs relatively little to build up a decent pile of lenses. But the FM2 is the perfect TRAVELcamera; if I was to spend more than a couple of weeks on the road taking pics, the FM2 is what I’d take. It’s partly because the Nikon lenses are so good, but mainly because of this camera’s unqualified toughness. I’ve had my current FM2N, a 1986 model, for around six years. During that time it’s needed absolutely no servicing at all. I’ve changed the batteries just once.
Another plus point is the meter’s sensitivity; it will meter up to ISO 6400, essential for shooting in really low light. Alongside a Nikon F100, I use the FM2 for a long-running project shooting bands at soundcheck, an environment where there’s very little light. The FM2’s been perfect for this kind of shooting.
You can get your hands on a Nikon FM2 on eBay for as little as $100 if you’re lucky, though this usually won’t include a lens. Bump the budget up to around $150 and you’re likely to get one with a lens and a few other bits and bobs aswell. For a camera that’s more than likely to outlast you, that’s a bargain.
Check out  my FM2 pics below or the hundreds to be found in my Flickr set.

Close up of a Royal Mail letter box, looking like some kind of steampunk robot

My friend Sam Baker, drummer extraordinaire, taken in the New York evening light on KODAK Elite Chrome 400 slide film

Joey Burns of Calexico at Brighton Centre soundcheck, shot on Neopan pushed to 6400

My friend Charlotte at the Chap Olympiad in 2009

During soundcheck for The Clean’s Brixton Academy SHOW supporting Pavement in 2010

Walkies in Dubrovnik Old Town

Everything Everything’s Jonathan at soundcheck at London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire

A restaurant display in the Old Town of Dubrovnik

The golden glow of an Adriatic sunset on Ektachrome slide film

Bill Janovitz of Buffalo Tom’s hat during soundcheck, somewhere on the road in Europe

Chefchaouen: Morocco’s blue city

Aug31by zorkiphoto

Blue plaque in hard, clear mountain light

Only two hours drive from Morocco’s chaotic port city of Tangiers,Chefchaouen feels like it’s in a different world. Home to some 45,000 people, this historic city clusters along the slopes of the Rif Mountains in northern Morocco, its houses washed in shades of blue that catch the bright, mountain light.
It’s no surprise that Chefchaouen is known to Moroccans as The Blue City. Just like the white-washed houses of Greece’s Santorini, Chefchaouen is a city described in the shades of a single colour, especially the houses surrounding the Medina and the city’s main square, Plaza Uta-el Hammam. It has none of Fez Medina’s bewildering confusion, and lacks the touristic overload of Marrakech – well, at least for now.

I visited Chefchaouen in May, during a whistle-stop week TRAVELLING across Morocco with some of my family. Chefchaouen was a perfect antidote to Tangiers; I’m a massive fan of grimy, ungentrified port cities, but Tangier’s reputation for being a scammer’s playground isn’t exactly unfair. If your first experience of Morocco is the tumult of Tangiers, then Chefchaouen’s picturesque calm is even more of a contrast. Chefchaouen is a few hours drive by taxi from Tangiers (about €70 for the whole vehicle). We travelled with a super-friendly taxi DRIVER in a 1980s-era Mercedes that had done some 800,000km in its lifetime. If there’s a better advertisement for Mercedes reliability, I’ve not seen it. For part of the way, he insisted on playing the only Western CD he had – The Best of The Bee Gees; the North African plains turning into foothills and towering peaks to the tune of ‘Stayin’ Alive’.
Morocco is a photographer’s dream; the clear light of the Rif and Atlas Mountains, or the wide blue that stretches over the country’s baked interior and cries out to be captured. That’s before you encounter the exotics of medieval medinas and timeless souks. Anyone SHOOTING FILM in Morocco should be aware; take as much as you can. In a nine-day trip I rattled off about 25 rolls, and that felt like I was barely capturing what was on offer. On a trip like this, I’d assume I was shooting three rolls a day, around 100 shots. There are times when you have to hold back and not rattle off a roll in a few minutes.

Staring down to the streets from a rooftop vantage point

Chefchaouen’s medina might not have the bewildering complexity and size of Fez (some 13,000 streets, lanes and cramped alleyways are contained within its walls) but for tourists that’s probably a good thing – there’s much less opportunity to get completely lost. And for photographers, Chefchaouen’s open medina in the older, eastern half of the city means there’s a great deal more light to work with. Those blue walls, often draped with carpets and blankets for sale, help create bold photographs. The blue walls are a reminder of the city’s Jewish heritage; the blue was supposed to be a reminder of the blue threads used in traditional prayer shawls.
I brought along a handful of sadly now-defunct Kodak Ektachrome E100VS (Vivid Saturation) along with some brand new Agfaphoto CT100 Precisa, the offcuts of Fuji Provia rebadged and sold at around half the price of the Fuji film (and I can’t tell the difference between the two). Slide film has that depth of colour that even the best print film can’t match. I shot on a Pentax ESII, my standard TRAVEL camera, easy to shoot with and using Pentax’s beautiful 1970s lenses.
Chefchaouen is the gateway to one of Morocco’s biggest national parks, theTalassemtane, which stretches across the Rif Mountains; there are half- and full-day hikes bookable, or longer treks that take you two or three days across the mountain range. But Chefchaouen doesn’t need to be a springboard for treks across the mountains. There’s more than enough to see and capture for a couple of days, especially as this city’s laidback atmosphere makes it such an easy place to stay. It’s hard to get lost in the medina, the winding lanes all leading back to the main square, with its trees strung with lights; the haggling you’ll do with shopkeepers in a great deal more relaxed than you’ll do in Marrakech, for instance. No trip to Morocco should ignore it.
Check out more pics below, or in the Morocco album on Flickr.
(I stayed at a pension called Casa Elias; I absolutely recommend it)

Using a polariser helps bring out the colours and cut down glare from the bright buildings

Most of the old city is too narrow for cars; donkeys are known as the “medina taxis”

Slide film helps bring out the rich colours

The squares leading to the central square are full of shops, but also locals; Chefchaouen is a living, working city

The city sits under towering outcrops

Everywhere you step, it seems, there’s something to catch the eye

A local takes 40 winks on a spring afternoon

Morocco is famed for its textiles, and the mountain light adds to the colour

The outside of a souvenir store, shot on KODAK Ektar print film