Saturday, January 1, 2011

May its passing be not unremarked

Fish market Hong Kong 1980
Guangondese (Cantonese) folk dance demonstration 1983
Wisconsin 1982
Wisconsin 1982
Kinkaku Temple Kyoto 1983

Tourism at the Grand Canyon 1985

The waters of Puerto Rico 1979
I used to go through it like candy: Kodachrome 64, best slide film ever made. Now that it's no longer possible to get it developed anywhere on earth, many are sadly bemoaning its passing. And many would agree with me, that the colors and vibrancy of the images it captured were unparalleled: accurate skin tones, reds and blues, such sharpness and liveliness. Above are just a few scanned slides, muddied a little by age and repeated showings in front of a hot projector lamp, tweaked a smidgen with PhotoShop to bring back some of their original vigor. Click to enlarge and fully enjoy them. The camera  was a (very rare) split-focal screen Nikormat FTN, with 50 mm f2, 28 mm f2.8, and most wonderful of all, 135 mm f 2.8 Nikkor lenses (long before you could do all that with a single zoom).

Oh yes, I do love digital photography. If nothing else, it's surely easier to organize my photos, and God willing, the images will falter less with time. The image below is among the very first I ever took with my digital camera, a Nikon D70, in 2004.

3 comments:

  1. Oh this is so right on. I have hundreds of these wonderful slides gathering dust. The record of all our travels and 2 sons growing up. A sad passing indeed. :(

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  2. Troutbirder, get thee a scanner and get to work before it's too late! So many of mine are not salvageable, at least by scanning, any more.
    PS Will soon be posting more about adventures in Florida that you might be interested in for your upcoming trip. Stay tuned!

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  3. What a great selection of pictures! I feel like walking down that lane in Wisconsin. Who knew photography would change so much in our lifetime? I was thinking about that the other day as I scanned pictures from seven decades for the post honoring my father. Just about every kind of camera was represented, including my silly talking Polaroid camera from the 90's. That camera broke after only a few years, but even if it had lasted, Polaroid film was discontinued a few years ago. Time goes on.

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