About six months ago, my wife discovered a Japanese indie band called 超☆社会的サンダル (Chō shakai-teki sandaru) and became obsessed with them. We thought it would be cool to see them live while we were in Tokyo this winter. Unfortunately, the band didn’t have any scheduled gigs, but their vocalist, Onizawa Mashiro, suddenly announced an acoustic solo concert. We were supposed to meet a friend that day who coincidentally lives in the same district where the venue is, so we invited him to join us. This entire story almost didn’t happen because all the tickets were booked immediately. Our friend only managed to book a single ticket for himself, and he hasn’t even received a confirmation for it.
Read more ...

When I first started developing black and white film at home, I got a starter kit from Fotoimpex. It came with Rodinal and a brochure that guided me through the process, including an explanation of agitation method used by Ansel Adams. The instructions suggested agitating the tank for 10 seconds every minute by twisting the tank around its axis while turning it upside down. This method worked perfectly for me with Rodinal and, later, with HC-110.
Read more ...

In January, I published a virtual photo album with photos from Kyushu, Chūgoku, and Kansai that I shot entirely on black and white film. While the digital album is convenient for sharing, I wanted to have physical prints as well. This project became my main motivation for building a darkroom at home. After eight months of occasional darkroom sessions, I’m sitting with a stack of 104 gelatin silver prints on my table and a strong feeling of accomplishment. It was my first long printing project, so I wanted to share a few things I learned.
Read more ...

Recently, I brought my medium format Bronica S2a camera and a 135mm f/3.5 Nikkor-Q lens with me to a lake to take some landscape photos. The waist-level viewfinder that I use with this camera requires as much light as possible to make focusing easier. So it doesn’t matter which aperture is set on the lens, the camera always keeps it wide open and only closes the blades when taking the photo or while the depth of field preview button is pressed.
Read more ...

Once, I wanted to buy a lens hood for a 55-year-old Yashica Mat-124G. To my surprise, an original hood cost half as much as I paid for the camera body. Maintaining analog camera gear can be tricky, as parts are no longer produced and often have to be salvaged from donor cameras. This is where 3D printing becomes especially useful. It also allows you to design entirely new tools that were never available in the first place.
Read more ...

On July 16, Harman released their new film stock, Phoenix 2. I was lucky to get a voucher for a photo walk organized by Fotoimpex in Berlin, where I had the chance to try out the new film. They even invited an employee from Harman to give a short presentation about the film’s characteristics. He told us that, despite the name, Phoenix 2 is not based on the same emulsion as the original.
Read more ...

While I was happy with my hybrid approach to film photography, scanning negatives, editing them in Negative Lab Pro, and printing on an inkjet printer, the idea of wet printing in a darkroom was always tempting. The problem is, I live in an apartment and don’t have a spare room to dedicate to a darkroom. At one point, I searched for English-speaking community darkrooms in Berlin and even found a hackerspace that had recently built one. But either my unwillingness to commute or the social anxiety of joining a group of strangers kept me from going.
Read more ...

Trying tungsten-balanced film had been on my list of experiments for a while, and staying in Osaka felt like the perfect opportunity to shoot it. The city is incredibly bright at night, with neon lights everywhere, making it an ideal setting for a film that thrives in artificial lighting. The tungsten-balanced film is designed for artificial lighting, and if you use it during the day, your photos will have a strong blue cast. This happens because the film is balanced for 3200K tungsten light, which is much warmer than daylight. Without a corrective filter, daylight will shift photos toward blue tones.
Read more ...