quinta-feira, novembro 12, 2015

 

Iceland 2015 with the Fujifilm GS645S Pro




























Trip to Iceland on last April.

All pictures below were shot with this astonishing Fujifilm GS645S Pro using Pro400H film developed and scanned at Carmencita Film Lab in Valencia, Spain.

Since I enjoy so much the medium format film size, I found the 6x4,5 as an "affordable" perfect ratio - 15 pictures per roll! I would like to say some words about the all-rounder Fujifilm GS645S Pro rangefinder medium format film camera. I bought one of those in 2nd hand, a couple years ago, and I got it clean and properly calibrated here in Munich. This work has been done by a very experienced cameras repair specialist, which is still doing his amazing magical job. If someone want his contact, just drop me a message. I'm using this 645 Fuji from time to time as a main camera for the long weekend family trips, some street photography but also as the film camera companion to the digital camera, during larger holiday travels. Because it is "so small" and almost inexpensive makes it an incredible portable medium format system. I hope my humble words and pictures could inspire someone who may be thinking about getting one of those ... or to visit Iceland as well.

So, I took this 645 Fuji along with the Canon digital body (and a couple lenses more) on our last year family trip to Iceland in April. Once the Canon was being used a lot to make movies. Essencial, movies of our toddler Maria. The Fuji GS645S was used as the main medium to obtain stills from these days in Iceland. As extra stuff, I've only taken two packs with Pro 400H 120 film rolls and a spare pair of batteries within my bag. Not much extra volume at all.

Addressing my top3 cons and pros about this camera I would say:
1) The lack of bigger apertures: I know this is an issue of such rangefinder design but I found the f4 not sufficient for the bokehlicious portraits.
2) Looks fragile, I could not access how fragile actually is but it's made on "pure plastic" and the lens is protected by one metal bumper on the front, which might already say a lot about it.
3) The neck strap have to be placed on the side, which I must say I found very silly and unpractical.

On the good side:
1) I found the lens excellent! Sharp even at f4 and they are also tiny if you compare to other medium format camera systems.
2) Since is a manual focus camera, the ability to quickly focus your subject is a mandatory criteria. With this camera I have lost very few pictures due to defocus. Since we are talking about a medium format camera the finder is huge and the focusing area is bright and big enough so you don't have to care if you ask someone else, without experience on manual focusing, to frame your own portrait.
3) Great quality-cost ratio. Paying around 200 Euros you are able to obtain images with such unique medium-format look.

I own a few medium format cameras and this is a pure joy to use, definitely one of my favourite cameras.





































domingo, novembro 01, 2015

 

Falta o verão!