Spotlight: Great Wall PF-1

Last week, I drove over to Mississippi in order to purchase a bulk of old film cameras from an estate. Within this group of cameras, along with its original box, case, and instructions, was a Great Wall PF-1. A cheap Chinese copy of the Fujica ST-F, the PF-1 is a full-plastic SLR. That's right, there's an actual mirror, prism, and focusing screen system within this hipster wet dream. Honestly, this camera's feature set is somewhat incredible considering its Holga-esque build quality. There's a built-in flash, and even metering! For the light meter, you press a little silver button on the front of the camera, and in the viewfinder you'll see a green light indicating correct exposure, or a red light, meaning you're either over or under exposed. The meter can be set for either 100, 200, or 400 ISO film. Both the light meter and the flash are powered by two AA batteries.

Exposure is controlled by adjusting the aperture ring on the base of the lens. The shutter fires at a set mechanical speed of 1/60 (Though, oddly, according to the instruction manual, at f/16, the shutter fires at 1/370 of a second... could be a typo?). With the fixed 40mm f/2.8 lens, you can focus as close as 0.9 meters, which is a bit pathetic for an SLR. There's a split-image assist on the focus screen that makes getting your subject into focus a relatively pain-free experience.

Ergonomics are pretty decent. The only tricky part to operation is remembering to couple the focusing ring to the aperture ring (by means of a sliding plastic tab) when you want to use the flash. This is how the PF-1 determines correct flash exposure. Speaking of ergonomics, I love the camera's adorable knurled plastic film advance wheel; it reminds me of the disposable Kodak cameras of my youth. The PF-1 is small enough for a coat pocket, and the plastic construction means it's quite light and easy to carry around all day.

Here are some photographs I made with the Great Wall PF-1. I used Kodak HP5+ film.

Collage: One Day (#1)

For this work, I cut up an entire strip from my 5 Days piece, and turned it into a 20" x 20" collage. All photos in the collage were made at regular intervals throughout the course of a day. I set a timer to go off every 20 minutes, and photographed whatever I was focused on at the time. The resulting mess is an abstract representation of one day in my life.

Myself Through Time and Place (Part 3)

The latest batch of images in my ongoing series, Myself Through Time and Place. Displayed in order of creation. All made with my Nikon F2 and 20mm f/2.8 lens. 

A Walk Through Burbank Gardens

A Walk Through Burbank Gardens is a collage I made from roughly 175 photographs. I made these photographs while on a walk through "Burbank Gardens", the fancy name given to the cluster of homes in Gentilly that I currently live in. I photographed what I saw and interacted with on my walk (most notably the friendly cat in the bottom-right), and the resulting collage is my somewhat whimsical interpretation of the banal experience. For the photographs, I used an Olympus Pen FT half-frame camera with a 38mm lens and Kodak Portra 160 film. The finished piece is 24"x18" on wood panel. 

Plates: Amalgamation (My Father)

For these photographs, I took the concept from my piece, Amalgamation (My Love), and applied it to re-photographing pictures of my father.  Each of these 3 composite photographs are made up of exposures of photos depicting my dad at different points in his life. All 3 composites are comprised of the same 17 photographs, in which my dad's age ranges between 4 and 72 years old. I find it interesting how different each of these amalgamations look, considering they come from the same source images.

I used my Nikon F4 with a 105mm f/2.8 macro lens, and Ilford HP5+ film.

Plate: Campfire

Plate: Comic Con

Our trip to New Orleans Comic Con. Made with my Nikon F4.