Still Shot

Still Shot

Tuesday’s are Jay’s days, but due to the holiday things got a bit mixed up. With nothing on board to feature, I just started writing. One thing lead to another and I had two thousand words on canceled events, dedicated reality TV fans, and the irrelevant pimple on the face of it all. It felt fantastic to write, but irresponsible to publish. There’s enough of that bullshit in the world today. I don’t need to add fuel.

So instead, I’m gonna go a bit off topic today. I haven’t shot a car in almost two years. A lot of that has been due to Covid, but also because I’ve felt a bit handicap by my equipment. In the past, I’ve always focused on vintage film cameras and old lenses – justifying this by comparing the general depreciation of modern equipment to the skyrocketing values of the old stuff.

The problem is, I just haven’t had the time or the patience to shoot and develop film as of late. And if you aren’t 100% into doing that sort of thing, your results suffer.

I’ve always wanted a modern digital camera body to use seamlessly with my vintage lenses and I’ve done quite a bit of experimenting with this in the past to varying degrees of success. It’s just that it always comes with compromises that are hard to swallow or time consuming to defeat. Over time, this struggle becomes both exhausting and expensive. So much so, that I just sort of lost the passion to create that content.

Last year, I did a small favor for a buddy of mine in the camera industry – not thinking much of it and certainly not expecting anything in return. Almost a year later and out of the blue, he decided to pay me back 100-fold and I’m now the owner of a camera that I’ve dreamt about for over a decade.

At best, I’m an amateur photographer. But my use case is so obscure that my needs outweigh my talent. See, I learned everything I know about photography by copying Steve Coonan. He uses the low available light of the golden hour along with long shutter speeds to create perfect portraits of the cars we all admire. I strive to do the same, but using vintage era Leica glass that twists onto both film and digital camera bodies.

The film part is easy, but time consuming. The digital part, well… I’ve never really been able to do what I want as I’ve never had a digital camera that meshes seamlessly with both me and my lenses. I do now… and holy hell fellas – for the first time in a couple of years, I feel like making content again.

There’s just no telling what this all may lead to, but I’m excited to get back at it… and that’s far more positive and important than some overflowing pot of stirred bullshit. So, let’s go!

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