Rolleicord In Montréal

I brought a much fuller set of camera gear to Montréal during my latest business trip in March and April. I previously didn't think I'd have the room to pack a full bag of DSLR gear and a second backpack containing my work laptop, but this time around I made it happen. In fact, I was even able to bring along my treasured little Rolleicord III by wedging into a space next to my laptop in the second backpack. While I didn't have quite as much play time as I had hoped on this trip, I still managed to get out a couple of times to enjoy the cold weather (I'm a Florida native so I can say "enjoy") and occasionally snap a photo or two. To be safe, I had all of the negatives processed before returning home, so there would be no chance of X-ray damage.

While I didn't really come up with anything amazing while I was shooting with this camera, I did end up with a couple of decent shots.  I think I might be too worried about being seen as something other than just a guy taking a picture, I don't know.  I always want to sit still for a while and concentrate on a scene, gathering information and finding the composition that best speaks to me.  Something about this bicycle spoke to me, with its odd mismatched brake levers and weird MacGuyver'ed rear mud guard, half buried in snow and forgotten over the long winter months in Montréal.  There was a great photo here, and I knew it as soon as I saw it.  But then I quickly started to feel self-conscious, wondering what those people down the street were thinking of this weird guy hanging out by someone's bicycle. Or wondering when someone was going to bust out running down the stairs with a baseball bat, mistaking me for a bike thief or creepy trespasser.  As a result of that insecurity, I ended up sticking around just long enough to meter the scene, dial it in, and fire off a shot without spending any time on composing it.  It left me with a photo that I didn't really love, and I still wonder what I would have ended up with if only I had spent more time.


One thing that I did learn about the Rolleicord on this trip was that while I might be able to consistently handhold at 1/30s with an SLR with a 50mm lens, I am not as good at handholding a TLR at that speed.  I think this is partly because the shutter release lever is on the front of the camera and requires that you first pull it off to one side to cock it, then swing to the other side to release it.  You have to hold the camera with one hand, while moving the lever with the other while taking care not to get your hand in front of the lens.  I lost a few shots due to shake on my first couple of rolls, until I forced myself to be more conscious of it.  It was sometimes difficult since the look I was going for often required a lot of depth, and since I was not carrying a tripod with me, I had to come up with a good compromise.

I also started to notice some problems with the film advance.  When you trip the shutter, it unlocks the film advance, allowing you to turn the advance dial until it locks again. Presumably, that means you're on the next frame.  What was happening maybe once or twice per roll was that the advance would go too far, or not far enough before locking.  So if I was on frame 3, I would advance the knob until it locked, thinking I was on frame 4.  But I would actually only be on frame 3.5, meaning I would double-expose half of frame 3, rendering both 3 and 4 worthless. This is a problem that I need to find a solution for if I'm going to keep using this camera.

One final example from my trip, a photo that rather surprised me by its popularity.  This one I wasn't too concerned about the people around me because there really wasn't anyone, but while I was intrigued by the zig-zagging fire escape and the old, urban feel of the building, I knew for a fact that the parallax error was going to absolutely ruin this photo.  I took it anyway, hoping to be able to do something with it after the fact.  I did my best to keep the converging lines centered in the frame and took the original photo, which as expected, looked terrible.  Then I did a perspective adjustment and crop to it (similar to raising one side of the paper under the enlarging lens in a darkroom, I know it's not exactly the same but I had to do something) to even it out.

The result I deemed "passable" but quickly and inexplicably became one of my more popular photos on Flickr.  Within about 36 hours it had been viewed nearly a thousand times and marked as a "favorite" by more than 90 accounts, and was listed on Explore as one of the most popular photos of that day.

Anyway, I had fun carrying the Rolleicord around with me in Montréal, but I have to admit that I was happy I brought my DSLR (a Canon EOS 5D Mark III) with me as well.  I love shooting film but it's taking me a while to get back into the zone.  It also gave me a chance to play around with my latest lens, a 14mm Rokinon that will be the subject of a later post. If you're interested, here are a few photos of my trip, mostly shot with the 5D3 with a couple of Rolleicord shots in there as well.