A year that was and one to come has been in my thoughts these days. It was  only during a bout  of insomnia on Friday that in desperation I consulted Google in my Galaxy A5 (I have not taken one single photograph with it since I obtained it a year and a bit ago). I looked up body cap pinholes for Fuji cameras. I found a few sites. On the next day I called that Vancouver gem that Leo’s Camera on Granville is. I asked Jeff Gin if he had these bodycaps. He did!

I instantly went to get one. This body cap is for Nikon cameras. Because my Fuji X-E1 and X-E3 cameras can accommodate an adapter (which I have) I am able to use that Nikon body cap. Here is a look at photographs I took some years ago with a Mamiya RB-67 body cap pinhole. My exposures on 100ISO film were long. Using one direct Dynalite flash head I punched it as many times as I could for one minute and fifteen seconds.

Jonas at Leo's pinhole body cap photograph January 6 2018

Now with that Fuji X-E3 and the Nikon body cap pinhole I took a picture of Jonas hand held with my ISO rating at 3200. It is not all that sharp as pinhole pictures are never all that sharp. But I might have gotten a bit more detail if I had put the camera on a tripod.

I went home and I did put my camera on a tripod. I set it at 3200 ISO and my exposure was 8 seconds on bulb.

The image which I further “fixed” with Corel Paint Shop Pro X2 on the cyanotype application is one that I like particularly as it all happened within hours of thinking about it.

It was my Rosemary who almost five years ago urged me to buy a digital camera and I did and with the help of Jeff Gin at Leo’s his suggestion of the Fuji X-E1 was an intelligent one. That camera has taken me to places unknown and I have been met with all kinds of surprises.

These Fuji cameras have the adaptor for Nikon lenses (and others including the Leica and I have an adaptor for my Summicron 50mm F-2 lens from my Leica IIIF). What these adaptors can do for me is that I can attach that Nikon 50mm F-1.4 lens I have and when I use it wide open I get the beauty of very shallow depth of field.  It was that combination that led to the photograph that I took of Itzel and her son Elías in 2017.

Itzel & Elías 2017

2017 was also the year that I re-discovered the beauty of the pictures I used to take with my iPhone3G. When it broke I bought the Galaxy and forgot about it. When Benson at Richmond’s Powersonic Computers told me he could fix it I took his challenge and now I have a capability to take pictures with a look that is inimitable. There is a paradox here!  Benson charged me $50 to repair the iPhone (and that included a new charging cable I had lost) but I spent $67 at Leo’s for a good device which allows me to clamp the phone to my tripod for sharper pictures in my little Kitsilano, Vancouver studio. Here are some results.

Olena - iPhone3G 2017

All the above has happened with now with the phenomenal entrance of an intelligent subject who is willing to go through a lengthy photographic relationship in which we will collaborate the idea of eroticism as seen by older people (me) and not quite that of my subject who is 47, more or less.

This all projects a creative year for this obsolete – redundant & retired photographer who is hoping he will live long and prosper so he can try out all those little tricks that came with 2017.

The Mamiya RB-67 pinhole body cap and the Fuji pinhole body cap