Kim St. Dennis Photography

Quick update. Havent posted in a bit, but Ive been busy. The Holiday season came and went. With that shooting was put on a hold and in place rolled in family time. Christmas is a bit like an ant infestation, it just takes over everything! Some quick notes on what Im doing.


Gallery show opening night!


Tonight at the Altadena Public Library 5 pieces of my work will be shown in conjunction with the Aperture Society of LA. Its a meet up group that Im apart of. Well long story short, the library curator, Tina Wallin joined our meetup group and found out that we were looking for a show venue. She was kind enough to open her library up to us and now we have opening night! The show runs all through March 2010.








Hasselblad... Yum.
(photo from images.fixya.com)
So for Christmas I was the lucky recepient of a Hasselblad 503CX medium format kit. This included a 80mm Carl Zeiss f2.8 lens, a 120mm film back (same as hulga and Diana stuff), and a waist level viewfinder. Well let me start by saying I love it. Its mirror action makes a bang loud enough that people stop and comments. Ive been experimenting with MF films and Fuji instant film a lot. Its a blast. I wasnt the only lucky one though. The wife picked up a Panasonic GF1 4/3rds camera al a me. Although now I just steal it when i want can.



Last up: Rolleiflex 6000 and Hasselblad H

So heres the thing now Im shooting with this medium format (MF) stuff and Im loving it. So its got me thinking about image quality, taking my time shooting, etc. and Ive started to pine for a medium format digital. Maybe some auto focus for as the eyes get worse and a digital back just to make things easy. So whats that 20K? Why yes, new in the box it is.

I bet you thought I was going to say no it was cheap. Well browsing the 'bay as Im now refering to it, I see I can pick up some older gear for MUCH less. Well lets say 1/2 or more. And of course, this leads to more though on buying new things. Its a diseas my wife tells me. Like David Hobby says, "I can rationalize anything to myself, its my wife who I need to rationalize it to." That leads to the final though on the matter and some tech notets. Should I sell the Nikon gear and go MF? Well see. Ok stop reading its the tech notes.

Nikon is easy with iso 50-6400 1/3 shutter stops and the same with F stops and internal metering and fast focus (eat that canon users). Here is the down side, color sucks and the sensor is small. The up side on the MF stuff flash sync for the hassy is 1/800 and the rollei is 1/1000. Lenses are insainly expensive at 1500-2500 each (all zeiss and the other germans for rollei though), the digital backs are iso 800 max although 2-3x the sensor size of FF 35mm and I really like the waist level viewfinder. So well think on it...

-K