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100 strangers: norm (54/100)

Hasselblad 2000FCW

150mm Sonnar F f/2.8

Kodak Tri-X @ 200

Rodinal 1+50, 10% reduction dev time

 

This picture is #54 in my 100 strangers project . Find out more about the project and see pictures taken by other photographers at the 100 Strangers Flickr Group page.

 

I found Norm reading outside a coffee shop in downtown Littleton, CO. I was having kind of a dry day, and was considering throwing in the towel. I passed Norm once, and thought "I like that hat, so maybe I'll ask this guy for a portrait". A few steps later, I turned around and asked him.

 

He agreed right away, and immediately identified the Hasselblad hanging across my chest. So naturally, we got right into a photography discussion. I asked if he had shot a Hasselblad in the past, and he said "no, but I had a Leica M3 and a Nikon FE, but now I shoot digital". So we discussed the convenience factor of digital (and that's really all it is, folks -- convenience) vs film, and the different way that each medium renders light.

 

Norm is shooting an Olympus C-8080 camera, at 8.0MP. Norm, if you read this, and were confused by my puzzled reaction when you said Olympus C-8080, I was reacting because Nikon had a film model called the N8080. I was momentarily crossed-up!

 

Anyway, one interesting thing Norm mentioned is that he's gotten very large prints (24x30" --or even larger?) from 5.0MP cameras using interpolation software to resize the image while keeping the detail reasonably smooth.

 

Tech Notes

This shot is with the insanely good 150mm Sonnar F. I may have shot this wide-open at f/2.8, but I suspect not because the DoF is truly paper-thin at close distances, and there's is pretty reasonable DoF in this shot (at least the plane of Norm's face is fully in focus).

 

My development regime here was a little different than usual. When shooting in sunny/contrasty conditions, I normally shoot Tri-X at EI 200 and cut development by 20%. I cut it only by 10% this time since I shot this roll in pretty mixed lighting and I didn't want the shady shots to come out too dull (this shot was in open shade).

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Uploaded on June 11, 2012
Taken on June 10, 2012