Posts by Zach Margolis

I finally got ahold of Leica Monopan 50 film stock, a fine-grain ISO 50 black and white film. After trying Adox Scala 50 in LA I mostly had a sense of what to expect. Comparing the two rolls, I think the Monopan has sharper contrast, and the Scala has more shades of gray. I like them both but will probably continue with my tried-and-true T-Max 100 because it’s just easier for me to buy.

For a lot of this roll (but not quite the entire thing), I tried out the “ƒ/8 and be there” philosophy of metering and shooting. The idea is that instead of futzing with the aperture and trying to tailor the exposure for each shot, just use ƒ/8. With its pretty forgiving zone-focus boundaries, you can ballpark the focus distance and trust that it’s right, focus on quickly capturing the moment and then living in it, rather than spending a lot of time getting things right and missing the moment.

• Architecture
• Landmarks in the fog
• Tuesday Walks
• Portraits
• Walking across the Golden Gate
• The Rest

Architecture

One big theme from this roll was eye-catching building textures and shapes.

Seeing how the arches in my June post turned out primed me to look for more of them on this roll.

Landmarks in the fog

A mini-theme of this roll was SF landmarks with their heads lost in the fog.

Tuesday Walks

I’ve been continuing my Tuesday morning walks to work and keep visiting Lafayette Park.

Reviewing this shot of the klaxxon, I thought I caught a shot of a helicopter. Upon closer inspection, I think this is some sort of insect. From the direction its facing, it almost looks like it is inside my camera or lens. Thankfully the bug did not seem to appear in any other shots, and a quick inspection of my camera did not turn up any bugs.

I really like how candid this shot of the tennis players turned out. I’m still trying to figure out my comfort level taking street photos of strangers, and I think that since the two people aren’t identifiable, I feel okay with this.

Portraits

I got a few portrait photos of people I actually know as well

Walking across the Golden Gate

This part of the roll was where I leaned in to “ƒ/8 and be there” the most. It was very sunny out, so I knew I could just meter one time and not sweat it too much. I shot at ƒ/8 and 1/250sm, and having that out of my mine let me enjoy catching up with my friends Alison and Amanda while we walked across the Golden Gate Bridge (for their first time!).

On our way back, a gigantic container ship passed under the bridge. We stopped to look at it, and since I had my fixed shutter speed and aperture, I could snap a few photos and focus on framing and moving to the right spots.

I love this last shot because it shows the bar pilot boat approaching to transfer a pilot onto the boat (usually this transfer happens outside the bay where we can’t see it), and also that the the grain is fine enough to see the windsurfers playing behind the boats.

The Rest

These shots defintely exemplify the strong contrast of the film stock.