Steak Sauce

I shot my first two rolls of film using the Canon A-1. Manufactured in 1984, the A-1 is/was ichiban, or the best, for a 35 mm SLR of its time. Like a fine bottle of steak sauce, the A-1 has aged well with the passage of time. As you can see, the images it produces are still top-quality. I believe what Ben said when he mentioned that this camera was used to take some of the best photos appearing in Time, National Geographic and other magazines of its time.

Not surprisingly, I first chose to point the A-1 at the puppies. These were taken in the afternoon with indirect light through my bedroom window.







To test its durability and ruggedness, I took the camera with me on a hike up Black Mountain with Alf, Denise, Jimmy and Jon. This was also one of the first times Rocky and Baby were let off the leash and allowed to follow me freely as we walked.





Ok, dam, so I just noticed that I'm experiencing some degradation in image quality as I scale the images down so they can fit on the blog. I apologize for this, but in the meanwhile, you may see some inconsistency in the size of the images posted until I settle down on a format that gives the right blend of download speed and image quality. Any suggestions on addressing this issue are welcome.

Anyway, back to our regularly scheduled programming...

A few of the pictures that came out really well at Toe's B-Day bash. If you compare these shots from the ones I took with the pocket digital, you can see that the control of aperture allowed me to mitigate the white wash effect from the flash.

I love this shot of Jenn. Isn't she beautiful? Too bad the focus was a little fuzzy. This could be a wine ad in some magazine.



Another wine ad shot. I'll let Toe explain the tiara...



I set up this shot thinking it would be on the artsy side and I'm slightly pleased with the resulting chiaroscuro effect.



My second roll of film was devoted entirely to Rocky and Baby at OB Pier. I had an errand to run downtown, so I figured I'd take the dogs along for a photo shoot while I was out. It was a little early in the afternoon for the best light to be out, but we did the best with what we could.