Lawrence Ripsher

Pentax 67ii + Pentax 105mm f/2.4 on Fujifilm Neopan 100 Acros

And now for something a little different. I tried some splash photography over the weekend to build up relevant samples for the Zeiss 100mm f2 Macro (for Canon mounts) I’m trying out. This type of work is not a forte for me but I knew enough to take a decent crack at it. This is all manual so it takes a lot of patience (and an appalling hit rate) to get right. If I recall, ISO was up in the ISO 2000ish range with shutter speeds at 1/1000 and f/10 …

My first colour shots with the Pentax 67ii.
I’ve been waking up to spectacular sunrises recently and on Thursday I decided to chance it, get up earlier at 6am and drive out in the hope I’d be lucky with the weather. The sunrise certainly didn’t disappoint – clear skies, just enough cloud and beautiful pink hues. I drove over to Lake Washington (which is on my way to work) and as I walked down to the lake, the colours were starting to reach their most intense. Someone was already down by …

The last images I’ll share from the first two rolls of film I shot with the Pentax 67ii last weekend (and have been posting this week). It turned out to be a great coulpe of rolls – with a usable hit rate of about 80% from just 20 shots. Normally I hover around 3 – 4 shots out of 12 (for 6×6 MF) or 8 – 12 shots for a 35mm roll of 36 shots – so this was substantially higher. Will be interesting to see if I get anything …

I met an Irish photographer in Seattle the other day who happens to live here. He was carrying his treasuerd Leica which he was obviously happy with. We talked briefly and he made the comment that was the best place in the world to do street photography. I was surprised. Compared to the places I’ve been I find Seattle to be fairly run of the mill. It’s a wonderful city to live, with close access to the mountains, sea, etc – but for true street photographer, it doesn’t come close …

Pentax 67ii + Pentax 105mm f/2.4 on Fujifilm Neopan 100 Acros

Pentax 67ii + Pentax 105mm f/2.4 lens on Fujifilm Neopan 100 Acros

A few weeks ago I posted a shot from this location. Yesterday I was stuck for ideas on what to shoot so went back and the benches were still laid out like this… Here are two takes.

Sometimes it just works… it’s a magical feeling when an image comes together exactly as you imagined. You notice a scene, see the potential, carve your own view of it and your imagination is realised. It’s not about how good the image is – it’s about realising your vision.
This doesn’t happen often but when it does, all the struggles are worthwhile. I had one such experience today.

Pentax 67ii + Pentax 105mm f/2.4 on Fujifilm Neopan 100 Acros

As I mentioned yesterday, I recently took ownership of a Pentax 67ii and the one thing that had me worried was the mirror bounce…. this was largely down to reviews which speak of the difficulty in handholding the camera. The Luminous Landscape writes about how ghosting is possible even on a tripod with long lenses / slow shutter speeds while a seller on Craigslist offered 50lbs worth of sandbags free with his 67ii gear… Given I don’t even own a tripod (and have never shot with one), this was obviously …