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Kamera No Hitsuji #1: Black and White Sakura

Added 2024-06-10 18:54:54 +0000 UTC

Hello! I'm starting a new series called 'Kamera No Hitsuji'; I'll be showing off my photos, talking about my cameras and anything else photography related.

I finally scanned in my black and white sakura photos. Typically sakura are always photographed in color, and that makes sense. Blush pink sakura on mossy green trees are a classic symbol of spring! In Portland however, most of our sakura are rather pale, even white in some cases. Being that the color is more understated, I thought it might be interesting to do the photos in black and white.

Flowers can be difficult to capture in black and white though. You need strong directional light, a shallow depth of field, and high contrast, or else the flowers all blend into each other and the photo loses focus. To achieve this, I shot with my Nikkor AF 60mm 2.8D lens between a 5.6 and 2.8 aperture. I used a neutral density filter so I could shoot at a shallow depth of field in the harsh daylight.

For film, I went with JCH Streetpan 400, pulled one stop to 200 iso. Streetpan is known for being a grainy high contrast film. I figured for close up work it might be a little too rough shot and developed at box speed, so I pulled it one stop in order to reduce grain and get sharper images. The effect worked, although the negatives came out a little underexposed. I think in the future if I'm developing at 200 I'll be metering for 100 iso.

All of these were shot on my Nikon F3 HP. I have a ton of cameras, about 25 or so at this point? I love them all, but the F3 is my go-to camera for when I need to get serious work done. There's no understating how capable that camera is. Which makes sense, it was THE choice for professional photographers throughout the film photography era. I might do a deep dive on it sometime!

I think my favorite of the roll is the first one I posted, although I really dig the double exposure with the bridge as well. I took some color sakura photos as well, maybe I'll add those to this post later once I scan them!