Hello everyone, Happy New Year.  Once again, I know fortunes and habits rarely change with just the simple upping of a digit in a calendar but I hope everyone has a restful and productive start to the new year (and the rest of the various new years coming up later) ;).

As you can see from my previous posts it was a surprise and a delight to have the venerable monks who are on the Walk for Peace movement visit our community in metro Atlanta.  So many visitors to see a small glimpse of our culture and customs in Snellville the past few days.  If you follow my work you know we’ve had a ton of events, parties and festivals at that temple.  I have been going there for over 20 years after all.

I opted to just post my photo story without captions or descriptions, just the photos from my perspective to best show our multicultural community.  As with everything these days there are so many different points of view and the whole social media bandwagon surrounding the walk is just wild.  Drilling down into the comments section anywhere can be an exercise in frustration for sure.  But thanks everyone for the reposts and kind words on my work.  For important and historic works I generally have no problem fulfilling my role as the “unknown” photojournalist.  However I know I was in most people’s shots. 😉

(I used 3 cameras that day, a Nikon and 70-200mm, Canon with a 50mm, a GFX with 35-70mm, and an Instax.  The shots above are with the 70-200mm.)

Definitely a historic experience for all involved.

So to also start off this year, here’s a good old fashioned blog post with food and photos.  This fun hangout is about us browsing used book stores and me practicing with my random cameras.

SPOT #1: Book Nook Decatur

I can’t believe I ran into this American compilation of Manga that I originally owned back in the day.  I got rid of my all comics, manga, games, etc years ago and this was definitely a blast from the past.  I think I bought it in Athens and I remember really enjoying Parasyte (which was made into a show?).  However I’m not paying $20 to recapture some of my youth.

I did however spend $10 and got this amazing Alice in Wonderland (the live movie) photo/art/bts book.  The images inside are amazing and would be well at home in D&D/Dark Souls.  I’ll have to rewatch the move to see if my opinions on it have changed.  And did they just have to put the price tag there?

Finally, another lovely subject for the lo res Kodak Charmera camera!  The animated GIF above is from a converted Charmera video clip.

As far as the Charmera, in decent lighting it’s okay.  In other scenes the auto exposure is just a bit too bright, and the mushy noise reduction is just a bit much in many scenes.  Obviously it really does depend on the subject.  In a future post I’ll compare it with the various old iPhones/iPads that I have here.

SPOT #2: Half Price Books

We didn’t buy anything here, just browsed.  I got lucky here a few times with some dirt cheap Star Log magazines.  Even one with Seven of Nine on the cover!

SPOT #3: Decatur

Downtown Decatur has a neat book store with so many cool visuals everywhere.  Sometimes it’s a big sensory overload as I tend to want all the books.  Instead though I got the chance to put in some practice time with some of my odd and unique gear:

So I spent last week being really productive.  I organized all my camera gear and junk in boxes.  Misc cords and wires were all sorted, and it also gave me an opportunity to dust off gear I totally forgot about or haven’t used in ages.  One of them is the lens above, a somewhat rare plastic “3D lens in a cap” made by Loreo.  I bought it back in 2011 I think and you can no longer find the FF version.  It’s quite an oddity and the resulting pictures have made an appearance a few times here on my site.  One aspect I never thought about just using it for (besides the neat 3D effect) is that with this lens, the photos are naturally portrait/vertical oriented.  This is a cool way to somewhat get a knockoff version of the new Fuji X Half or a digital version of an Instax Mini.  Especially with the insanely small f/11 and f/22 apertures on this lens.

On this adventure I also brought along my Instax 210, which I dropped onto the concrete at the temple a day before.  The body split a bit, but I put gaff tape on it and it somewhat works as normal.  It’s a shame as these are also somewhat rare, with the 300 costing way too much on the used market.  All because the new 400 series Instax Wides, you have no control over the exposure or the flash.  The Instax 41 had too low of a battery so I didn’t get any shots on it sadly.

So the 210 did survive the fall on to the concrete! But it’s definitely going back on the retired camera bench.

I’m not the only one on the internet that wants to know how to mimic the look of the Instax film on digital.  There’s just something so nice about the “incorrect” cooler white balance and low dynamic range of all Instax.  I think the setup below might get somewhat close. 

It’s my original X100 with an amazing cheap Godox iM22 manual flash.  That thing is tiny and has a built in rechargeable battery and 5 power levels.  The X100 obviously has its own flash, but the recycle times can really KO the small battery in cold weather.

I think the randomness of the manual power settings of the flash, combined with cooler temp leanings of Fuji digital are a decent starting point.  Turning off the sharpness when you are editing the raw files helps with the Instax look too.

So here are example images shot with the Loreo 3D lens.  It’s split screen because when you use a proper viewer at the right distance, your left and right eye pretty much sends the images to be blended in your mind.  It’s the same effect of a Viewmaster and Stereoprints.

Again the coolness of the Loreo 3D lens is that I can crop the left or right shot and get a nice vertical image with a lo fi vibe.  I used a small Canon flash to help out the f/11 aperture, which is crazy tiny.

Back to some more Fuji X100 shots:

SPOT #4: Thrift Store

I got an Apple mouse and a 58mm UV filter.  The mouse was $1.50 and the filter was oddly more at $2.60. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

SPOT #5: Clarkston

“Dessert” was Guava drink from one of the local Asian grocery stores.  Where I live I enjoy having Assi and Super H down the street, but man would it be nice to have some of these smaller groceries without all the traffic.  Being able to pop in and buy a drink or pack of ramen is next level. 

The sunset was really lovely, making Clarkston look like a movie scene.

Since it gets cold and dark at like 5pm still it was time to go home.  It was a fun few hours in Atlanta browsing books and testing gear.