“Every shot has to count”: switching from analog photography to the X-PRO1 (Jockum Klenell)
Being a die hard analog fan and slow process photography it would seem highly unlikely to work with a camera such as the Fuji x-pro1. When I travel I always bring, [shoplink 14068 ebay]rolleiflex 66[/shoplink], [shoplink 14069 ebay]Hasselblad CM500 66[/shoplink], [shoplink 14070 ebay]Pentax 67[/shoplink], Nikonos (if I want to go in the water), [shoplink 14071 ebay]Canon Ftb[/shoplink] and a horrible but fun little [shoplink 14072 ebay]Leica C3[/shoplink]. For work I use a Canon 5d M2 and a Canon 1Ds M2. These two I very rarely use for my own work.
It seems to be a moment for every camera and every film and every format. Among the things I appreciate greatly with analog photography is the fact that on one roll of film you have 36 shots, 12 or 10. Meaning, unless you bring a shopping bag of film with you, every shot has to count. So for my 5 days together with the Fuji x-pro1 I was able to go to Calais in the north of France for some location scouting for a client of mine. I went there for a day and I brought one memory card of 2 G and no possibility of charging the digital negatives to my computer. This left me with only 72 shots in RAW. Same thing for the other short surf-trip to Zeeland in the Netherlands, one memory card, 72 shots. This way every shot has to count.
These here are the shots I like the most from those 2 days at the coast. I used the x-pro 1 like I use my analog cameras but this time I had all of them in one. The x-pro 1 combines all the the great things of modern digital specs with a robust classic feel. The digital images are very good and for some strange reason they invite me to experiment with different effects in photoshop. This is something which I very rarely do with my Canon 5d M2. Perhaps this is because the x-pro1 is a far more playful camera to work with. When slow is needed, its slow. When snappy, its snappy.
On a last note, I love the small ‘imperfections’ of analog photography and even more the idea of being at some remote place with a pocket full of undeveloped rolls of film. The excitement of going to the shop to get your dia-films and searching for that one gem of a photo is to be compared to the excitement of a child by the christmas tree. The x-pro1 is like most other digital cameras but its robust like body, its weight and rangefinder tricks one in a lovely way into believing that your shooting on film. It makes you look a little longer, search a little more to snap the shot that you want.
Fuji X-PRO1: [shopcountry 12882]
Check out my work on www.jockumklenell.com
