 Yo what up welcome back to another episode where I talk about some film photography gear and other stuff that I like this year And if after you heard that sentence you're like yes daddy. I'm ready. Give it to me. Then this is the video for you I guess well It's that time of year again when it's 115 degrees outside and I avoid going out to shoot like it's the plague and Actually, there's also a plague outside too. Instead. Let's stay inside where we're safe from 2020 and discuss some cool people in gear This one kind of goes without saying but I'll say it anyway without a doubt the camera that I've used non-stop this year is the Mamiya 7 It's just too perfect of a camera and that's the problem if it ever breaks or gets lost I might have to shave my head change my name and sign up for the first rocket to Mars Because I'll be a hundred percent done with earth if I can't shoot the Mamiya 7 anymore I have the 80 millimeter f4 lens and without a doubt. It is the sharpest lens I've ever used corner to corner The ma'am 7 shoots 6x7 negatives on medium format or 120 film and it does it all by being a lightweight Rangefinder camera, which means it doesn't have a huge mirror in it that slaps up and slaps down every time you take a shot Unlike a certain 6x7 camera that shall remain nameless Possibly the only qualm I have with the Mamiya 7 besides its sky-high price is that the lens doesn't collapse down into the body Like it did on the Mamiya 6 it's possible that Mamiya ditched that design because they realized it reminded everyone of a certain Bodily appendage on a cold day, but nevertheless it would have been a really cool thing to have especially for travel This is an obvious one to me. It's tea hopper Not only are her videos a wealth of information, but they're also aesthetically pleasing She does a lot of the usual film and camera reviews, but what I think is pretty cool She also does more commentary style videos as well as I guess you could call it photography philosophy videos You know messing up with Saturation and contrast in order to achieve it. You can actually do it naturally I mean if you look at people like William Megalston and you know William Christenbury I found myself recently studying and trying to understand the distinct style of certain painters such as Edward Hopper who I've been inspired by since Well birth so naturally I found her Norman Rockwell video to be quite interesting wait Edward Hopper Tea hopper correlation distant relative the mystery deepens in her video She breaks down Norman Rockwell's distinct style and how it could correlate to photography or more specifically film photography with its hundreds of different Emulsions so go check out her channel if you're looking for more film photography YouTube in your life and tell her to keep doing what she's doing because It's awesome, and it's working. Hi. This is a channel about film photography mainly I picked up a few books this year because it's important to support other artists in the community And it's also important to study every move they make so you can crush all your competitors all jokes aside One book definitely stands out to me. Walking's fall bard is Willem Verbeek's new book, zine, personal ice diary Whatever you want to call it This is an obvious choice to me because not only if I always wanted to go to Svalbard But I've also always wanted to be Willem Verbeek Walking's Svalbard is about Willem's one-week stint in the northernmost city in the world, Longyearbyen Like my soul, the landscape was constantly encompassed in darkness and ice because Svalbard is in the Arctic Circle Willem shot all these photos on his Mamiya RZ67 which is impressive to me because I don't know a whole lot of people that like walking around with that camera The book is beautiful and honestly truly one of a kind. The snowy transparent cover that they did is really goddamn cool Here's a pro tip. For this book, stick it in the freezer overnight and then read it. It'll really feel like you're in the Arctic Circle Without a doubt in my mind, it is the ArcaSwiss Geared Tripod Head I was using a ball head for my tripod before I got this bad boy, but frankly, it was annoying to crap out of me I have a lot of heavy cameras including an 8x10 large format camera And anytime I wanted to make minor adjustments, it was a huge pain in the ass The ball head design I think is really good for getting compositions set up really quickly But it's not as good at small movements because you have to unlock every axis even if you only want to move one That's just my opinion though. Please tear me to shreds in the comments Now this tripod head looked pretty intimidating at first with its all black metal design But I found you just gotta stick with it and be persistent Like my high school bully who still texts me threatening messages to this day The price tag on this beast is not pretty. I'll admit I dropped a brick in my pants the first time I saw it But is it worth it? I think it depends on what you do I do a lot of knife photography so I needed a good tripod and tripod head anyway I found also that I like to make really small adjustments on a lot of my compositions And this geared tripod head makes it easy to do so I'm very glad to have it and I would consider it to be one of the best pieces of gear I've ever used So do whatever you want with that information So this one kind of deviates from the film photography aspect of this video But in a sense I'm also looking for inspiring artists to get my lazy ass to do better So I just couldn't not recommend Tomas Sanchez His work is primarily traditional painting and oil and acrylic but holy f**k is it cool I mean if anything I'm recommending his Instagram because compositionally he's got it all figured out In fact I'd go so far as to say he's on another plane of compositional existence And he's merely looking down at us peons from the throne that he sits upon as lord of framing and design The colors, the composition, the repeated patterns, the fantasy element Everything just works perfectly together I imagine it's probably what it's like to explore the jungles of South America But you know, on DMT When I first stumbled upon his Instagram I thought to myself Well, that's that I should probably just quit all art forever Seriously though, go follow him if you want to be inspired The film photography project's retro chrome You all know that I'm a sucker for rolly vario chrome And this stuff may just be cut from the same cloth or master roll Either way they look incredibly similar to the point where I don't really give a f**k if it is in fact different I will gladly turn a blind eye and shoot the crap out of it I actually shot a separate video reviewing FPP retro chrome so I won't give you all the points here But yeah basically it's an expired government ectochrome I love the warm tones it produces and how it handles the color red I also like how it renders cooler tones like shadows Spoiler alert, it turns them purple I'm guessing there's only a limited amount of stock of this stuff left in the world And I'm really not looking forward to the day that it runs out So I've gone ahead and bought about 30 rolls I hope that tells you something about how desperate and clingy I am as a person So that's about it I don't know what I hope you gained from this video But at the very least I hope you learned something Or at least started following someone who is undeniably cooler than me I'll see you next year for photography favorites 2021 Assuming this year's grand finale isn't a huge asteroid impact Where I talk about some film photography gear and other stuff that I like this year Oh that rhymed