It was finally time to take my old school Contax RTS out from the storage and put it though it’s pace again. Every year I go through this phase where I have to go back to the roots of photography. Last year I used a Canon EOS3, where as this year I went even further into the past.

Reason why I bought this type of camera was because of it’s heritage. It was highly regarded for it’s time, with the exquisite build quality and it’s compatibility with Zeiss lenses. If you lust for Zeiss’ superb lenses then a Contax is the best place to start. Zeiss were considered the best (along side with Leica), their lens optics are still regarded as the best to this day.

Alright, so where was I…
What makes me go back to film is how it behaves. Film has this texture, you can see it popping out of the page when printed, even more so when a method called cross processing is used to mix colours with a colour space. Film has this look we grew up seeing, but with digital everything changed that. Film wasn’t perfect, but that’s what distinguished it from digital. We can sort of fake the film grain, but what about that dirty bleach look that came with every exposure like red and green broke out into a fight. I LOVE that fight!

Another unique things about film is that it’s not forgiving either. Not only does it cost 0.20 to 0.40 cents per exposure, but you need to shoot off the rest of the role, and pay to get it developed before you even get a chance to see it. With digital, the average person (even myself) have gotten lazy, not to mention everyone including your 82 year old grandma calls herself a “photographer”

For the next 17 days the camera and myself will be inseparable. As they say, joined to the hip; Hip to camera body *nudge nudge* *wink wink* …. forget it! The goal is to target the shooting in a editorial, urban and the homeless type fashion. Just to test the camera out my roommate delightfully volunteered to pose like a moron, thanks Ethan!