Film Photography Trip to San Francisco

With any good photography trip you need cameras, a friend, and loads of coffee.

Any weekend trip to San Francisco to meet one of my friend, Mike (@michaelg_94). First part of any photography trip is to decide what gear I am going to take. I decided to go with:

  • Mamiya RB 67 w/ Sekkor f. 3.8 127mm lens

  • Minolta Maxxum 7000 w/ f. 1.4 50mm lens

WHAT GEAR TO BRING?

These first few images were taken at 3am on my drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco. I stopped to get some snacks and coffee and since I had all my camera gear and one roll of CineStill 800t. These 3 shots are the best of the bunch. They still were lacking in some technical aspects and they had a static discharge which created the red lightning bolt in two of them.

But they got the trip going. The first images of any photography trip are always the hardest for me. I like to get the first roll out of the way quickly to get over the anxiety. For my first time using CineStill 800t, the images came out pretty good.

HOW DID THE FILM PHOTOS TURN OUT?

As you may have guessed on any photography trip with friends, they automatically volunteer to be subjects in the photos. Most of the time they act surprised and complain when you point the camera at them, but they still let you take the photos.

Here at Fort Baker (Battery Spencer) which overlooks the Golden Gate Bridge I took these photos of Mike on my Minolta Maxxum 7000 with Kodak Portra 400. I love the colors on these photos. everything is exposed correctly and to top things off I even managed to get a couple of them in focus.

At night we headed over to San Francisco’s historic China town. Unfortunately since I went at the tail end of the pandemic most of the shops were closed by 9pm. I only managed to get these 4 images which I took in about 10 mins. Not a good thing. I tend to take my time and really think about the shot before just firing away.

That went out the window with these images. Luckily thought the images came out okay. The colors were popping! I did shot these with the Minolta Maxxum 7000. I shot these images wide open since I was using Portra 400 and I needed all the light.

First stop of the second day was to Coit Tower where we were able to see all around the city. At least that would have been the case but there was a fair bit of Fog that rolled in by the time we got to the top of the tower.

All of the Coit Tower photos were taken on my Minolta Maxxum 7000 w/ F1.4 50mm lens and Portra 400. For the colorful images the Portra 400 worked like a charm! However for the foggy cityscape images they all came out muddy. I do like how the fog hides large sections of the city creating more dystopian feeling image, but I did not do that view justice with these images. They look muddy, unbalanced and have a weird green and magenta color cast. Also I did not get the foggy images in focus, but the first three images though!

My first serious attempt at black and white photography using the Mamiya RB67 Sekor F3.8 127mm lens w/ Ilford HP5 400. I do like these images but similar to the Coit Tower imasges above think I was seriously lacking in shot variety. I essentially only got three different shots.

My favorite though is the photo of Mike sitting on the bench with the Golden Gate Bridge in the background. And to make the shot better I actually managed to get Mike in focus. So you know, that’s a WIN!

The two diner images were an impulse shot. We had been walking around the pier for about 30 mins and I did not like any of the images I had framed up. Luckily I saw this empty diner that had its windows open. I only had two frames left on the Mamiya RB67. I especially like that there is a light leak in one of the frames, which I think adds to the image.