We went sledding today, and then afterwards came to my house and had waffles, hot chocolate, and played some Rock Band, looked at and printed some photos and generally had a great time. Took a few shots, although it was tough during sledding, because even at ISO 1600, I was still only getting 1/50th of a second at f/1.8 (which was one stop over, for the snow). All well and good, bu with an 85mm lens, it was tough to get sharp photos, much less to expose the snow high enough. So yeah, they’re pretty grainy, but it was fun anyway. Enjoy the shots.

Here are just a few random shots from this past week. I’ve been fairly busy, and unfortunately that hasn’t left me with a lot of time to take the camera out, and the times when I should have, I didn’t, for fear or wrecking the mood of whatever I was doing at the time.

Once I get my financial situation in order, I plan to try to get a Mamiya 645AF (or AFD, if funds allow). Obviously funds are way out of reach to obtain any kind of digital back, but I very much enjoy shooting film and would like to do more of that. Since it would only cost a very little more to replace my broken Canon 1n with a Mamiya 645AF, this seems like a good decision. Also, in the future, I’ll have some money invested to the Mamiya lens catalog, and thus will be able to buy a digital back (and probably a second, more modern body), without having to get rid of or trade over my existing equipment.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. For now, here are a few candid portraits I shot this weekend. Enjoy.

This last photo is one of the few candid 5-star portraits I’ve made recently. I made one of Liz a few posts back, but since then it has been a few months at least since I made a candid portrait that deserved the much-coveted 5-star approval in my library. Of the roughly 10,000 photos that have the specific “portrait” keyword (I have a tremendous backlog of photos that need keywording), only 119 of them have 5 stars assigned to them. They are in entirety photos that I would be satisfied to be remembered by. Naturally I have preferences even within those. A number of months ago I tried paring down my 5-star collections to my 10 favorite photos, and the task was agonizing. At any rate, in the near future perhaps I’ll put together some kind of proper collection of 5-star images, but for now, enjoy the man in the glass.