Having Some Fun Around Purdue Athletics With Three Cameras

Early in the summer I went up near some of the Purdue athletics buildings to make some photos near sunset. I went up to test a camera with black and white film in it, but a great sunset started to form so I quickly started making photos with my other cameras. This is why you take a couple of cameras on a walk. You never know what you are going to need.

Sony A7RIII With The Sony 24-105mm Lens

This is my control setup. I use this combo so much I know what I am going to get with it. It is almost always with me on a photowalk, and gives me a great range of photos that I can make. I made my favorite photo of the walk with it on this trip.

This is my favorite photo of the night. I really love how everything came together here to make the photo. The lights on the megatron were on. The clouds parted just enough for some great light at sunset. I also finally found the angle to get all of that and part of the Tyler Trent sign up against the sky. Everything works here to make a photo that I really like.

This is another version of the above photo. I moved a little closer to try something different. It works, but not as well as the first photo.

You will see another version of this photo later that I like more than this one. This is still a good photo of Lambert Fieldhouse though. The last light of the day giving us a little show before it goes down.

During the pandemic I made many photos of the Boilermaker statue. It was an easy place to get to quickly when the sunset started to pop off. Here I walked down with a little light on the clouds to make a couple more photos of the statue.

I don’t know what the official title for this area is. Over the years I have just started calling it the corridor. Here it looks pretty good during blue hour. This photo is best viewed a little larger to get more of the details of Mackey Arena.

As I was leaving I made one last photo. I didn’t have the lens to make it with the other two cameras so I had to just give it a shot with the Sony. I really like how this turned out. This area has always intrigued me. I haven’t spent the time to make a good image of it yet. Maybe I should make a challenge to myself to do that.

 

Minolta SRT 101 With Kodak Tri-x 100

This was the reason why I went up to make photos in the first place. I had just purchased a film camera and I wanted to test it out a bit. Knowing the area and having made photos around Mackey Arena I had a good idea of what I could expect. When testing something new that it always a good thing. I won’t go too in depth into these photos. You have already seen some of them here. It was fun to try out a new camera on the walk though.

This might be my favorite photo of the night with this camera. The Tri-x film just makes the bricks look so good. I hoped when I made this that the whites and the blacks in the photo would contrast very well. I guessed on the exposure right to get that mix between the two.

The Mollenkopf entrance is one that I always make a photo of in black and white. The building is just meant to be photographed that way. I have made a few photos to this one over the years so it was a good test for the camera. Even with the bright sky the exposure meter on the camera worked very well.

I always want to make photos of this entrance to Ross Ade. It looks so good. The problem is that the background is always cluttered behind the bars. One of these days I will walk by when it is not, and it will I will finally be able to make the photo.

The entrance to Lambert Fieldhouse is one that I have photograph a lot as well. I usually am testing film at night here with that single light over the doors. It works well in black and white as well. I love the look of this older athletics building. All of those little details are worthy of a deep dive one of these days.

We end with this photo of John Wooden. I really wanted to test how the camera meter worked here. I had a bright sky in the background along with part of the statue being in shadow. The meter came through and gave me a good exposure. You can’t ask for much more than that. This photo alone was worth the trip up to campus to let me know that I can trust the meter on the camera.

Fuji AX-3 With Lomo 800

This is a combo that has worked very well for me. The Fuji AX-3 has quickly become one of my favorite film cameras. Lomo 800 also has given me some good results. The two of them together helped me make some of my favorite photos from this walk.

This might be a close second as far as my favorite photos of the trip goes. I love the light hitting Lambert Fieldhouse. The last light of the day always looks good, and with Lomo 800 it looks pretty good. The colors are amazing here.

The Boilermaker statue has been one that I have photographed many time. Here I tried to underexpose a bit to let the sky be the star. The silhouette is so recognizable that you can get away with that.  I made these photos at two different times, but they both show off the awesome light that was all around that night.

Here the strengths of Lomo 800 are not really used. I included this photo to compare it with a similar photo made with the other two cameras. In all honesty I was going to make a post showing the three Wooden photos, but I really didn’t like any of them that much. They do help tell the story of the walk though so they all appear here.

I made this at a time when of the night when the sky was still a little too bright. That made it so that I couldn’t show off the way that this film renders colors very well. Both this one and the Wooden photo suffer from that. I do like the way that the Lomo renders the lights though so I will have to try this again in better lighting. By the time this post goes live that might have already happened.

Add one more to the list in lower light. I think that this would have worked well as a black and white. Lomo in low light just isn’t hitting.

This was kind of the star spot for me on the night. I really like how my photo from here turned out with the Sony. The Lomo 800 film just didn’t do it justice. From my limited experience with the film it really shines in bright light. It does not really do so well in lower light. I still like how a couple of these photos turned out though.

Wrapping Things Up

This might be the first of these posts where I think that each of the three cameras played a big role in the post. The point of the whole thing was to test out the Minolta camera. I threw a cheap roll of black and white film in it to do just that.  I really like a couple of those images. The camera got me up to campus that night, and I am glad that I went up there. I made my favorite photo of the night and maybe of the megatron scoreboard with my Sony camera. The Fuji and the Lomo 800 gave me a photo of Lambert that I really like as well. It was a successful photo walk for sure. Which photo is your favorite?