Cars on Film on Instagram

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Olympus XA, Arista Premium 400

I feel like such an Internet curmudgeon. In my day, sonny, we used Netscape 1.0 to surf static HTML Web pages that were coded in Notepad, and we liked it! I try all the new Internet gewgaws and gimcracks but don’t like most of them. Twitter? What’s the point? Pinterest? Wow, what a colossal waste of time! Instagram? Crappy lo-fi photography? Bah! Bah to the whole lot.

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Minolta Hi-Matic 7, Fujifilm Fujicolor 200

Except that I’ve been posting photos to Instagram more and more lately. Film photos. My other lifelong love has been cameras and photography. I’ve collected vintage film cameras since I was nine years old. I had to start collecting anew after my divorce, which is a long story best told under the influence of really good bourbon. But in the past six or seven years I’ve built a collection of about 75 cameras and I shoot them as much as I can.

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Kodak Signet 40, Fujifilm Fujicolor 200

Old cars and old cameras – I love it when my hobbies come together. So now when I shoot a roll with an old camera, I upload them to Flickr. When I especially like a photo, I save it to my iPhone, bring it into Instagram, crop it, apply a filter, et voilá. Hm, I’m enjoying a lot of modern Internet technology there. Maybe I’m not as curmudgeonly as I thought.

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Minolta Hi-Matic 7, Fujifilm Fujicolor 200

These headlights go with a ’71 Olds Delta Royale coupe that sometimes showed up in the parking lot at my previous job. I used a wonderful mid-60s Minolta rangefinder camera for this shot.

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Polaroid Automatic 250, Fujifilm FP-3000b

Here’s another shot of that ’71 Delta, but this time I used an old Polaroid camera to photograph its delightful tail. Fujifilm still makes film for the old packfilm Polaroid cameras, the kind where you pull the picture out of the camera, wait a while, and then peel the print off the backing paper.

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Argus A-Four, Fujifilm Neopan 100 Acros

I have a thing for interesting tail lights, and Ford cornered the market on them in the 1960s. This is from a ’67 LTD.

Olympus XA, Arista Premium 400

Olympus XA, Arista Premium 400

I don’t discriminate against front ends, though. I love this shot of a ’66 Charger.

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Olympus XA, Arista Premium 400

Sometimes a shot pleases me so much that I don’t apply any filters. Such was the case with this ’58 Fury’s immense flank. We Instagrammers tag such photos with #nofilter.

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Yashica-D, Kodak Ektachrome E100G

Here’s another #nofilter shot, of my Toyota’s butt. I took this with a big medium-format camera on color slide film and really enjoy the color, tonality, and depth of field I got.

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Minolta Hi-Matic 7, Fujifilm Fujicolor 200

I found this ’41 Buick in the parking lot at Costco, of all places, looking devastatingly stately.

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Argus A-Four, Fujifilm Neopan 100 Acros

Dare I admit here that I’m kind of over the whole muscle-car thing? But this Nova’s aggressive snout made a good subject.

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Olympus OM-1, 50mm f/1.8 F.Zuiko Auto-S, Fujifilm Fujicolor 200

Here’s a #selfie. I was just farting around with my Olympus OM-1 in my driveway when I wondered if I could take a reflected photo in my Toyota’s side mirror. If you’re on Instagram, too, you can follow me here.