Tampa and the Fuji GS645S with Kodak Ektar 100

A couple of weeks prior to my trip to California, I had the opportunity to take the Fuji GS645S on its first outing. I needed to visit Tampa, FL for business and had some time left to take a walk on the W Courtney Campbell Causeway.

It was a hot and sunny day, and I had the Fuji GS645S loaded with a roll of Ektar 100. It being a new camera for me, I had to figure out how to load it, set ISO, and adjust basic settings. Which are all easy to do on this camera.

I like using rangefinder cameras like the GS645S, especially in an environment where a lot is going on. The rangefinder allows for seeing more than only what is happening directly in front of you and anticipating any action that might impact the image you want to create. A possible setback of this is of course the fact that you have to account for parallax error when framing the scene. One of the nice features of the GS645S is that it has moving frame lines in the finder that allow for parallax compensation.

The first picture I took was from my hotel room. I was looking out over the northern part of Tampa bay and there was a nice reflection of a building I wanted to capture. Although I had some reflection from my window, I think the resulting image is rather nice (I cropped it just slightly to get rid of a not so nice street at the left).

Next step was leaving the hotel and start walking. The W Courtney Campbell Causeway is a rather long road connecting two shores of Tampa Bay, with as an additional feature a walk/bike path that is separated from the main road. Although I have been told that it is possible to spot dolphins and fish, I was not lucky enough to see any. Fortunately there were some other good image opportunities available (did I mention I like palm trees?).

For the technically inclined: I shot the Ektar at box speed (ISO 100).