My xshot case just came for my iPhone 4S. The most obvious thing to do was to shoot video with the 4S atop my DSLR, similar to Doug Mills’ rig with a 5D2 on a 5D2. But then I thought of a variation which I thought might be worth sharing.

The Camera+ iPhone app allows a frame to be shot with the volume up button on the Apple earbuds. So, if the light is good enough and you feel confident enough to shoot your stills on an iPhone, you could do this:

The benefit is that you don’t pollute your video with your DSLR’s shutter. Doing it the other way around obviously gets a lot of shutter in the video, regardless if it’s shot on an iPhone or second DSLR. Normally I’d run the 5D2 rig with an H4n, so I’m not sure where that would get mounted. But that’s just a bit more hardware.

I think the usefulness of this depends a lot on your priorities. If the light is good enough for the iPhone to work well, maybe it’s good enough to rely on to file a picture with. There’s also a confidence issue in the framing due to the parallax error to take into account.

I just taped the “+” button for a test, but I’m sure you could sacrifice a pair of spare earbuds to make it look a bit more pro.

Fujifilm FP-100C on a Mamiya RZ67.

Per frame, digital photography is pretty much free. There’s no significant cost between shooting 100 frames or 10. For work, that’s convenient. But sometimes it’s good to slow down and be more deliberate. Film is a way to do that. (It’s worth being deliberate even if you can motor drive for free, of course.)

I’m borrowing an RZ67, which is a medium format film camera. I’ve shot some roll film on it, but I like shooting instant film on it more. The Polaroid back allows one to use Fujifilm instant film. For ISO100 color, it’s $0.75 per picture. For ISO3000 black and white, it’s about $0.90 per picture. That’s expensive, considering I shoot a few hundred frames on my digital cameras for a daily assignment.

The camera is weird. You look down into the viewfinder. The image you see is mirrored horizontally, so even pointing the camera takes some getting used to. It’s manual focus, obviously. It makes a beautiful KA-CHUNK sound on the shutter release.

It’s a big, slow, expensive contraption. But those constraints make it fun.

And pulling the film apart to see the print is always a little magical.

We taped a piece of gray seamless up at Michael‘s house during a little party last week. I unpacked the lighting gear I haul around but seldom seem to use, including the most unwieldly lighting modifer I own, a mammoth 86″ PLM. It’s a giant sail outside and usually too big to use inside. But it makes nice light.

The picture above is stray moment between making quick portraits of people. It was incredibly brief. I kind of saw it, I pushed the button, and there it is. Sometimes things come to you, sometimes you have to earn it. And sometimes you miss it completely.

The PLM, for scale:

And Michael shot the following frame of me looking a bit too serious.

Adriel Gaines looks at high water from the Mohawk covering part of Sunderman Rd. where he lives. (Ivar Vong/for The Register-Guard)

Water from the Mohawk covers part of Sunderman Rd. on Thursday afternoon. (Ivar Vong/for The Register-Guard)

Adriel Gaines shows the high water level from the Mohawk River in his backyard. Gaines lives off of Sunderman Rd., where there's several inches of water over the road at some points. (Ivar Vong/for The Register-Guard)

A field seen from Sunderman Rd.

UPDATE: The final edit from the trip is here.