American Tobacco Campus
A few weeks ago, I saw a listing on Craigslist for a Minolta X-370 film camera that was priced at next to nothing. It’s a camera I’d been wanting since my youth so I jumped on it.
The guy I was buying it from wanted to meet at a restaurant just outside of downtown Durham where he was having lunch. It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon so I figured I would take some film with me and find a place to start shooting right away. And just in case it turned out to be a dud, I also threw my Canon 50D DSLR into my bag.
Not only was the Minolta not a dud, but it ended up being a very well-preserved copy of what I consider to be an absolutely beautiful camera. And as a bonus, it came complete with a lovely 50mm f1.4 MD prime lens that’s been receiving rave reviews from photographers for decades now. I couldn’t wait to shoot with it.
My copy (above) looks really good for being a 40-year old camera. Some dramatic lighting doesn’t hurt either!
After sealing the deal, I realized I was only 5 minutes away from the American Tobacco Campus.
Today, the ATC is a historic site made up of several buildings housing restaurants, bars, and offices, but in days gone by, it used to be a series of tobacco factories and warehouses owned and operated by the American Tobacco Company. Made almost entirely of vibrant red brick and boasting great angles and picturesque views, it was the perfect place to test out the new camera and lens.
Shooting with the Minolta X-370
I popped in a roll of Kodak Ultramax 400 and started snapping away. I found the X-370 to be very well behaved in hand with a nice bright viewfinder, easy to use exposure metering, and great ergonomics. I’ll be posting a gear review of it soon, but in the meantime, here are some of the photos I took from that day. I had the film developed and scanned at the highest resolution by The Fotoshoppe in Cary. The photos below were run through some very light editing in Lightroom but for the most part, what you see is what came out of the camera. I’m super impressed with the Minolta’s color and exposure accuracy.
Shooting with the Canon 50D
I had only brought one roll of film so when it was done, I packed away the Minolta and brought out my Canon 50D digital camera. The Canon is a 15.1 megapixel crop sensor camera from back in 2008. This is another machine I was able to pick up for a song (along with some lenses) on Craigslist. Since buying it several weeks before this, I hadn’t had a chance yet to shoot extensively with it so this turned out to be a nice opportunity to see what it could do. For now, I’ll let the shots below speak for themselves, but I’ll also be posting a review of the 50D soon. I mimicked some of the shots that I had taken with the Minolta to make comparisons. I’ve added those below as well.
