jameslake.photos
April 5th, 2025



    I always naively thought when I was younger, “It would be awesome if somebody just followed me around and took photos of my life.” I eventually realized the most qualified person for that job is myself.

    Trevor Blake gifted me my first camera, a Lumix GH1, but I never truly connected with it. I had a few solid sessions, bringing it around randomly, and got some good memories from it, but it never really gave me the photo I really wanted. 

September 22nd, 2018

    What pushed me into shooting film was a hilarious incident that happened while skateboarding  during lunch in Frogtown. I was on the half pipe filming myself, and lost my board. It went directly for my phone, hitting the exact location of the phone camera. 

September 17th, 2018

    Because of that, I had to figure out other ways to take pictures. While rummaging through my parents’ garage, I came across a Vivitar 357PZ point-n-shoot camera, which somehow still worked and only needed a new battery. 

May 31st, 2025

    It was the only one out of all these cameras that actually worked:
 
December 28th, 2018

    It served me great for many years and through many adventures and events. As of 2025, its motor has slowed, and doesn’t seem to work right anymore. 

    I then purchased a Canon EOS-M from Trevor for $100, because he happened to have a few of them. He also gave me a Canon 50mm f1.8 lens with a converter for EOS-M, which finally started to give me results that I was happy with. Or at least this is when I realized what a better lens could accomplish. With the EOS -M came a 18-55mm kit lens, which I didn’t like for photos, but I eventually used for video a few years later. 

    Trevor also gifted me my first film SLR, the Minolta Maxxum 7000. It was a little over my head at first, but I was able to get some results I was really happy with, which inspired me to continue testing out film. 
    
December 16th, 2023


November 5th, 2017 (way before he gave it to me.)
       
May 18th, 2023

    When I realized I wanted to shoot more film and continue using an SLR, but was intimidated by the Maxxum 7000, I bought a Canon EOS 650 off eBay for $30. It felt simpler, but eventually taught me the basics I needed to end up comfortable with the Maxxum.


February 28th, 2022


    And because Trevor had given me that Canon 50mm f1.8 lens, it paired perfectly with this EOS 650. This is when I started getting photos that I was really happy with. It is also when I started going to Blue Moon Camera in St. John’s, north of Portland.

February 28th, 2022

March 28th, 2022

   After becoming more comfortable with the Canon EOS 650 and the Minolta Maxxum 7000, I was going through random closets at my parents’ house and stumbled upon my brother’s old Pentax K1000, which I didn’t even know existed. It was in great condition, and the first camera I had access to that was fully manual. It was a bit intimidating, as I had been shooting with Aperture Priority and Autofocus. But the first few rolls I put through it went surprisingly well. 

April 28th, 2022

    Around late September 2022, Jordan Rick (Todd’s wife) lent/gifted me a Yashica-D TLR medium format camera, which was my first foray into medium format film. It took me a few weeks to realize that the mirror was offset and preventing it from working correctly, but I was able to fix that and the next roll after that came out great. A bit later (October 2023), I ended up getting a full CLA (clean, lubricate, adjust), and it’s now in absolute perfect shape, as it would have worked in 1964 when it was released. 

April 8th, 2024

March 17th, 2025

    I think in the same month as Jordan giving me the Yashica-D, Jake (the owner of Blue Moon) convinced me to buy a newer Minolta Maxxum, the 650si, from 1995. It’s been my main go-to camera for any situation. It can go up to 1/4000 shutter speeds, and f32, so it works great with 800 ISO film even in bright light. And it has a flash, in case there’s not enough light. It’s basically the point-and-shoot of SLRs (albeit much larger), but lets you have all manual control if you want. I have a 28mm-75mm f2.8 lens for it, which also works great in almost any situation. If I’m going on trip and can only bring one camera, this would be the one I would bring.
 
June 2nd, 2023

September 15th, 2024

December 31st, 2022

    At this point, my 3 main photo cameras were the 650si, the K1000, and the Yashica-D. But then I started to get into video. The first video camera setup that inspired me to even start was a frankenstein combo of a GoPro zip-tied to a Zoom H4n.
 
October 17th, 2023

   Once I realized that was a stupid setup, I instead switched back to the EOS-M. The fact that it had autofocus, interchangeable lenses, and the option for external microphones, it was better in nearly every way. With this camera, I finally started film video for real, and editing it into little videos. See “Frozen Rosebuds” (January 19th, 2024)  and the “Seattle Trip” (March 23rd, 2024). (And most of the entire Fynndlit YouTube channel).

December 23rd, 2023

    In 2025, I’ve had strange luck with inheriting new cameras. Maybe it’s always been that way actually. On New Years Eve, 2024, Willi gifted me a fully functional Minolta SRT102 manual SLR, and a broken Pentax MX (the smallest 35mm SLR they’ve ever made.) The SRT102 came with a 28mm lens, but I found a rarer 45mm lens for it and it’s now a normal option in the rotation.
 
December 31st, 2024

    I ran with that collection of cameras until tax-return-day 2025. I had been wanting to update my video camera setup because the EOS-M came out in 2012, making it 13 years old. Trevor had turned me onto the Fujifilm film simulations, and I wanted something that would be mainly for videos, but also takes great photos. I also wanted a camera that wouldn’t require me to edit the colors of the photos on the computer. The obvious solution to that was the XH2s, which arrived on February 26th, 2025, at 1:56pm. I paired it with an 18-55mm lens which was essentially the same as the one I was using with the EOS-M.

  The quality upgrade was insane. And I ended up taking more photos with it than I originally expected. I have a 1/4th mist filter for the lens. Now if I only had one camera to bring on a trip, it would probably be this one — to cover both video and photo. But if I could bring two cameras, the next one would be a film camera.
 
March 2nd, 2025

March 2nd, 2025


    At this point, I figured I would never have any other cameras, (mostly because the Fuji was the most expensive thing I’ve purchased since my house.) I was content with everything I had and every base was covered. Then I had a dream on _______ where I got to shoot photos on a medium format SLR, (specifically the Pentax 67). It planted a strange seed in my head. Then on March 22nd, I was talking with Morgan, her Mom and her Grandma when they visited Portland. Photography came up, and her Grandma mentioned that her husband (Morgan’s Grandpa) ran a photography studio in the 80s, and had an RB67 that he wasn’t using. I expressed that a medium format SLR was a dream, and he gifted it to me. The first few rolls had a light leak, but that’s been fixed and it’s working great now.
 
April 5th, 2025


April 6th, 2025

   In the same day where I learned about this, my mom called me and told me that her old friend wanted to give me some old cameras she had but didn’t use anymore. It ended up being a Minolta Maxxum 600si, (which is essentially identical to the 650si), and a Nikon F2 — often considered the best manual SLR camera ever made. 
May 21st, 2025

   Now I live like this:

June 10th, 2024

© 2025