I have acquired two wonderful cameras this past week. One is an Olympus XA-4 and the other a Rolleiflex 2.8E with the famous Zeiss Planar lens.
The Olympus is a wonderful little camera. It is a tiny scale focus, auto-exposure marvel of engineering with a fantastically sharp 28mm f/3.5 Zuiko lens. This will be tons of fun on the streets. More info here:
[link]
The Rollei I purchased from a friend at a local Ritz for a great price. This is the camera I have been dreaming of for a long time. I had the opportunity to play with one for about a week when I worked in the lab at a camera store in the Bay Area, and I have been hooked since. In the mean time I have owned two Yashica Mat-124 G's, which are great cameras but not up to par with the Rollei. The advantage is that they cost 1/4th as much
So, armed with my two new babies, and of course my Pentax K10D, I took a second trip to John Wesley County Hospital, a nearby abandoned hospital.
A quick recap: The hospital is abandoned because it was built with asbestos insulation. It remains because it is not yet cost effective to remove the asbestos and tear down the buildings. It has five main sections. The patient treatment buildings, the administrative buildings, the mechanical and maintenance buildings, the water tower, and across the street the research buildings. Right across the street from all of this is a ploice station
The hospital was much more accessible this time. Instead of pulling my truck right into the complex like I did last time I parked down the block and walked. I felt a bit obvious with all of my camera gear (and 3 friends, 1 also with camera gear) but we made it in unnoticed. We spend around 3.5 hours exploring before being stopped by the police. On my previous trip the water tower and the large building next to it were not accessible. They were blocked by a rather formidable fence. The building next to the water tower is the one I really wanted to get into this time, and as luck had it the fence was open. Just as I got into the building and saw how perfect the lighting was an officer walked up to the door and told us to come out. He was an asshole at first, just in case I guess, but then he was cool. Another officer had pulled up behind the first and he just got out and leaned on his car looking mean the whole time. He didn't even return my smile and wave
Apparently some moron(s) had set fire to one of the buildings a couple days earleier, and in fact it was still smoking. As if pointless arson wasn't stupid enough, the building they had set fire to had already been burned about as much as it was going to be. Idiots...
I think this is the reason for the openess of the facility and the extra police presence. All in all it was a pretty satisfying trip, but I do want to go back once more for that last building. I can't get caught again since the police wrote down all of our names and info, so I think I'll head back early in the morning, before light, with a much smaller group (or alone) with the intention of shooting the inside of that building only. I'll get inside, wait until the light is good, shoot my shots, and then leave.
Shots from the Rollei:
Shots from the Olympus:
Our new friends (I couldn't resist
):
Transitional Phase 
