Edoardo Melchiori

I think is definitely a contradiction photographing 1968 cars with a 2009 digital camera. So when the Historical Rally of Montecarlo settled down in Turin for the 2010 departure I decided to take a film camera with me: the 1959 Zeiss Ikon Contarex Bullseye.

These cars are analogical, no electronics at all. The drivers had to do all the job by themselfs. So the camera to picture those mechanical splendor has to be analogical as well I thought.

So I get from the bag my old Contarex, grabbed and an old expired film from my grandfather’s desk and went out. The camera was covered with a fine dust of the years of inactivity. Heavy as a little solid stone. The selenium-cell meter was nearly dead so I had to manual expose every shot with my Canon 7D to be sure of the right exposure before shooting with the Bullseye. No exposures to waste, back to film after so many years of compact flash memory cards!

Adjust the knob of the exposure, tuning the desired aperture and CLACK! The Ikon sets the aperture only when you press the shutter button and the sound is so mechanical. You can almost feel the over 1100 individual parts of this camera aligning together for the shot. Then you manually move the film for the next exposure. Sometimes you can get it wrong and you come up with something like a double exposure melting different point of view.

The results are a few shots of a Fiat 500 and the famous ORX Mini Cooper Works. Prints are soft and simply perfect in their analogical splendor.

To be honest most of the dust and noise from this shots is due to the scanner, direct prints from the negatives are simply perfect. The funny thing is that the 1.89 GB raw file from the scanner at 4800 dpi has more noise than the direct prints from the negatives.

After rumors it’s now official, the Lisboa-Dakar 2008 will not start.
This has been a hard decision for the ASO organization and a completely un-expected news for all the athletes that came here from all over the world.
It never happened in the past but due to security problems in Mauritanie and a terrorist threat the race will not take place this year.

For more Lisboa Dakar Rally photos visit the gallery.

I’m leaving heading to Lisboa for the start of the Dakar Rally. Africa, we’re coming!

Pictures of the Lisboa Dakar Rally are posted here.

The Dakar Rally (or simply “The Dakar”; formerly known as “The Paris-Dakar” or “Paris to Dakar Rally”) is an annual rally raid type of off-road automobile race, organized by the Amaury Sport Organisation. Most events since the inception in 1978 were from Paris in France to Dakar in Senegal, but due to political instability in Africa, the 2009 Dakar Rally was run in South America, the first time the race took place outside of Europe and Africa. It will return to South America in 2010. The race is open to amateur and professional entries. Amateurs typically make up about eighty percent of the participants.
Despite its name it is an off-road endurance race, called a rally-raid rather than a conventional rally — the terrain the competitors traverse is much tougher and the vehicles used are true off-road vehicles rather than the modified sedans used in rallies. Most of the competitive special sections are off-road, crossing dunes, mud, camel grass, rocks and erg among others. The distances of each stage covered vary from short distances up to 800–900 kilometers (500–560 mi) per day.

Source Wikipedia.