Family, Photography and other misc news
As you might have guessed from my last few posts, I have been experimenting in the studio recently with different backgrounds. The one above is a paper called platinum. Its nearly perfect for taking a white balance reading and one can also easily use photoshop to remove the model and place her on other backgrounds.
Last week was Cruft’s the international dog show. I like to see how the hound group goes, I am sure that one year a Greyhound will win.
This year it was ‘Frosty’, a Grand Basset Griffon Vendeen, from the Netherlands, who won in the Hound Group.
I have been on the lookout for a new fountain pen. My current pen is a little too valuable for everyday use in the office so I wanted something else.
It was announced on the news this week that Ruddock’s of Lincoln is to close. A small family stationary business its been finding it difficult to cope recently with the cheaper on line stores. I bought my last fountain pen from them so as I needed another one I wanted to give the small family company some final business.
I bought myself a basic steel nib Waterman which will be fine for use everyday.
Its sad to see so many small shops closing, but they have taxes to pay as well as rates and its difficult to compete against a large warehouse especially when the company puts its profits through other countries to make a technical lose and not pay any profit in the country they are based.
I try at least twice a week, to have a walk around Lincoln with my camera, sometimes with more success then others. Too many people around and your frame becomes crowded and it becomes difficult to get a strong image. Not enough people and you are less likely to blend into the background and get a natural image.
The history of digital photography is of ever better sensors, more dynamic range, less noise and more megapixels.
Generally manufacturers like to be top of the tree in the megapixel race. It’s easy for customers to understand. The bigger the number the better right?
Well actually more megapixels generally come at a cost, and that is increased risk of camera shake, showing up imperfections in your shooting style, in your equipment but also less of the useful parts, i.e. generally less dynamic range and more noise.
It’s only because of the very fast evolution of digital sensors that we are still seeing improvements in all areas.
Many people are surprised that you only 6 MP (megapixels) to print a good quality A4 print.
The shock to people is that it general takes a fourfold increase in megapixels to be easily visible to the human eye.
Thus when considering a jump in resolution if you currently have a 6 MP camera then you need to jump to 24 MP to see a noticeable improvement in resolution. That is not to say a camera upgrade is not worth it, as you will gain in other areas, but as digital sensors reach maturity it’s going to difficult to justify an upgrade.
While waiting for my Leica M10 I have been watching the forums, especially the Leica medium format section.
Current medium format cameras go from 36 MP to 100 MP and it’s interesting looking at the reasons for people’s choices. A number of portrait photographers who shoot large numbers of people tend to want less megapixels to speed up editing and work flow, while product photographers who only shoot a few frames want as many megapixels as possible.
Thus a portrait photographer is probably quite happy with a 36 – 50 MP camera while a product photographer maybe investing in a 100 MP back with pixel shift giving an effective resolution of 200 MP.
With spring now about to start we have bought the seeds for our first crops of the year, hopefully we will get some dry days soon so we can start planting.
If you listen to the met office then its now spring, but I always count spring as starting at the equinox.
Its certainly starting to look like spring with the daffodils now starting to appear. The last couple of weekends I have been hoping to get out and shoot a few flowers and landscape shots but as usual when you try and plan something the rain always seems to stop play. Still there is always next weekend.
The history of cameras has been one of modularity. Any 35mm professional camera from the 1960’s allowed you to add a grip, motor drive, different viewfinder and even bulk film backs.
Medium format and large format has always been modular and extremely flexible.
My large format camera, an Ebony 45S and my medium format Hasselblad 503CW are both old school and very modular.
The reason this post came about is that when shooting in the studio with my medium format camera, when using film I have a long lead running from the flash port on the lens to a remote unit to trigger the flash, when using my PhaseOne digital back then its a cable connected to the flash port on the back. I have the waist level viewfinder so no hot shoe.
http://www.photoethnography.com/ClassicCameras/HasselbladFinders.html
I have been researching other viewfinders particular those with cold shoes, that way I can fit the wireless trigger in the cold shoe and run a short 10 cm cable to that and not have a longer cable running to the floor.
I find it interesting that the trend has been for less modular and less upgradable cameras since digital came along. Now that trend is moving to medium format. The first was the Leica S and the Pentax 645Z, less modular and with handling like a 35mm camera.
Now we have Hasselblad and Fuji releasing mirrorless medium format cameras and we now have a real race on to produce small cheap medium format cameras that handle like 35mm cameras. Cheap is relative as we are still looking at a near £10K investment to get you started.