Family, Photography and other misc news
This week I have been going through some of my very early work, this film shot was taken in 1995 I believe with a Canon A1. So twenty years old. I have certainly learnt a lot since then, and also forgotten a lot.
Soon i’ll have my own studio ready (getting ready to put the new floor down at the moment), and I think i’ll be going back to simple studies like this, working simply with a single light and getting back to the basics.
Sometimes keeping it simple is all that is required.
I am photographing a vintage fair this weekend for fun using my little old film Leica M4, as I was loading my film I thought it was time for a film Friday so here we are, a picture taken with my Leica M4 earlier this year.
Time for another film Friday, on one of my regular excursions up Steep Hill in Lincoln I spotted this gentleman taking photographs of the old Jews House. I could not resist getting a shot of him ‘chimping’ at the results.
As usual for my 35mm film work it was taken on my old Leica M4.
Leica M4
Leica 50mm f/1.4 Summilux-M
50mm, 1/4 Sec at f/1.4, Ilford Delta 400
Processed in Kodak X-Tol developer
Post Processed in Adobe Lightroom V5.3
On a MacBook Pro, OS-X 10.9.2
Its been far too long since we had a film Friday, but this week I finally got round to having a couple of rolls developed that I shot with my M4.
This is part of a long term book project I am working on documenting the area around Lincoln Bailgate.
Well after the power cut at my home village earlier in the week giving me lots of fun with Lightroom, we had another bigger power cut this evening taking out a lot of Lincoln and the surrounding area.
It made me think about our modern reliance on power and so tonight I packed my Hasselblad bag with some medium format film and am going to try and shoot some film for the next few days.
The down side is that I will not be able to share the images, well at least not for a few months with you on this site as it takes me a while to finish a roll of film, get it developed and scanned and published.
So i’ll also take my Leica M8 for some fun shots.
If I am shooting fixed subjects like landscapes or buildings then is likely to only be a few shots of each scene. When shooting wildlife or people then I can end up with a thousand or more images to have to sort through.
Well the first job is to get those image on to internal hard disk of my computer. I then import and copy them into the local Lightroom. The import also copied the files to an external disk. Once the majority of the editing is complete the Lightroom files get moved to external disk. By this time Apple’s time machine will also have a copy on its disk so I’ll havE several copies before the memory cards get wiped and I also clear down the local hard disk for the next set of images.
Something to remember with Adobe Lightroom V5 is that you can create something called a smart preview. This enables you to edit and image but not actually have the image with you, great for when your out and a about but wanting to get some work done on an old MacBook Air with only a small SSD inside.
So you now have a thousand or so images sat in Lightroom, how do you quickly find the great ones. Well there are several ways but I find it a lot easier if I use two monitors, one set to grid view and the other set to loupe. This enables you to flick through the your images in grid view but evaluate them properly.
I also tend to group similar photographs together, you can then just pick a couple of good ones that ones that are very similar.
I also find its good to do an edit close to taking the photographs but also go back over your old work and look again at the ones you did not select. To often you can chose photographs because of the amount of effort it took to capture and not based on the content. Time can be a good equaliser.
Its always good to have a few photography projects running, I have one based on female backs, one one drinks and two based on location, one a local park, with each shot taken from exactly the same point through a period of several years and then this one based on Kings Cross in London.
The Kings Cross Project is a set of photographs showing the people and architecture of this great train station. I have been photographing the area with either the Leica M4 using film or my M8, with all shots processed as Black & Whites.
I was in London again yesterday so once again while waiting for my train back home I took the opportunity to work the area some more.
As projects go this one is pretty relaxing and focuses on the building and people in it. When ever I go to London it makes a break to work on this and build on my ideas.
People are often surprised to find out that I still use film.
I sometimes shoot 35mm film on my Nikon FM2 and my Leica M4 for fun.
I shoot landscapes on my medium format Hasselblad and my Large Format 4 x 5 Ebony, both of which I still use film.
Its a bit like an artist using watercolour or oils to paint with, some artists use one, some the other and still some, both. As a photographer I mainly shoot digital but film for me has a place too.
While the selection of films is gradually reducing, film use is growing, and some film manufactures are increasing their production.
Today Kodak came out of Chapter 11, they are back in business. Film users are worried but I think there is still hope. We have to admit film now is always going to a small niche product and I am not hopeful for colour but I think Black & White has a bright future.
I always find it amusing when I see photographers with cameras costing thousands of pounds using cheap consumer zooms. The rule has always been spend the money on the glass not the camera.
Now some consumer zooms are very very good. The Nikkor 70-300mm is a good case in point, while a consumer lens and built to a price, it does seem a little flimsy in its construction compared to the pro glass but for its price it produces excellent results. Sometimes having super zoom so you can react and get the shot instead of having to change lens can be an advantage.
I see comments on forums saying Canon glass is better then Nikon or Olympus is better then Panasonic. Judging a lens one must consider the design criteria. Sharpness and Contrast are what people want from modern lens, Canon and Nikon prioritise one of the other and each manufacture has picked differently so the look from the lens is different. Depending on which you prefer you might prefer one manufacture over the other.
Also how a lens treats contrast and sharpness can make it suitable for different purposes. Many portrait photographers like the look of older lens, they seem to blow and soften the highlights in an extremely pleasing way and while you can do it in post production there is a trend now to trying to get it right in camera again, and some of the great classic portrait lens can be purchased quite cheaply.
Its making use of old lens that has made micro four-thirds so popular. Adapters are available now for most of the lens available and with the crop factor of that format, the cameras are using the sweet centre spot of the lens.
When your talking exotic glass then people immediately think about the Leica Noctilux 50mm. Over the years this lens has gotten faster and faster with the latest version being now f/0.95. The other lens thats worth mentioning in the Leica world is the new 50mm Apo-Summicron M which is f/2. Now that does not sound like a special lens but this 50mm was designed to be as close to perfect and modern design could make it. No matter what aperture you use its close to perfect. Leica said a few years ago after they had designed this lens that they would not put it into production as no one would buy it. At nearly six thousand pounds for an 50mm f/2 you would be hard to justify it, but Leica changed their minds and put it into production and its selling like hot cakes.
The other exotics that people think about are the telephotos. The 600mm and 800mm monsters, used by sports and wildlife photographers. These lens have a fantasic price and a fantastic weight to match. If you can afford one, then you also need to budget a couple of thousand for a matching tripod and gimbal head.
While Nikon make some very big lens that are special order, the only off the shelf big telephoto until recently was the 600mm, but now they have a new 800mm which comes with a matched teleconverter to bring it up to 1000mm.
The wildlife and landscape photographer Moose Peterson recently posts a fun little YouTube video about this lens which you might want to check out. If your interested in this kind of lens then remember to be sat down when you read out the price ;).