Photography: A Social Activity

Today I was walking around my sister's neighborhood in Atlanta, taking pictures of interesting things on people's front lawns, sidewalks, houses, etc., all from the sidewalk and street. Sometimes it was an interesting shadow of a porch lamp against a brick wall. Sometimes it was the shape of someone's tree silhouetted against the sunset sky. In every case, I stood on the sidewalk or street and used a telephoto lens to get in close to my subject, if I needed to.

On more than one occasion, someone in the neighborhood would ask what I was doing, and I would say that I was taking pictures for fun, as that is exactly what I was doing. Photography is a hobby of mine, I do it because it's fun. Well, one woman in particular became rather irate when I gave her this response, and insisted that I needed to get permission from every homeowner before I took pictures of their homes, and that I should leave unless I planned to. She hinted that she would call the police if I didn't leave. Now, the legality of this is pretty clear. As long as I am standing on public property, such as the sidewalk or street, and as long as I do not profit from the pictures I take (and even in certain circumstances this requirement can be waived), I can take a picture of whatever I want. Well, some places may have statues against peeping toms and other sexually-perverse activities, but I certainly was not doing anything illegal.

Similar things have happened to me at various public places. At an outdoor shopping mall, I was only allowed to take pictures of one area, an outdoor fountain, and then only if I did not use a tripod. At my previous workplace, I was not allowed to take any pictures of anything on the building premises, even the lovely garden and fountain that they had cultivated in the courtyard. I have even heard that people with tripods are no longer allowed to walk onto the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco!

It's rather sad that photography has gotten to this stage where it is essentially distrusted by non-photographers. Whether it's because people are afraid they will be robbed, because of terrorism concerns,because of the erosion of privacy, or because of commercial copyright and clearance issues (i.e., money), photographers are now looked upon with a suspicious eye. It is quite sad, really. I feel as if I need to defend myself simply because I am doing something I like to do in a perfectly legal manner.

And yet, as "social engineering" experiments performed by computer hackers has shown, the easiest way to get what you want is to simply sweet-talk people into it, disarm them by socializing with them. In my sister's neighborhood in Atlanta, I placated the woman's concerns by explaining that I was visiting my sister (whom this woman happened to know), and then talking with her about where I was from and the photography class I had just taken, and explaining to her what I was trying to accomplish with the specific shot that she had interrupted me on. We ended the conversation with a "Good night and happy holidays!", and she let me take my picture in peace. It's silly but true: people just need to be made comfortable around you, and then they will let you do almost anything.

This reminds me of the final project of one of my classmates in my photography class. She had taken five portrait-style photographs of people who lived in her cousin's neighborhood. For three of the five people she had taken photographs of, she did not know them beforehand. Yet in every single photograph, each person had a very relaxed, peaceful look on their face. Photographing one or two people in this fashion could be considered simple luck, but getting all five people to look this way is more than just luck, it is a reflection of the photographer who took the picture. The only way that this could have happened is if the photographer managed to get all five people into a state where they felt relaxed and peaceful around her and her camera. This is a skill that not all photographers have. I recall talking to a professional grip in Hollywood about what it took to become a director of photography, and he pointed out that the best DP's were not hired simply for their skills in photography, but more for their skill at handling movie stars, at getting the people who were being photographed into a state where they could be photographed well. This requires people skills, knowing how to put your subject at ease, how to convince them to stand, pose, and move as is required in order to get the shot.

I know several photographers who have said that they consider photography to be a rather antisocial hobby, something that they do by themselves, and for a long time I thought that way too. It's unfortunately part of my nature, I tend to be rather reclusive and antisocial. But more and more I'm seeing that a good photographer is hardly antisocial, and proactively seeks social contact while taking pictures, both for artistic reasons (such as putting a subject at ease) and for practical reasons (such as getting permission to shoot the subject in the first place).

Aspect Ratios and Composition

Before I started shooting medium format, I got pretty comfortable composing shots using good old 35mm film with its 1:1.5 aspect ratio. I shot a lot of landscapes, and so the wider perspective made perfect sense as I tried to capture the vastness of some of what I was seeing. You can see some examples of that here.

So when I first started shooting 6x6 format on my TLR, or 6x7 on my RB67, it really felt cramped and awkward. Everything felt too tall, I could never get wide enough for the perspective that I wanted. It was pretty frustrating, and part of the reason I bought the RB67 was because I was having second-thoughts about using the TLR and was hoping the extra width of the 6x7 format would help alleviate some of my frustrations with 6x6. I even started researching 6x4.5 cameras (the lack of waist-level viewfinders turned me off though).

However, over Labor Day weekend I went to visit my family in Atlanta and shot my TLR almost exclusively because it was much lighter and more compact than the RB67. Because I was taking pictures mostly of family members, especially my nephews, I forced myself to shoot closeups, almost portraits. In general I have a problem of trying to shoot too wide, and including too many extraneous details in my photographs. The subject needs to be clear, and going in closer can help with that.

But as I started shooting very tight shots with the 6x6 camera, the benefits of the format started to make sense to me. For portraits, a person's head and shoulders fit much more comfortably in a square frame than a long 2x3 frame. But more than that, there is a certain balance to be had by putting, say, my mother's frame on the right hand side of the picture, and letting her arms flow down her shoulders from left to right and having them lead the viewer to my newborn niece laying in her arms. In a 35mm frame, landscape orientation would have cut off too much of my mom and it would not be obvious who was holding the child, while in portrait orientation there would have been too much of my mom above and below the child. While I could probably have figured out a lens/placement combination with a 35mm camera that would have achieved the effect I wanted, it all came quite natural with the 6x6 frame.

So using that knowledge, I recently shot some sunsets with a 6x6 camera (I rented a Hasselblad 503CW), and I think they turned out well. It's very interesting how the format changes the way that I compose my pictures. Instead of trying to say very broad sweeping things, now the pictures are more focused, more precise. The tops and sides of trees are cut-off, and only the meat that matters is in the frame. It's a prime example of how photography is really about showing reality as the photographer sees it. I feel as though my pictures before on 35mm were a bit more generic, they didn't communicate anything very specific. There was too much fat, I was trying to put in too much. Now my pictures are starting to have more of my ideas and thoughts in them because I'm starting to manipulate the world with the camera and show only those pieces that I think are important. I still don't think I communicate nearly as well as I should with the camera, but I feel like shooting in the 6x6 format is greatly helping me in that process by forcing me to be more focused in my compositions.

Now I'm strongly considering getting another 6x6 camera aside from my TLR. Perhaps a V-series Hassie? Maybe a Bronica? Possibly a 6000-series Rollei? We'll see. I'll need to take my TLR out into nature more for photographs before I'll have a feel for whether it's good for those types of photographs.

Finally, B&W Darkroom Success!

This past Wednesday I finally developed a roll of film that came out correct, and I successfully made a good print off of it! I spent last weekend shooting pictures near Skyline Lake where highway 280 and highway 92 intersect. I shot mostly Velvia 100 and focused on getting the sunset, but I found a deserted highway that was fairly interesting, and I thought it would look good in B&W so I shot it on HP5+.

I went into the lab with a fair amount of trepidation, since I still had not gotten everything to work right. I had bought all new developer and fixer earlier, and then on Monday I mixed the developer (Kodak D76) so that it would be at room temperature by Wednesday. But I went into the lab and everything went off without a hitch! The temperatures were correct, I read the correct developing time off of the HP5+ data sheet, and I had no issues getting the chemicals on and off the film reel in the proper order. I was in and out of the developing room in just under 30 minutes. The reel looked good as I put it into the water tank for its final rinse, but you never know until you get it fully dried.

That took another 20 minutes, during which time I checked out all the equipment I needed to make a contact sheet and setup everything at the enlarger. After all that work developing the film I wanted to see what it would finally look like, on a print! When I pulled it out of the dryer, the negatives looked fantastic, with consistently good contrast throughout the entire strip and the edges between the frames clearly delineated. It looked nothing like the mess I had the last time I developed film, that's for sure!

I put the negatives under the enlarger to make a proof sheet, and was pleasantly surprised when the test strip showed that even 8 seconds of exposure was too much for the contact sheet! I did another test strip at 1 second increments, then printed the contact sheet at 5 seconds, everything looked great! I ended up having enough time in the lab left over to make a few prints, so I chose my favorite frame and made about five prints. It looks gorgeous! I haven't had time to scan in the negatives to attach to this post so that everyone can see, but I'm quite happy! It's not a terribly interesting set of pictures anyway, just something I knew would be a good for me to practice developing pictures on.

Now I feel much more confident in developing my film for the next assignment. Yay! :-)

B&W Darkroom Disasters!

So I've been taking a beginning B&W photography class this fall because I want to learn more about darkroom processes. I figured out how to print successfully relatively quickly, although I wouldn't pretend to be good at it yet. The prints I've made consistently lack that great pop that well-made prints have, that excellently deep and rich contrast. But I feel like I'm getting there, and it's only a matter of time... well, first I have to decide if I really like B&W all that much. We'll see.

The developing side, however, has been an absolute disaster! I have now developed four rolls of film, and all four have been crap. The first one was a series of test shots on 35mm that I didn't roll onto the reel properly, so parts of it didn't develop properly. That's not a surprise, as getting the film onto the reel properly is probably the hardest part of developing film, and almost everyone in class had a problem with that.

The next three rolls I tried developing, though, were even greater disasters! First I mixed a batch of Kodak's D76 developer. Now, the directions tell you to heat the water to 124 degrees F so that everything will dissolve properly. Not a problem, the darkroom has a hot water tap, and the water basically came out at right around that temperature. However, the developing directions then tell you to develop with the developer at 68 degrees F. Hmmm... so I mixed it at 124 degrees, but I have to use it at 68 degrees. Curses!! I tried and tried to get the temperature down to 68F, but the best I could do was 80F.

At this point I had wasted half an hour just trying to get the temperature down, and I only had a limited amount of time in the darkroom, so I just decided to develop the film at 80F. I looked up the stats for the film I was using (Ilford HP5), and it indicated that if I needed to cut my development time almost in half in order at that temperature, so I did that. Little did I know, but at 80 degrees D76 developer is too "active", and it actually started developing film that hadn't been exposed yet! The end result was that the negatives I had were extremely "dense", meaning that they were too dark. When I attempted to print these negatives, so little light was hitting the paper that I had to use exposure times of over 12 minutes!! Unfortunately these negatives contained my assignment for the class, so I couldn't simply throw them out, I had to get prints from them. Suffice it to say, I spent four hours just trying to get a decent print from these negatives. When you're forced to use a 12 min exposure time on paper, you find out all kinds of interesting things. Like enlarger lenses that vignette wide open are a real problem at such a long exposure time, so expect to spend a long time burning in the edges. Or that paper does indeed have reciprocity failure. The ambient light of the darkroom was actually brighter than the light coming from the negative onto the paper, so I had to build a little "shrine" out of towels and paper bags to block out all the ambient light!

Even worse than that, I then decided to develop the B&W rolls that I had shot at my cousin's wedding. I went through all the same steps as I had done with the other rolls, but somehow I apparently got the fixer and the developer mixed up, because when I was done developing the rolls, they had absolutely no information on them. Nothing. It was completely clear plastic, not even the numbers from each frame around the borders was showing up. That normally means that you've put in fixer before developer, so the fixer has completely wiped everything off of the film. But I swear I was very careful about the order of the chemicals, and that couldn't have happened! In any case, I threw out all my developer and fixer and bought all new chemicals so that I could rule out bad chemicals as the cause. I then shot one more roll this past weekend so that I can try again to successfully develop film.

Sigh, what I wouldn't give to just see that nicely developed B&W film, clear on the edges but nicely shaded silver color on the inside. Hopefully I'll figure it out soon, since it's the whole reason I'm taking the class!

Scanning B&W Negatives - No ICE!

Apparently when scanning in black and white negatives (true black and white, not C-41 black and white), you can't use Digital ICE or any other technology that relies on infrared scanning to pick up dust/dirt on the negative. I'm not sure why, but when I scanned in a few B&W negatives with Digital ICE turned on, everything looked terribly posterized. I saw a few posts online about Digital ICE "not working" with B&W negatives, so I tried turning it off and everything was fixed. I'm guessing that the infrared scan incorrectly interpretes some of the emulsion itself to be dust or dirt, and removes it, leaving huge holes in the grayscale of the picture that then results in posterization.

The Zen of Manual Camera Photography

Last weekend I managed to get out with the new camera and take some pictures. It was quite a different experience from taking pictures with the SLR, I must say. The first and most obvious difference came when I was just learning how to use the new camera. The two-step operation of the shutter (first cock it with a lever on the left, then fire it with a lever on the right) took some getting used to. I searched all around the camera for a dial with which to set the ISO speed of my film, until I realized that since the camera didn't have a meter, there was no need for the camera to care what the film speed was! More intuitive was the way focus is dialed in on the camera, very smooth and nice, with much more precision and repeatability than on my SLR.

The second difference was trying to compose the shot using the waist-level finder. I had heard some people complaining online about how difficult it was to do this, but until I tried I didn't realize how disorienting it can be! It's not simply that everything's backwards, it's that if you want to center something that's on the left of the viewfinder, you have to move right! Even tougher is attempting to level the picture, because again if the right side of the image is too high in the viewfinder, you have to lower the right side of the camera. Surprisingly though, after about my third roll of film I started to get the hang of it. I'm thinking that a few more sessions with the camera and it should start to become second nature to me.

The biggest different, though, was how different the entire experience of the picture-taking session was for me. People have said that they like to use rangefinders because they feel like their part of the action, they're right inside what they are photographing, when they use a rangefinder, whereas with an SLR, they feel like they are an outsider looking in. I think I know what they are talking about, because I felt the same way when I started taking pictures. Because I didn't have the camera up to my face all the time, I felt free to look around and soak in the landscape before me, instead of hiding behind the camera the whole time. I really felt more connected and more relaxed about taking pictures. Less like a scientist documenting what I was seeing, and more like a part of the scenery. It really felt good.

The other thing that contributed to this feeling was the all-natural meter that I had, mainly my own eyes. Before I took any pictures I learned the Sunny-16 rule, and memorized parts of the EV scale. Using that, I sized up each shot based on what its EV value was, and used the Sunny-16 rule to translate that into an f-stop and shutter speed. It was amazing how much simpler taking photographs became when I didn't have to rely on a machine to tell me what the settings should be and I just used my own judgment. I felt it really helped me relax and look at the scene before me, instead of trying to point a device somewhere to get a meter reading and wondering if the meter had gotten fooled.

So overall I'm pretty happy with this new approach to taking photographs. It's almost a zen-like experience now, I feel so much more connected to everything. It's very cool. Can't wait to drive up and down the coast on the weekends and take some more pictures!

Just bought a Mamiya C220

So, I haven't been feeling so great recently, and one of my biggest flaws is that I tend to try and compensate for that by buying things. Call it some sort of retail therapy. I know it doesn't really help, but ultimately I do it anyway.

This time around I decided to invest in a medium format camera. The main reason I did this was because for portraiture work. I managed to take a very nice-looking photograph of a friend, and I found myself wishing that I had a bigger piece of film to look at. I've been growing increasingly frustrated with the fact that I need to scan in my film to digital before I can really get a good look at it. Putting an 8x loupe over a 35mm frame is OK, but not really comfortable, and you can't really get a great feeling for holding a picture in your hand when it's that small.

Plus, medium format offers greater resolution and the ability to make bigger prints. I've been scanning in my 35mm film at 4000dpi with a Nikon Coolscan V-ED scanner, and it seems like at that resolution (6,000 x 4,000, or 24megapixels!) the film itself has become the limiting factor.

Finally, on my trip to Greece and Italy, I felt as though people would get more self-conscious when they saw that I had my big camera pointed at them. It was much more difficult to get a nice candid photo of friends and family.

All of these things led me to start researching alternative format cameras. Ideally I would shoot a giant piece of film, like a view camera, but large format cameras are simply too big and complicated to shoot candid people photos with. They're really intended for studio work or landscape photography. That left only medium format. Most of the SLR choices were very expensive (not even going to discuss the cost of a Hasselblad system, but even the Mamiya 645 series was pretty expensive).

Then I discovered Twin Lens Reflex camera systems, and I knew I had found what I wanted. These are relatively small cameras, so they are easy to carry around discreetly, and the fact that they are mostly waist-level viewfinders enables you to take pictures on the sly much more easily. You can even turn your body to the side as if you're not looking at your subject and just turn the camera lens towards them to take their picture! Plus on eBay the prices were quite reasonable.

Originally I was looking at RolleiFlex cameras, because of the quality of the camera and lenses, but the auction prices for any that were known to be in good working condition seemed to approach $200 with regularity, and I was a little bit concerned about paying that much for a very old camera with an unknown history. Plus the fact that it was a fixed lens design with no possibility of switching the lens was not very appealing to me.

Then I found the Mamiya C220 and C330 cameras. They have interchangeable lenses! Plus the cost of the camera with an 80mm lens was only marginally higher than the RolleiFlexes. I found a dealer who seemed reputable on eBay, and I ended up buying a C220 with the 80mm lens, plus a wider 65mm lens and a telephoto 135mm lens. The package will hopefully arrive by Friday, so I will have something to play with. I'll let you know how it goes! :-)

Lessons learned from Greece/Italy

So I've finally finished scanning in all my photos, and now I'm in the final stages of editing them and getting ready to upload them to Yahoo! photos for others to see. I'd say I learned a lot about taking photos from this trip, mostly because of the fact that over 70% of the photos ended up being quite terrible (as usual). Figuring out why is always the learning experience when taking photos. Here's a few things I learned on this trip:

1. On touristy trips like this, people are much more interesting than empty landscapes. The pictures are much more interesting to look at if you have people you know in them, interesting both for others and for myself. This seems self-evident, but I normally don't take pictures of people. It's something I need to work on since I have very little experience with it.
2. Focus, focus, focus! Too often, I had the focus set wrong. I would think that infinity was good enough, or I would trust the camera to just get it right, and it would get it wrong. Especially when you throw people into it. Something placed ten feet away from the camera with f/8 at 40mm is unfortunately not within the depth of field if the focus is set to inifinity. You don't really care when that something is a plant or chair, because it's "close enough". But when it's a person, it's glaringly obvious when they're even just a little bit out of focus. Aside from people though, there were a few times when I had a statue or some other inanimate object as the focal point of the photo, and I just didn't check the focus closely enough, so the photo was ruined. Unlike almost any other technical problem, you can't fix focus problems in post.
   
3. Use the AE and AF lock buttons when shooting people. People don't like to stand around, so you have to work very quickly. If people are in the photo, you can't make them stand around holding their pose while you figure out the right exposure, so you have to do all of that beforehand, and then ask them to pose. This is where the AE lock and AF lock buttons come in handy. I never use them when shooting landscapes because I have time to set everything manually, but when people are involved, there isn't time to take meter reads and adjust the focus ring manually. These buttons are invaluable for those situations.
4. While landscapes are predictable, living mobile things (people, animals, etc) are not. So while with careful setup you can take just one shot of a landscape and have it be exactly what you want to capture, with people and animals you always have to hedge your bets and take a bunch of shots, hoping you get the perfect shot somewhere in there. I got lucky with one picture of a friend that turned out really really nice, but that was pure luck. Many more pictures of family and friends and even animals ended up being wasted because I only took one or two shots and didn't capture quite the perfect expression or action. This is where digital really helps, and I'm strongly considering getting the Canon 5D, I just can't afford it anytime soon! This is also where using a rangefinder instead of an SLR might be beneficial, so I'm considering that as well. Man, this hobby is getting expensive!
5. The 24-105mm f/4 lens is really the correct lens to bring on a tourist trip. The point of being on a tourist trip is to spend time with the group you're with. If you lag behind to take pictures, they get tired of waiting and simply go ahead. While I did take a few days off to just go photograph on my own, in general I preferred spending time with the group than being by myself. Probably the slowest thing about taking the photographs was switching lenses. I brought my standard landscape lenses, meaning the 17-40mm and 70-200mm zooms, which are perfect for landscapes, but really not good for walking around and taking tourist-type photographs. Too often I found myself needing to switch lenses, and on more than one occasion I chose to give up the photo and stick with my group than take the time to swap lenses and get the shot I wanted. And rarely did I end up needing the super-wide or super-telephoto focal lengths on those zooms, a 24-105mm range would have been perfect. That lens is also very discreet, unlike the huge grey 70-200mm lens that I didn't feel comfortable walking around with around my neck. I could have reduced my weight and sped up my shots if I had had the 24-105mm. The IS would have come in handy several times as well. Yet more money to be spent!
6. On overcast days, overexpose!! I had a ton of photographs come out way too dark, and in almost every case it was because the sky was overcast and there just wasn't much contrast. The camera essentially sees a gray card in front of it, and so it pulls everything down to 18%, and it looks ugly. This is something that I'm still trying to understand completely, and I probably need more formal training on it, because I have a tough time figuring out when the camera is underexposing and when it's not on cloudy days. Clearly I'm missing a key piece of information about how the meter works.
   
7. Don't use Sensia 100 on overcast days! Man, this film looks bad when there's little contrast. Just flat and ugly. Of course, it's really just Astia, so it's low-contrast by design. On sunny days it's quite good. But overcast it just doesn't do much. Provia 100F is a much better choice in those situations. Actually, the dollar per roll I save using Sensia instead of Provia is probably not worth it. I think I'll just stick with Provia full-time, since it handles all situations pretty well. Although I feel like I should give Velvia another shot. Oh yeah, Kodak Elite Chrome 100 is just gross, I will never shoot it again.
8. My bag situation is all wrong. After buying four new bags for all different kinds of situations back in February, I'm finding that probably none of them were right. That's pretty annoying. Probably the closest thing to being perfect is the Crumpler seven million dollar bag I have (which I didn't bring on this trip!) It enables me to carry all my gear, but more importantly, stow the entire camera without taking the lens off, regardless of which lens I have on the body, very quickly and pull it out very quickly. This would have saved me a lot of time. The only question is whether or not it would have been comfortable to carry around for eight or nine hours. I'll have to find that out. In the meantime, I have to look for new camera bags. *sigh*
   

Crazy Tourist Photographers

I just recently got back from a trip to Italy and Greece. I brought a relatively small setup with me to go shooting photos with: my EOS-1v, the 17-40mm f/4, the 50mm f/1.8 II, and the 70-200mm f/4. Plus about 30 rolls of slide film. Walking around though, I saw some truly crazy things that other tourists were doing with their cameras. There was the usual "tourists who don't turn off their flash when trying to shoot a picture of a building across the Great Canal thereby ruining the shot by just getting a picture of illuminated nearby water" thing.

The crazier thing was how many people were doing this while using $1500 digital SLR's. I swear, these things have just become status symbols. People buy them because they're "cool" and it makes them look "sexy", even though they have no clue what they're doing and, worse, don't really care to get a clue. It's the Mercedes of the photography world. I find that pretty despicable. When I decided to start out with photography, I bought a simple entry-level camera that cost me about $250 with lens. Only when I finally figured out how to operate the thing did I bother with upgrading to nicer bodies or lenses. I wasn't worried about how "cool" I would look if I bought the fanciest equipment first.

The worst of this was seeing people taking silly pictures with the most ridiculous gear you can imagine. I saw a 60 year old who was carrying a full EOS-3 with power booster and a 420EX flash attached, in broad daylight, while lounging at the pool. Do you really need those 7 pictures/sec capability while sunbathing?? I never once saw him actually try to take any pictures with this camera setup, either. Clearly this guy was carrying this gear around just to show off.

But the tourists who take the cake in this category has to be the two guys who were walking around Venice with their girlfriends/wives/whatever, carrying not just EOS 5D cameras, but also 70-200 f/2.8 IS lenses, with lens hoods attached, on a cloudy overcast day! They were using these things like point-and-shoot lenses, just walking around, snapping a shot, and then moving on. No tripods, of course, and certainly no more than five seconds to evaluate a shot and take it. They could have been such pro's that that's all the time they needed, of course, but somehow I got the impression that they were just showing off their fancy gear. Worst of all, they were making their wives carry all their photo bags and gear! Like little sherpas.

I did at least see two serious photographers while on the trip. One had a Leica M7 who was waiting patiently for tourists to clear so that he could take a picture of a homeless lady begging for change. Another had a tripod out during the magic hour and was very carefully and patiently setting himself up to take pictures of the gondolas. So it wasn't all just ridiculousness.

But probably the most annoying thing of all was the three or four times that I would take the time to find an interesting shot, compose it, get all my settings right, take it, then turn around and see some tourist there behind me duplicating my shot! Find your own damn pictures to take, people!! ;-)

Re-Evaluating the Sunpak Monopod

So in a previous post I bemoaned the little Sunpak monopod that I had bought from Best Buy. The biggest problem with the monopod is the fact that the smallest leg extension at the very bottom is not secured in place with a twist lock, but rather simple spring-loaded clips that give easily if even a little bit of weight is placed on them.

However, I've been shopping around for higher-quality monopods, and what I've found is that there really isn't anything nearly as light or as small as the Sunpak. It's extremely convenient to carry around, unlike even the smallest carbon-fiber monopod I've seen, so I'm much more likely to carry it around. And the cost simply can't be beat. $30 for the Sunpak, with ball-head, is drastically cheaper than even a simple aluminum three-section Bogen with the entry-level ball-head.

So I've resigned myself to keeping with the Sunpak for now. I will probably stop trying to use the third leg that collapses on itself to avoid the biggest problem with the Sunpak. With the other legs fully extended the monopod is the same height as when I am bending down on one knee, so that's still pretty useful for a lot of the pictures that I take. It will go with me on my trip to Greece and hopefully be very useful for me.

Testing out film

So I'm going on a trip to Venice and the Greek islands at the end of May, and I expect to take lots and lots of pictures while I am there, I'm very excited! But one thing I need to get done before then is figuring out what film stocks to take with me. I love Provia for its high contrast, rich colors, and tight grain, but every once in a while I find it's a little bit cold, and I'd like to find something a bit warmer. I'd also like to see what a lower contrast film looks like, especially on very sunny days around noon. And then there are 400 speed films to evaluate (I normally shoot 100 speed) for those times when it gets dark. To that end, I've bought:

1. Two rolls of Kodak Elite Chrome 100 (to test out the warmer palette)
2. Two rolls of Fuji Sensia 100 (to test out the lower contrast)
3. Two rolls of Fuji Sensia 400 (to test out a 400 speed film)
4. Two rolls of Fuji Velvia 100F (to give it another try)

And of course, I bought 5 rolls of Provia 100F, just because that's my standard. Hopefully over the next month I'll be able to test out all four of the above film stocks and decide exactly what combination to bring with me on my trip.

Not sold on Velvia

So this weekend I went to various places in San Francisco and shot some pictures using Fuji Velvia 100F. Got the results back yesterday and today, and I'm not really that impressed. I can't say that it's significantly better different from Provia, at least in the shots that I took (mostly landscape photos, with some sunsets). The colors looks good, certainly, well-saturated, a little bit of a blue cast when underexposed in shadows (to be expected), tight grain, tons of resolution under an 8x loupe. But it seems like Provia 100F actually has *higher* contrast, whereas everywhere I had read that Velvia is the higher contrast film. This showed up when I scanned in the slides and under Photoshop's Levels there was frequently very little information at the white end of the spectrum. Plus I didn't get any super-saturated colors, which is the point of using Velvia, right? Maybe I got a bad batch of Velvia? Not sure. At this point I'm content to stick with Provia 100F for most of my tasks, although right now Adorama as Velvia 100F on sale for the same price as Provia 100F, so I'll probably pick up a few rolls to try again at a later date.

Taking Pictures in SF

So apparently I need to start investing in different clothes and equipment if I am going to continue trying to take pictures at sunset in San Francisco. Today I went to the Presidio, which is at the most northwest point of the city. There is quite a large park area in that corner, featuring the Palace of the Legion of Honor, the Veterans Memorial Hospital, and Cliff House. It's an amazing place to take photographs, because looking west is the ocean, with its associated beaches, cliffs, and especially the setting sun, and looking east is the Golden Gate Bridge. Of course picturesque Marin County is just to the north as well, not to mention all the beautiful trees that surround you. So it's quite the interesting area to take pictures.

However, there is absolutely no respite from the wind out there. I was wearing a long sleeve shirt, a sweater, and a pea coat, and the wind just cut right through that, especially going down through the top of my coat and just whipping all the heat right out from my clothes. My hands too began to get very cold after a while, making steady pictures a difficult endeavor. Even though it was not a cold day at all, the wind made things very difficult, especially towards sunset. Apparently I need to start wearing windbreakers, scarves, and gloves when I try to take pictures from now on.

I also discovered that the $30 Sunpak monopod that I bought from Best Buy is pretty much useless. The bottom portion pulls out and "clicks" into place (no locking mechanism!). Needless to say, with the EOS-1v plus my 17-40mm f/4L, the bottom leg kept collapsing, and usually just as I applied the pressure required to release the shutter. What's truly annoying is that I could have bought a high-quality Manfrotto-Bogen monopod for only a few dollars more! Oh well, live and learn.

The sunset was truly beautiful today though! I will have pictures posted at my Yahoo! 360 account soon.

First impressions of the EOS-1v

So I've shot two rolls with the EOS-1v so far (I know, hardly anything at all! I need to get out there and shoot more!). My first impressions are that the camera feels PERFECT in my hand. I used to think that big cameras were too much, back when I was carrying a Rebel Ti around. Now that I've used the EOS-1v, I can't imagine how I took all those photos with the smaller bodies. It's just not very comfortable, my fingers are in all the wrong places on those bodies. The EOS-1v offers fantastic grip, and it's easy for me to reach all the buttons I need to without excessive twisting.

The other thing I really like about the 1v is the action of the shutter. There's just a very solid feeling when I press the shutter release. The heavier body probably contributes to that. The weight of the body also helps me steady the camera. I took a few shots at 7/10 second shutter speed and under an 8x loupe it doesn't look blurry at all! With my Rebel Ti, I could never get anything under 1/10 second, and with my Elan 7 1/2 second was about as long as I could go. Of course, my hands and body have gotten steadier in that time too, but I know the camera has made a big difference as well.

Finally, having everything operate in 1/3 stops is an interesting experience. From the aperture stops to the shutter speeds to the +/- exposure, I feel like I'm constantly seeing new numbers pop up in the viewfinder that I've never seen before. But I definitely appreciate the ability to fine-tune exposure. And obviously the camera is capable of taking much more accurate pictures since the metering system doesn't always have to round off to the nearest 1/2.

Overall it feels pretty good, I'm definitely glad I made the switch, considering the cost!
A very rugged body. I'm looking forward to using it more in the coming months and years! :-)

The elusive Canon GR-E2 grip found!

For the past week since I bought the EOS-1v, I've been scouring the 'net, trying to find the GR-E2 grip for it (the non-power-booster grip). The reason is simple: the power booster is crazy heavy and bulky. I can barely fit the EOS-1v into my Orion photo pack with the PB-E2 on, and the camera is damn heavy too! I don't need 10fps or hours of continuous operation since I'm not a professional photographer, so it just doesn't make sense for me to deal with all the extra weight and bulk of the PB-E2. So, for day to day usage, I wanted to use the GR-E2, which substantially decreases both the weight and the bulk of the EOS-1v.

Problem is, I was coming up with nothing online. No photo store had it in stock, and when I started bidding on eBay for one, it ended up selling for $60, which is exactly the retail price for a new one! I called up Calumet Photo to have them special order it, but they said it might take several months for me to get one. So I kept going to every camera store I could find in the San Francisco area looking for a used one.

Finally, I went to Keeble and Schuchat Photography in Palo Alto. Despite the fact that I had called ahead and they had told me they had none around, when I got there I discovered that they in fact had TWO! And they would sell me one for just $20, 1/3 of the retail cost. It looks brand new, too! Needless to say, I was quite happy to buy it. So finally I had obtained the elusive GR-E2 grip. :-)

The camera is so much more manageable now. It's kind of scary though that nobody had this grip in stock, not even any online merchants, and that they thought the wait to special order it would be over a month! It's pretty clear now that film cameras really are dead, and if you can't find what you need on the used market you probably won't be able to get it anymore. Time to grab all the accessories you need for those film cameras before they all disappear!

Used film cameras are a fantastic value

So ever since I discovered that the Canon EOS-3 could be had used for well within my budget, I've been searching for used EOS-1v cameras that might be close to my budget as well. This past weekend I went to Samy's Camera in LA, and they had a used EOS-1v with PB-E2 power booster for $750. I decided to take the plunge and buy it. The camera itself is in fantastic shape, no major nicks, looks almost completely flawless. The power booster has a bit of wear on it, but I intend on buying a GR-E2 grip anyway so that won't really be an issue. Basically, I got a $2000 retail camera that is almost new for about 1/3 of the price. That is just insane. This is the top of the line Canon camera, used by professional photographers around the world, and it costs less than the Digital Rebel XT. Looking on eBay, there are a ton of these cameras for sale, each for less than $1000. With some careful bidding, I'm sure you could get a cheaper price than what I got. This is a fantastic value, in my opinion. I finally have a camera that can store per-picture camera information, that's built solidly, with spot metering, 10 fps capability, and it cost me so much less than even the entry-level Canon digital SLR, nevermind a digital SLR that would be comparable in build quality (like the 5D or 1DsII).

The bottom line is, if you are still using Canon EOS film cameras and need a new body, the used market has tons of great cameras for you. Definitely check it out.

Blue cast problem solved

Turns out the heavy blue cast I had in my slides was due to the lab that I was using. I shot several rolls of Provia and had them processed at a different lab and they've all been fine. Same batch of film from B&H, plus one of the rolls was shot at Tahoe where it was around 40 degrees out, so definitely the temperature didn't affect the film that much. Of course, when I underexposed my shots, there was a blue tinge to the snow, but it wasn't that heavy. I tend not to notice slight casts in color, so if it stands out to me that means it's very very glaring. Once I scan in some photos I'll add them for comparison so that you can see exactly what I mean.

The dreaded Provia blue cast problem?

So I'm a relative novice when it comes to shooting slide film, I haven't gotten into all the nuances of shooting with a particular film. I had heard about problems with a blue cast when shooting Fuji Provia 100F in the shade or in general when it is underexposed, but my first ten or so rolls I did not encounter this problem. I've been mostly shooting sunsets recently, so I'm mostly exposing for the sky, leaving the foreground completely underexposed. The sky is usually very orange during sunsets (as you can imagine), and that's what I had been getting in my shots.

Recently I shot a series of sunsets which all turned up a heavy blue cast in the sky instead of the familiar orange that I normally see in my shots. The blue was very very severe. I didn't change any of my shooting procedures though - I used center-weighted metering, pointed my camera completely into the sky, took a meter reading, then underexposed my final shot so that it matched that reading. I'm confused as to how this could have resulted in such a heavy blue cast when previously I had not had this problem.

Some other possible considerations:
- I did just buy a batch of 10 new rolls from B&H Photo. One of the rolls was from a Wolf Camera, but most of them were from B&H. I suppose I could have gotten a bad batch.
- I had all of the rolls processed by one particular lab. I had used them once before without any problems, but since all of these rolls were processed at the same time, maybe they messed up the development by using bad chemicals? When I asked the lab about the results, they indicated that the results I got were typical Provia and that there was nothing wrong with the processing.
- The rolls had been in the freezer until about seven hours before I shot them, and the ambient temperature was in the low 50's. I heard somewhere that Provia tends to have a blue cast when it is physically cold. Do I need to heat the film up to 70 degrees or so before I shoot?
- Maybe I've just been lucky with my shots so far, since everyone says that Provia reacts like this?

I guess it's time for me to buy an 81B filter to protect myself from these kinds of results in the future. I'll get shoot a few more rolls without the filter and develop them somewhere else just to verify that this is in fact a problem, then I suppose I'll just have to learn when I need to use the 81B and when I don't.

Canon EOS-3 vs. EOS-1v

So now that I've decided to stick with film, I've been searching for a second body to load a different speed film on. The idea originally was that I would load a slow slide film like Fuji Provia 100F in my main body, the Canon Elan 7N, and then buy a cheaper body, like a Rebel T2 or even another Elan if it's cheap, and load 400 - 800 speed film, maybe negative, maybe Provia 400F. So I walked into Keeble and Shuchat Photography's used department to see what used Canon EOS cameras they might have.

What I found instead was several Canon EOS-3 cameras there, all at over 60% off MSRP. I suppose I should have realized that the mid-to-top end of Canon's film cameras would be readily available now that everyone is switching to the Canon 5D and 1Ds, but to see that I could get that much off of the retail price was pretty amazing. I was extremely tempted to buy the camera right then and there, but honestly I had never even considered buying an EOS-3 so I had no idea what the feature-set of it was.

While researching the EOS-3 I came across advice that indicated that the EOS-1v was a serious step up from the EOS-3, and that I would not be satisfied with the EOS-3 once I tried the EOS-1v. So I started reading up on the feature set of the EOS-1v, and saw that it had the one feature that I've been dying to have ... the ability to record your exposure information onto the roll of film. Being as I am a simple novice, I'm always trying to learn more about how to expose things properly, and I'm constantly frustrated by my poor memory when I'm reviewing my shots. The ability to review that information while looking at my processed film would be invaluable to me.

The only problem, of course, is that the price drop for a used Canon EOS-1v isn't nearly as dramatic as that for the EOS-3. I'd still have to pay almost $1,000 currently for a used EOS-3 in good condition. I don't really need any of the other professional features of the EOS-1v, so it's hard for me to justify paying twice as much for an EOS-1v as an EOS-3. So that causes me a great dilemna. I could just wait and see if used prices for the EOS-1v continue to drop, but I could really used a second body right now as I'm constantly switching between 100 speed and 400 speed film as I go from shooting outdoor landscapes to friends indoors. What to do ....

If I was being fiscally responsible, I would just buy a new Rebel T2 for just $180, which is much closer to my budget than even a used EOS-3. *sigh* I really need a good telephoto lens too. What to do, what to do ...

The experience of taking photos

As most amateur photographers have probably done, I have been contemplating switching from film-based cameras to digital-based cameras. The reasons for doing so are pretty obvious - no more waiting for film to be processed before seeing your results. No fees to buy or develop film. No longer being frustrated when lighting conditions change and you have the wrong speed film loaded.

For a while I was waiting for an affordable digital camera that didn't have a FOV crop factor. I like to shoot very wide landscapes, and I frequently take shots in the 17-20mm range. If I bought a camera with a FOV crop factor around 1.6x, I'd have to buy an 11mm lens to approach the 17mm that I shoot at. Purchasing a good one would be extremely expensive, not to mention that I would likely not need it once digital cameras with full-frame sensors become more prevalent. In other words, it would be an expensive temporary purchase that I would want to sell (for a significant loss) later.

A lot of that changed once Canon released the 5D. Granted, it's still a pretty expensive camera. But it's one that, if I save up for, I can afford. So, I went into the camera store and started trying it out. But something kept nagging at me.

I already own a budget 4 megapixel digital camera that I've been taking pictures with for about half a year. And I love the fact that I can take pictures without worrying about "wasting film", and see the results immediately. But I mostly just take casual pictures with it. Not because the camera isn't up to more serious shots, but because I really don't like examining my pictures on a computer. It simply isn't very fun. I can't hold a digital picture. And something about that just makes it seem uninteresting to me. I don't get the same satisfaction out of taking a nice picture with a digital camera that I do with a film camera, simply because I can't hold the resulting picture in my hand.

Sure, I could buy a photo printer to print out my own pictures, but once you factor in the cost of buying a really good one and buying ink and high quality photo paper, it's not necessarily any cheaper than film. Or I could upload the picture to an online photo site and order a print, but that's not exactly faster than dropping off film at a processing store.

OK, so those are kind of flimsy reasons, and I could probably deal with it. But yet I'm still hesitant to do it. Why? I think it's because the whole experience of shooting pictures digitally is just different from film. Digital is too transient and abstract. Your picture is a collection of bits on a flash card or a hard drive. You can only see them using a computer or some other electronic device. If you don't have any electronic devices around to view the picture, does it even exist? Digital just doesn't feel real to me.

For professional photographers, I understand that this is a pretty silly idea. Digital has blatantly obvious benefits and cost savings that cannot be ignored for the professional. But I don't take pictures in order to make money and sustain a living. I take pictures for fun. For the experience. So it matters to me how I feel when I take pictures. And for now, taking pictures with film, taking them to a film lab for processing, and then looking at the processed filmand/or print in my hand is part of what I enjoy about photography.